APPENDIX Answers to the professor questions QUESTION N.1• Positive and negative issue judgment about segmentationWe believe that the segmentation shown in the Case did not present some importantpoints related to the market. The first is the one directly connected to the price elasticityof the market. In the case is written that the positive result obtained by Fiserv’s onlinepayment system was due to the direct saving for customers. In this segmentation thereare no informations related to this point so that we cannot understand also which type ofeconomic risk customers will perceive when we will present the opportunity to shift fromthe bill paper to e-billing.We cannot understand also what is the final goal that people want to rich using internetdevices to make payments and do transactions (terminal value).
14. APPENDIX QUESTION N.2• What your choice of targeting?As already shown in the cost analysis slides we decide to consider not just one segmentbut 3 of them. The reason is very simple to understand. The new product (e-billing) isanswering to the real needs of just two simple of cluster (E-Savvy and Self improvers),which are looking for “better system” to cut time and better organize the bill, but justthe first cluster doesnt have a high risk perception due to the internet securityproblem. There is also another problem related to this case. The bad results shown in thepast make us thinking that is not correct to invest only in a specific target because westill dont know if the perceived benefits of the product are enough strong togenerate a profitable buzz (world of mouth). For the new strategy it will be better tohave one cluster of early adopter, one cluster as followers searching for bothconvenience and better bill management system and one cluster that, even if doesntneed the new system, could be involved to generate profit in the medium run.We will use the early adopter (E-Savvy) to cover the initial advertisting costs and we willuse the positioning to the Maximizers (III group) to increase the buzz when the productwill be ready to answer both explicit and implicit needs that are still on stage (in thetext it is clear that customers are looking for mainly a reminder system bill )
15. APPENDIX QUESTION N.3• How do you think is better to convert the target?According to the informations written to the Case, we already know that the targetmarket as high price elasticity. We decide to convert the target using different type ofapproaches. For customers that already use e-billing (mix customers) we will just presentour best price offer using the range of possibility shown by the markup valuation (e-billingwill be always more convenient even if we increase the markup). For mix users we willjust use the outbound marketing and e-mail marketing. Same marketing strategy,related to price, we will do to convince the 2 targets of E-Savvy and Self Improvers.For the Maximizers we will use another approach. People inside this cluster believe thatalready have a good bill management system so we will have less possibility to get theirattention using just the price formula. For them we will use another type of marketingstrategy. Because they are financial "influencers" into the market we will crate a specificcampaign to test the product and gain money to write technical and behavioralreview about the product itself. To introduce the campain we will use link-buildingstrategy and social media marketing; banners and specific landing page connected to thebanks or billers website
16. APPENDIX QUESTION N.4• Which is the role and involvement of the merchant in a BtC through B approach?It is a strategic rule because it base to create a sort of bridge between to differenceneeds. In this case Fiserv is playing the master rule because through the final customers(end-users) it could increase the banks/billers benefits and also its own revenues. Webelieve that in this specific Case the most important issue to take into account is theprice setting. Making the right price for the service to the bank will help to find the betterstrategy for the end-users. If the banks or the billers could have more flexibility inchanging from one markup to another (bacause they still have margin due to acompetitive service price setting by Fiserv) they could create more subscriptions’promotion strategy according to the demand elasticity.