“SMART Runners.com” business model covers a wide range of running related services and trying to merge it as a consolidated platform. To understand more about the competitors, comparison was done with few best players in the market who offer similar services for the same target segment. Though the way they serve may slightly vary, but the current need of the consumers are getting fulfilled by their service. More details about the companies and competitive analysis can be found in the following sections.
7.1.1. Runnersworld.com
The online home of runner’s world and running times magazines. It includes running news, gears tips, training advice, running shoe reviews and many more. They do have blogs, training forums, and nutrition or weight loss program along with membership details. They primarily come from magazine background and focus more on spreading the information. They are not transactional based portal and doesn’t associate themselves with any event management activities.
7.1.2. IndiaRunning.com
It is the India’s leading online community (Calendar , 2015) for sports enthusiasts who want to discover, learn about, share and ultimately participate in running races and related activities.
Thousands of individuals visit IndiaRunning.com each month to search and register online for races and team sports; interact with others who have similar interests; and access nutrition, fitness and training tips. This portal holds the India’s largest directory of running races and related activities, facilities, groups and venues. From 2K runs, marathons to cycling races, finding activities to do is easy and online registration makes participation fast and convenient.
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"procamrunning.in" is a new website (About US, 2015) created by Procam International, the event organizers of Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon, Airtel Delhi Half Marathon and Tata Consultancy Services World 10K Bangalore. Procam International, the country's leading sports and leisure Management Company, has always stayed away from the trodden path, opting instead for events that would challenge the limits of marketing and organizational excellence. Having successfully promoted events like the Mahindra Squash Challenge, ATP Challenger Tennis, the Squash World Open, WWE, Asian Beach Volleyball, World Body Building, besides National level events in tennis, soccer, horse racing and golf – distance running proved to be their biggest test yet before the 1st edition of the Standard Chartered Mumbai International Marathon was flagged off on 15th February 2004.
They have product features like runner's profile page, polls, communities, forums, ask the coach, ask the doctor, trivia, running calendar etc. and their mission is recently changed and started focusing more on the running part exclusively nowadays.
7.1.4. Facebook
Everybody knows about Facebook and it serves a lot of consumer needs especially in terms of communication. It brings everybody closer and no matter how much miles far away they are. It serves across all the industry because of which all the business feels the need to get into this and keep them connected with the customers as much as possible.
However, this platform don’t specifically provide any customized features for running industry or event specific functions. You do it for a group of 5 people or 1 million people, they don’t really care and offer standard features for any type of the users. Most business segment may have a fear about their monopoly in future and looking for alternatives.
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7.2. Product Position
Smart runners will be positioned across and spread widely that covers various verticals like event management, Training or blogs portal, member management (CRM) and eStore. As shown in below figure 9. Product position, it is more evident that this single platform will try to act as a central repository to serve various needs.
Source: Organized by this study
Figure 9: Product Position
It’s really challenging and complex to stay in center and try to provide products that suits the market. However in service industry it makes sense to serve all the needs of the consumer in single platform, so that the value addition for customers will be high and keeps them engaged rather looking for multiple products. Hence the operation process will be complex and challenging till all the members boarded and it is really important to respond to the competitor actions in quicker phase to stay live.
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7.3. Functional Analysis
Functional areas in the running industry can be broadly categorized into Marathon event management, running clubs, training, blogs, eStore and membership program.
Source: Organized by this study
Figure 10: Competitor Functional Analysis
As shown in the figure 10, each competitor focus on any one of the specific category and may slightly serve other areas which doesn’t have much barriers to enter with minimal complex.
Printland.com (India's online printing superstore, 2013)is providing digital solutions platform but they focus on all consumers and don’t help them to capture their pictures during the event.
Membership program to board the runners in one platform was not yet practiced by any portals.
Since this portal gives an options to redeem gifts and adds value for customers to sign up, it will be relatively easy to board the runners first and then better understand more about them.
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