Cork’d: Building a Social Network for Wine Lovers
Q: Assume Cork’d Management is going to rededicate resources. You have been hired to significantly increase the user base. What would you recommend as strategies for management to consider?
Ans: Cork’d business model is focused on getting more users to sign in for free. For me this is a weakness for the company because it reduces the sources of revenue. At the same time it is a business that concentrates on the costumer, which is the main reason for its success. So, I think they should host regularly big wine festivals as they did when they re-launched the website in order to obtain the membership of participating wineries, who are their primary sources of revenue. In this new age, the marketing department should focus on women and social media. Cork’d should hire wine consulting and marketing firm for broadening PR. Customers should be allowed to link their social media accounts and share updates on it. Activities like Endorsements from celebrities and wine influencers, more TV appearances, Video blogs, and advertisements in bars and during sporting events should be encouraged. Gary has a celebrity status, which should continue to be used to increase his customer base but it should mainly be utilized to attract more wineries that would create an account with them.
I would also recommend that the site should have wine related advertisements that could cover the site’s day-to-day costs, including salaries. Wineries should be allowed to customize their profiles and an efficient system should be developed to provide metrics to a particular winery on sales which is through cork’d. So wineries wouldn’t think twice about the value of signing up and would attract more wineries. They could also concentrate more on the shopping experience, allowing their customers to compare prices between vendors or having pop-ups with promotions on wines. They could also have “premium users” who would pay a prescription per year....