Reference no: EM133548853

Case Study: Caselet / Scenario

The personal care industry and digital platforms in South Africa

Key words: digital platform, personal care industry, business model, unemployment

Purpose of the study: The purpose of this research is to investigate the extension and evolvement of a non-asset digital platform to democratise the large personal care organisations who can only employ a certain number of personal care professionals, due to limitations created by a retail environment as well as provide personal care professionals an opportunity to become self-employed, self-sufficient and maximise their opportunity to earn.

1. Introduction
The approach taken for the literature review for this topic will be primarily based on seminal articles which will include peer reviewed journals, professional journals, market research, organisational literature, statistics, case studies and unpublished papers in the time frame from the years no earlier than 2010. Further to this, the geographical reach will be to gain insights from a global perspective on what successful digital platform business models comprise of and to identify the critical success factors and to test it within the South African market then to understand which aspects need to be adapted to suit this specific market.

1.1 Exponential organisational framework
The start of the literature review portion of this research study is to highlight and explain the business model that was created by Salim Ismail et al., who have done extensive research within start-up organisations that achieved a one billion dollar market cap in a significantly short amount of time. They have come up with eleven critical areas within these successful businesses and have found the higher the scores are out of the eleven factors, the greater success these companies have (Ismail et al., 2014). (Hagiu and Wright, 2015) expanded on the concept of multi- sided platforms to illustrate the complexity of exponential organisations.

1.2 Business models

1.2.1 Definition
The traditional components of a business model comprised of three components. Firstly, the customer value proposition, which is where an organisation offers customers more value, actual or perceived compared to its competition. Secondly, the profit formula which creates value for the organisation through revenue generation and ensuring positive net returns in for-profit organisations, and the third element is the crucial resources and elements needed to perform the organisation's activities, such as IT-systems, people, technology, equipment, etc. (Johnson, Christensen and Kagermann, 2008).

1.2.2 Transformative business models
Transformative business models are associated with technological advancements that allow the business to operate in a way that was not possible before the technology was available (Zawislak et al., 2012), however technology on its own does not transform industries on its own (Kavadias, Ladas and Loch, 2016). Business model transformation is achieved when the business model is re- engineered to link the use of technology to customer needs; in other words, create more value for the customer.

According to a study done by the University of Cambridge's Judge Business School, they identified six features that are present in a transformative business model, and when the new business model includes more than three of these features, it is classified as a transformative business model (Kavadias, Ladas and Loch, 2016).

The six features are as follows:

1. Personalisation which refers to the ability to shape a value proposition to the specific need of a customer. An example would be the use of big data to drive focused advertising to consumers on the Internet based on their previous search histories.

2. A closed-loop process which refers to products that can be recycled and reused, which drives down overall resource costs.

3. Asset sharing, which refers to the sharing of costly assets, for example Airbnb allows owners to rent out their properties or portions of their properties. This allows benefit for the owner who receives money that previously would not have been received and the consumer saves on costs and convenience. This is synonymous with non-asset based digital platforms.

4. Usage-based pricing which refers to customers only paying for the service when it is consumed rather than paying for an asset or product which is not utilised one hundred percent of the time.

5. Collaborative ecosystem, which refers to the platform that allows for different suppliers to interlock with the ecosystem, as well as customers being able to interlock from the demand side into the same ecosystem. The ecosystem connects the supply side and the demand side of the platform.

6. Agility - there has been a significant shift in organisational structures in recent years where organisations abandon the hierarchical model and adopt flatter structures that allow for more autonomy to speed up decision making and adapt to the ever-changing market environment.

Hello this is for a project of mine and I`m completely stumped

Question: Delimitations applicable to a study should always be stated explicitly.

1 What are delimitations? Define in your own words.

2 State five delimitations you would apply if the study from which the literature review above came had been conducted by yourself.