Bridgette Gill
September 26, 2005
BUA 440
Company Research
Project
Company Name: Register.com (Domain Registration)
PART ONE
For Small to Medium Businesses:
-They offer services to help aid customers in putting domain names to use for their company’s purpose.
-Personalized emails
-Domain name forwarding and site promotion services
-Small companies website creation services.
-Provide information on how important it is to have web presences
-Provide a service called SCORE,
which is the service corps of retired executives who help you with ideas for
starting and growing businesses
For Large Corporations:
-provide a dedicated account manager to help clients
-Offer brand and trademark protection online through registration and renewal programs for domain names on a global bases.
-Solutions to IP lawyers
-Brand managers
-E-commerce professionals and IT managers
Online Businesses:
-Teaming up with register.com businesses can increase customers by offering web presence products
-Help aid in reselling of company’s domain names
Individuals:
-Help build and maintain your own website
-Set up a personal email account
-Registering your own email and web address
Financial Strategy:
Register.com financial strategy I think is to grab your attention with cost leadership and excellent customer support. They offer many packages to consumers that will cover everything they will need. As well they offer many individual products and services that will mainly be for small businesses or individuals who may not be able to afford everything they want at once. They mainly offer all products and services in contracts of one year to five years. That way you will be come a customer for life. As well when looking over pricing for the products and services they have a list of partners that you may want to contact as well that offer many services like click on advertising for web sites and web site design teams.
Operations and Locations:
Headquarters:
Employees: Over 500 employees worldwide
Founded: 1994
IPO: March 2000
Overall register.com deals with all customers and IT calls internally. They do not outsource for selling or other branches of the company. They rely heavily on a well trained staff and a strong call center to ensure customer satisfaction. As well they believe that if they were to outsource a call center they would not be able to know if a product has a flaw and would not be delivering what they think they are capable of.
Marketing Strategy:
In general they offer many services to provide domain registration on a small business level to a global corporation. They are looking to snag as many small businesses as possible, and as well grab a good portion of the corporation market that is still not on the web. They compete directly with Network Solutions. They mimic Network Solutions strategy for individual domain registrations.
3. Business level Strategies: Register.com does offer a high level of customer service for domain registration but they mainly focus on cost leadership. They offer a low annual cost and offer a discount if you sign up for multiple years of services. In the domain registration industry you cannot offer something that different then the next company so you have to rely on low cost and exceptional customer service so the customers are loyal to your brand. Register.com focuses mainly on overall cost leadership so they can then enjoy a greater profit and stay in the market with reduced prices. Overall this works well because the services and products that they offer are not costly. I think that register.com does not necessarily follow the industry but when you are focusing on cost leadership your prices will reflect the market.
4. Business level Strategies in the Industry:
Internally: Cost leadership works internally for this company because it is what the market is. If register.com focused on product differentiation they would not being a top seller and reaching out to so many different types of customers. They offer a range of product to individuals to large corporations. If they did not have cost leadership as a strategy I feel they might not do as well and that would lead to a weak internal program.
Externally: Cost leadership is what the market calls for. Competing with names like Google and go daddy they all have to keep their prices just a little bit lower and offer better customer service options. Without that a company will be left behind in the industry.
5. Future: To continue the successes of register.com they will need to stay focused on cost leadership in the industry and as well keep up their customer service and IT support department. On the web site they offer many testaments on their great IT support service and it really looks like they take the time to train the department and really bank on the fact that they want you to stay with them. Reigister.com knows that there are many providers now for domain registration so they really focus on what would bother business people or individuals that are new to the online revelation and promote web presences.
PART TWO
1. Register.com competes in global domain name registration and internet services. They also compete in:
-Domain name
-Email packaging
-Web site creation and maintained
-Web hosting (Voted Number One)
They focus on all different levels of customers, from individuals to large corporations. They do not want to miss any possible customers and tend to try to fit all diversification.
Main Competitors:
-Network Solutions
Go daddy
-Yahoo offers a registration for small businesses
-Value-web
-My Domain
-Norid
2. Synergies: By definition are when the combined effect of several forces operating is greater than the sum of the separate effects of the forces. For a company to have synergies is a great accomplishment and is always a goal that should be in mind. For register.com I can see in the future maybe an expansion in a few of the different departments that could maybe combine to help create a package that offers more for a company or individual. I think that this could come with time and technology. As each day advancements online continue, it leaves a lot of room for improvement and that can only make a company that bases its profit from technology improve.
3. Corporate Strategies: I found that register.com was following the same idea route of other domain registration services. They are not necessarily following anyone else but they are not leading with new innovations on management. They do however focus on training and ensuring quality control with service of a great call center. They cover many different niches of domain registration but so do other companies. I looked over different offerings from other registration companies and overall they offer about the same but a little difference on contracts and pricing. Companies compete mainly on cost leadership and try to branch out to as many different people as they can reach. They main difference for me as individual who might want to register a domain would be price and word of mouth. I would ask friends and family because so many are so similar. I do not think this hurts register.com profits. I think they run a very effective customer call center and that could really make or break an online service based company.
4. I think the company would not be worth more broken up. With heavy competition in domain registration I think it is good the more they can offer as a package deal with one company. I think that if you were to break them up it would hurt them in the end because you would have all of this very small companies that make a much smaller profit each because customers could go to just one spot and get everything they need, which is similar to the idea of ‘one-stop shopping’. Overall the company has been making profits for the last three years according to their financial statements.