國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
- 37 - Dance Lessons
Dancing is an artistic and cultural expression in all of its senses. Lately, a variety of new dance classes are giving a new flavor to the dance scene in Taipei. With classes in both English and Chinese, several dance studios are now offering salsa, tango, hip-hop, and swing.
"Salsa is becoming quite popular in Taiwan. A lot of places are starting to hire live Latin bands and there seems to be a big salsa community emerging here," said Godfrey Zwygart, a director and instructor at Taiwan Yoseikan Bodu, a martial-arts center in Tienmu.19 Elsewhere in Taipei, well-established studios such as Wu Yi (舞藝) are upgrading their existing list of classes to include more recently popular forms of dance such as funk and hip-hop.
Furthermore, nightclubs playing Latin rhythms are opening up in Taipei, and both locals and foreigners seem to be attracted by these. For example, M-Taipei and 1001 Nights, two nightclubs, offer Latin music night parties where many locals and foreigners can be found dancing salsa, merengue, bachata and other Latin rhythms.
When asking our survey respondents about raking dance lessons amongst the other activities offered, it was positioned in third place with 23.2% of votes, tied with movie nights.
5.3 Competition Analysis
In order to provide a thorough analysis of the competition we consider it necessary to perform Porter’s 5 forces analysis.
5.3.1 Rivalry amongst Established Companies Level: Medium.
19 (Taipei Times – Dance while you still can)
‧
We consider coffee shops our main competitors. Although right now not many coffee shops are offering cultural activities and their focus is not as specific as CultureLink’s, the nature of our business is a coffee shop with the added value of cultural services. However, some other cafés are already offering similar options. In addition, as previously stated, cafés are now very common in Taiwan and they are increasing their numbers very rapidly. The following cafés are the ones we consider having the closest relationship to the activities that will be held at CultureLink.
Royal Art Café: Art Gallery/Café where customers can enjoy Italian café, quality wines and biscuits, toasts, salads, etc… Stopping to analyze this café more closely, they are known for hosting different types of culture-related activities, including language courses, karaoke nights, comedy nights and space for language exchange after the language courses. This competitor could be considered as the one performing the most similar activities to ours.
Sicuanga Multilingual League: Café that serves as a platform for allowing customers to practice a language in a real life-like setting. Learners are encouraged by event organizers to switch tables to get a feel of each language. After giving self-introductions, they start conversations in various topics about life. They currently hold these events in English, French, Japanese and Spanish and are willing to expand language options in the future.
Dream of Hobbiton: Café in Taipei where they hold weekly language events. The cost is 200 NT per event which gives access to 2 drinks or a beer.
The Bottle Shop: Café/bar that specializes on selling high quality, imported beer. They also hold a once-a-week language exchange event.
Many other cafés can be counted as direct competition, since people also go there to hold language events and exchange culture. Some of them have even themed their cafés to make them more attractive. Here are some other cafés that might also be competition: Cupidon, Alice, Eudora, KiKi Café, La Vie, Coffee Alley, Eslite Café, Starbucks, and Dazzling Café.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
- 39 - Indirect Competition
Main indirect competitors would be karaokes, cinemas or movie festivals, language cram schools, university buddy programs, and dance lessons. There are many of these dispersed around Taipei. Lower prices in most of these services as well as our variety of services and individual differentiation would reduce the risk of indirect competitors.
5.3.2 Risk of Entry of Potential Competitors
Level: Medium
As previously stated, there is a great boom in the coffee shop industry in Taiwan. Adding to this, with the country gradually opening up more to the world there is a huge entry of foreigners.
This makes the coffee shop business very trendy; however, adding the cultural factor and all the activities provided by CultureLink reduces this risk to medium
5.3.3 Threat of Substitute Products
Level: Medium
Substitute products/services would mainly be karaokes, cinemas or movie festivals, language cram schools, university buddy programs, and dance lessons. We consider this threat as medium because, although there are many, none of these substitute services can provide all of the activities that CultureLink would provide within one establishment. Also, the price of most of our services would be lower than substitute services, decreasing this risk.
5.3.4 Bargaining Power of Customers
Level: High
Having so many substitute services and competitors, customers can argue that other places provide similar services separately. Prices play an important role, because if they can find the same services at lower prices, customers, influenced heavily by budget constraints, increase their bargaining power.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
- 40 - 5.3.5 Bargaining Power of Suppliers
Level: High
Suppliers’ bargaining power is especially strong regarding language and dance teachers, because they can easily find other schools or cram schools that provide higher wages. We will compensate this by giving extra benefits, such as allowing these partners to join our other events for free.
5.3.6 Industry Life-Cycle Analysis
Based on the characteristics of the cultural cafés in Taipei, we could consider this industry to be at the beginning of the growth stage, since there are increasingly more cafés hosting cultural events and more customers are also entering the market. This is happening in part because of Taiwan making English a compulsory language; the increase in people learning other foreign languages; and the increase in the number of foreigners in Taiwan. Accordingly, many other places which we consider indirect competition have been also been in the market for a while (KTVs, dance courses, cram schools, etc…), and more are still coming up, making it a highly competitive environment.