Justin York

Dr. Hutt

BUA 440 MW 1:30

September 26, 2005

 

Yahoo

 

Industry in which Yahoo competes

Yahoo is an American computer services company with a mission to "be the most essential global Internet service for consumers and businesses".  It operates an Internet portal, a web directory and a host of other services including the popular Yahoo! Mail.  Other services include: online music library, finance services, personals, and most importantly for this industry Web Domain Registry.

 

Market Segments

Yahoo is a part of the domain registry industry but as of right now they do not necessarily compete on the same level as the likes of GoDaddy.com, or Network Solutions.  Yahoo is one of the worldwide leaders in internet services.  Yahoo’s main stake of the internet services is that of a universal search engine that caters to many of its offering products.  Yahoo has now begun making partnerships with telecommunications and Internet providers - such as BT in the UK, Rogers in Canada and SBC in the US - to create content-rich broadband services to rival those offered by AOL.  Yahoo’s web domain target market is that of small-business and personal email address’.

 

The 5 P’s

Price- Starting at about $4.98 for 1-5 years of service with a few choices of possible upgrades

Product- Easy-to-use control panel with DNS management, Domain name registration          terms from 1-5 years, Domain forwarding so you can point to an existing site

Place- The World Wide Web

Promotion- the Web as well as other non we based advertisements (Print, television)

Position- Not very well know as domain registry provider so not competitive on a global scale

 

Financial Strategy

Yahoo has of year end 2004 almost $3 billion in working capital, with assets reaching over $9 billion.  Yahoo has long-term liabilities of about $850 million.  Yahoo is primarily financed internally but do to excessive long term debt it has not been able to grow at its potential.

 

Operations Strategy

Yahoo is located out of Sunnyvale, California.  Other offices in the U.S. consist of Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, New York as well as many other cities throughout the states.  Other subsidiaries include Canada, Mexico, England, and Japan as well as many other countries all over the world.  Yahoo also outsourcers with such companies as British Telecommunications in England, Rogers Communications in Canada, and SBC in the U.S.

 

 

 

Business level strategy in the industry

Yahoo contends in the internet service industry with a product differentiation strategy.  Not only does Yahoo provide web domain registry it also offers Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Finance, as well as a job search, games and even television programming.  Yahoo also has a 24-hour support team to all its customers for questions and troubleshooting.  Yahoo prides themselves on customer satisfaction and care.  By doing so it has established itself as a worldwide leader in internet services and continues through research and development and internal financing to grow and externally reach out to business and individuals worldwide.  Yahoo currently has around 800,000 thousand domain names registered in within their company. 

 

Yahoo’s Future Success

Since Yahoo’s strategy in business is product differentiation they will continue research and development in such areas that will enable them to reach optimal profits.  Since domain registration is very young in their grand scheme of things they are a minimal player in this industry.  With increased profits in other industries that Yahoo competes in it will enable them to further develop domain registry and become an essential player in the game.

 

 Corporate Strategies

Yahoo states themselves as being a worldwide leader in internet services.  Many of the products that Yahoo provides appeal to the many of the customers that already have consumed their products.  They diversify the services that they provide by appealing to many different ages and personalities.  Globally there are many providers that do not offer as many products as Yahoo does so they pride themselves as being a total internet service source.

 

Fundamentally Yahoo as a whole is one big synergy cluster.  Within one website you can access its many entities and products that are provided to its customers.  With a few clicks you can be registering and domain name or looking up stock quotes after the market closed.  Yahoo personals is a product that is basically an on line dating network, and by using Yahoo! Messenger another product that is offered by Yahoo you can chat with different people that you have met on through Yahoo! Personals.

 

Since Yahoo has been established it has had to compete with its main competitor which is that of AOL.  AOL offers many of the same type of products that Yahoo provides some different and some that only Yahoo supplies.  Since Google was at one time an entity of Yahoo it now competes with them.  Since patent in there particular industry are few and far between Yahoo has had to deal with many competitors that try and steal a piece of the market, in essence, making potential profits smaller in the long run.

 

Since Yahoo offers as many products as it does to break up or sell off some on its entities would in my opinion be very detrimental to the company as a whole.  Because Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Personals are so profitable for the company this enables them to research new products to offer, like Domain Registry and also to evolve and better their existing products that are available.  Since Yahoo does offer as many different internet services as it does, it has in reality made it as strong a company as it is.  The feasibility of access and dummy proof services that it offers allows it to become a stronger unit as a whole.