網路房東房客配對系統 - 政大學術集成

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(1)國立政治大學商學院國際經營管理英語碩士學位學程 International MBA Program College of Commerce National Chengchi University. 碩士論文政治. 大. 立Master’s Thesis. ‧. ‧ 國. 學 y. n. al. sit. io. Rental Room Website. er. Nat. 網路房東房客配對系統. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Student: David Alejandro Vega Rodríguez Advisor: Professor Carol Hsu. 中華民國一○一年六月 June 2012.

(2) 網路房東房客配對系統 Rental Room Website. 研究生：魏維德. Student: David Vega. 指導教授：許瑋元. Advisor: Carol Hsu. 國立政治大學. 學. ‧ 國. 立. 政治大. ‧. 商學院國際經營管理英語碩士學位學程碩士論文. er. io. sit. y. Nat. A Thesis. n. a to International MBA Program Submitted iv l C n U NationalhChengchi University engchi. in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Master in Business Administration. 中華民國一○一年六月 June 2012.

(3) Dedication. To God for all he has given me. To Alicia and Santiago, for their patience, tolerance and love. To my mother, for always being there for me. To 古珊珊, for your help and support. To my friends Sebastian and Albert, for their support through the whole MBA.. 政治大. To Taiwan, for giving me the opportunity to study the MBA at NCCU.. 立. David Vega. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. I. i n U. v.

(4) Executive Summary Taking into consideration the existing financial crisis in Spain and the opportunity it carries for real estate agents and rooms/apartments owners to rent out their properties, roomsDB.net propose to launch a new room rental website to take advantage of the current niche existing in Madrid, Spain. The management team have direct knowledge of developing and running a successful room rental website in Singapore with six years of experience.. 政治大. In the big market of real estate we determined that the best option for us in. 立. Madrid is non-luxury apartments/rooms. We are confident that we are not going. ‧ 國. 學. to find fierce competition in the medium-term and we will take advantage of this to become the leaders in this segment of the market. Moreover, some of the. ‧. current competitors do not have the option for agents to post their offers in their. y. Nat. websites and we do will offer this service.. io. sit. The website will be different from competitors in customer oriented service,. al. n. lower cost base.. er. user friendly platform, immediate response to enquiries as well as achieving a. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. The promoters plan to raise an initial €60,000 to launch the website with a forecast of obtaining the 25% of the market share in the industry in Madrid. Based on case scenarios forecast, the website is forecast to generate cash from the first year of operation and the business will be also cash generative from the same year. The attached case scenario forecasts show a rapid growth and producing attractive returns. By year five, the return on investment is 55 per cent.. II.

(5) Table of Contents I.. Introduction……………………………………………………….... 1. II.. The Business Background ………………………………………. 3. 2.1. How it works? ……………………………………………….... 4. 2.2. The Markets………………………………………………….... 4. 2.3. How did we get here? …………………………………………. 6. 2.3.1. Google AdWords………………………………………………. 8. 2.4. Mission Statement……………………………………………... 9. 政治大. 立 10 III. The Market…………………………………………………………. ‧ 國. 3.2. Market Opportunity…………………………………………… 10. 3.3. SWOT Analysis……………………………………………..... 14. 3.4. Porter’s Fiver Forces Competitive Position…………………... 14. 3.5. Customers……………………………………………………... 15. 3.6. Distribution…………………………………………………… a v. ‧. Overview ……………………………………………………... 10. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. 3.7. IV.. 學. 3.1. i l C n hengchi U Supply…………………………………………………………. 16 16. 3.8. Competitors…………………………………………………… 17. 3.9. Competitive Advantage……………………………………….. 18. 3.10. Pricing…………………………………………………………. 19. Operations………………………………………………………….. 21 4.1. Differences……………………………………………………. 21. 4.2. Processes………………………………………………………. 21. 4.3. Systems………………………………………………………... 23. 4.4. Regulatory control…………………………………………….. 24. III.

(6) V.. Organization Structure………………………………………….. 25 5.1. Team…………………………………………………………... 25. 5.2. Operation Process……………………………………………... 28. 5.3. Financial Plan…………………………………………………. 28. 5.3.1 Proposal………………………………………………………... 28 5.3.2 Forecast………………………………………………………... 30 5.3.2.1 The sales forecast……………………………………………... 31 5.3.2.2 Cost Structure………………………………………………… 33. 政治大. 5.3.2.3 Income Statements until horizon………………………………... 34 5.4. 35. References…………………………………………………………... 36. ‧ 國. 學. VI.. 立. The exit………………………………………………………... VII Appendix……………………………………………………………. 37. ‧. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. IV. i n U. v.

(7) Figures, Graphs & Tables. Figures Figure 1. Singapore Property Rental Specialist website …………………... Figure 2. CAPTCHA ……………………………………………………… 23. Figure 3. reCAPTCHA ……………………………………………………. 24. Figure 4. Organizational Structure ……………………………………….... 26. Figure 5. Business Model: Multi-Sided …………………………………… 28. Figure 6. 治政 Bidding Example ………………………………………………... 大立. 30. ‧ 國. 學. Graphs. 6. All Traffic During One Year……………………………………... 7. Graph 2. Average Clicks in One Year …………………………………….. 8. ‧. Graph 1. a. er. io. sit. y. Nat Tables. i v Price in Madrid …… Average Rentall Price and Variation Rental n. Table 1. 12. Table 2. n U i n g c hSingapore Financial Comparisonebetween and Spain ………….... Table 3. Competitors Comparison ………………………………………... 17. Table 4. Different Plans for customers ………………………………….... 20. Table 5. Singapore Revenue A …………………………………………… 32. Table 6. Singapore Revenue B …………………………………………… 32. Table 7. Madrid and Singapore Population Comparison ………………… 32. Ch. V. 13.

(8) I. Introduction The current situation in Spain is very promising for people interested in renting out their rooms/apartments. This situation is influenced by the economic crisis in Europe, and therefore the demand for individuals looking for a place to rent has increased considerably. Furthermore the existing websites offering a real estate searching and listing platform in Madrid, Spain are not as friendly user and convenient for people interested in this kind of service. Thus, the present. 政治大 and provide a solution for real estate agents and room/apartment owners as main 立 thesis is intended to create and design a room rental web platform to facilitate. customers, and as third party to people interested in renting a room/apartment.. ‧ 國. 學. The first part of the present master’s thesis is dedicated to explain the. ‧. background of the rental market in Spain as well as to the describe how the. y. Nat. current platform already launched in Singapore works and why we think it is. io. sit. feasible and promising to launch this website in Madrid, Spain. The second. a. er. section describes the market overview in Spain, the most important competitors,. n. v and most importantly how the distribution will lwork for this kind of business, ni Ch. U. e n gThe the market opportunity we found. c h ithird part covers our operations, explaining the differences we offer compared to our competitors, the systems we will implement, and the regulatory control. Finally, the last section describes the organization structure of the company and shows the financial analysis including the investment required for this kind of business to work properly, the sales forecast, the operations process based on a Business Model Canvas, the cost structure and our proposal. We concluded that it is feasible and very attractive to invest in this business since we already have. 1.

(9) experience on a website that is currently generating revenue and we foresee a great success in this venture.. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 2. i n U. v.

(10) II.. The Business Background. The Room Rental Web Platform is the destination for rental real estate searching and listing in Madrid, Spain. The website is designed to facilitate the communication among agents, room/apartment owners and people interested in renting rooms/apartments. It is designed specifically for people interested in renting out their rooms and apartments but with the option of expanding it for houses and offices. However,. 政治大. the core business is rooms and apartments.. 立. The business is designed to provide the service and generate income from agents. ‧ 國. 學. and from people interested in renting out their rooms/apartments, not for people interested in renting a room or apartment. We want to help all the parties. ‧. involved but we will generate revenue just from agents and people renting out. sit. y. Nat. their properties. People looking for a place to rent will be people that will. er. io. generate more traffic on the website but will not generate income for us because they will not have to payaany commission or whatsoever to us.. n. iv l C n h e n g crenting people interested h i Uout their. Agents and owners,. apartments/rooms are. those who will have to pay a percentage of the price they are asking for renting out the properties, not the people looking to rent. Why Madrid? 1 Madrid is open and offers a business-friendly environment. Madrid is the first region in Spain for company set-ups. Today around 4,000 of all businesses in Madrid are foreign companies and 40% of all foreign firms in Spain have chosen Madrid as their base. Besides, I have the advantage to be a Spanish Native speaker and this market would be our first market with Spanish speaking 1. http://www.scribd.com/doc/56153346/Madrid-Doing-Business-Guide (14/04/2012). 3.

(11) people with projections to Latin America in the future. Also the current economic situations in Spain is an advantage for this kind of website as will be explained later. 2.1 How it works? The platform is intended to make simple the offering of a room for an agent or room/apartment owner. They have to sing up to have full access to the options offered in the platform. The option of signing up is very friendly user to avoid. 政治大 upload some basic information 立 of the room they want to rent out including complications for the owners or agents. Once they have signed up they can. ‧ 國. 學. pictures. After the information is submitted it will appear in a list of offers in the website and the people interested in renting the room/apartment will have the. sit. y. Nat. 2.2 The Markets. ‧. opportunity to contact the owner or agent.. er. io. Currently the dominant practice in Madrid for renting out a room/apartment is to. n. do it directly through newspaper ads and secondly vhiring the services of a real a estate agent.. i l C n However, nowadays h e n g cpeople h i Uin. Spain like to look for. apartment/rooms to rent using the web so newspaper ads are not as effective as they used to be. When people willing to rent out their room/apartment decide to hire the services of a real estate agency or agent they will face the problem that usually these people charge one month in advance of the rental price plus a commission once they find a tenant for the property they want to rent out, which is very costly.. 4.

(12) On the other hand agents willing to offer a room/apartment to rent it out face the problem that people not always trust on them or they don’t want to hire their services because they know that they will charge a commission. With our platform we have the solution for all the parties involved. For individuals willing to rent out they just have to pay to us 1.5% of one month rent if they want to post their offer on our website, price that will include some benefits that are described later. Paying 1.5% is barely anything if we will offer. 政治大 In the case of agents, 立 they also will be charged with the same percentage, to them the advantage of having a lot of people interested in their posts.. ‧ 國. 學. however, if they pay a monthly fee of $15.00, they will also have the right to become members of our platform giving them the option of posting as many. ‧. offers as they wish within one month.. sit. y. Nat. Finally, people looking for a place to rent will be totally satisfied since they will. io. them.. er. find plenty of options on our website, which will be trustful and totally free for. al. n. v i n U Likewise, it is important toC mention of the business is that h e n gthatc hthei uniqueness we are specialized in room rentals and the service is very professional. Also, the niche for this kind of business exists in the market and the demand is vast, but the most important advantage is the management team. We are 2 IMBA students with great vision and values and we are totally engaged in this project.. 5.

(13) 政治大 Figure1: Singapore Property Rental Specialist website 立. ‧ 國. 學. The picture above shows the options that either owners or agents have when they want to post and offer.. ‧. Currently, in the existing platform they can post three kind of offers: a) long-. sit. y. Nat. Term Offer: for people interested in renting out more than 1 year; b) Short-Term. io. er. offer: for people interested in renting out less than 1 year; and, c) Commercial offer: for people interested in renting out a office or a place to set a business.. n. al. 2.3 How did we get here?. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. It is important to mention that this website is an expansion of a website that already exists in Singapore. This website is called roomsDB.net and has already six years in the Singaporean market. We know how this business works and after some analysis we have concluded that it is time for expansion. For a better understanding of the performance of roomsDB.net we included some figures showing some statistics of the website. These figures will be very useful for the implementations of roomsDB.net Spain.. 6.

(14) Graph 1: All Traffic During One Year. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. The previous graphic shows one-year statistics based on number of visitors, average visit duration and also the new visits. In one year we had 558,094 visits. The Bounce Rate is slightly high, but we still keep 70% of good quality visits. What is Bounce rate? 2 Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left the site from the entrance (landing) page. This is 2. http://support.google.com/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=81986 (14/04/2012). 7.

(15) used to measure visit quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to the visitors. 2.3.1 Google AdWords: Graph 2: Average Clicks In One Year. 立. 政治大. The graph above shows the trend of clicks in one year and in one year the. ‧ 國. 學. website was clicked 157,995 times via AdWords.. ‧. The CTR (Click Through Rate) during the year was 0.77% which is low, but we consider that Google AdWords is still a good marketing tool to make the. y. Nat. sit. website more popular in spreading the name of it in Singapore. Nevertheless, a. er. io. Google employee said that beginner advertisers should shoot for a 2% click-. n. a lis not set in stone, he said, through rate. This figure i v but a reasonable starting point. Then, as the. n U i advertisers e getn more g c hinvolved. Ch. with their campaigns they. should focus more on their return on investment than their click-through rate.3 Currently roomsDB.net is already well known in Singapore and we are planning to use the same tool for Spain to spread its popularity. What is CTR?. 4. The average number of click-throughs per hundred ad. impressions, expressed as a percentage. The CTR measures what percentage of people clicked on the ad to arrive at the destination site; it does not include the people who failed to click, yet arrived at the site later as a result of seeing the ad. 3 4. http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2010/04/26/good-click-through-rate (14/04/2012) http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/clickthrough_rate/ (14/04/2012). 8.

(16) 2.4 Mission Statement: We believe our first responsibility is to provide the best support to people considering renting out their room or apartment. Our services are intended to help people find a tenant as soon as possible to make easy the process the renting out. We have targeted a specific market of people. We are also adding other marketing efforts to keep us aware of the changes in our marketing environment.. 政治大 We work hard, so that you don’t have to. We love what we do; therefore we 立 work at making sure you visit us again and again.. ‧ 國. 學. We believe and treat people the way we want to be treated. We pride ourselves. ‧. with the daily emails we receive from our customers and clients about all of the. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. great information and services we offer to them.. Ch. engchi. 9. i n U. v.

(17) III.. The Market. 3.1 Overview The Spanish property market was severely affected in the recent Economic crisis, resulting in the actual market for long-term, good quality rented property remaining relatively small compared to many other European countries. However, rental property is still available for those looking to move to Spain, with many properties being owned by foreigners and rented as short term or holiday accommodation.. 立. 政治大. Legal provisions on renting and letting in Spain are contained in the Law of. ‧ 國. 學. Urban Lettings (Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos) of 1994, which applies to rental contracts dated from 1 January 1995. Contracts settled before the. ‧. aforementioned dates are governed by several rules, which have been modified. sit. y. Nat. by the current law of urban lettings.. er. io. According to Spanish law, rental contracts are governed firstly by the rental. n. contract and, if there wasa lnone, secondly by the Lawi vof Urban Lettings. 5 3.2 Market Opportunity:. Ch. n U engchi. The current trend in the market of apartments and rooms rental is directly related with the variations of the economical situation in Spain. In this country, usually people prefer to buy a house or an apartment to live but due to the financial crisis they cannot afford to do it anymore, therefore one of the substitutes is renting. Thus, the longer the crisis the best for people willing to rent out.. 5. http://almeria.angloinfo.com/countries/spain/re_rental.asp (03/16/2012). 10.

(18) Nonetheless, it does not mean that if the economy improves people will rent fewer apartments or rooms, but it will be slightly affected in the long-term. According to a research, the mean of the variation in the price for new houses in Madrid is -2.5% and that diminishment is the same as the one in Spain. According to the same research 6 in the central district of Madrid the supply is substantially bigger than the demand but it shows a significant improvement in the rental market.. 政治大. The market size is relatively small because almost all people in Spain like to buy. 立. their own house. Nevertheless, recently the demand for apartments has increased. ‧ 國. 學. due to the financial crisis and according to some analysts 7 the crisis will be even worse, ergo, the demand of tenants will be substantially increased and with the. ‧. rise of internet users there is a high potential for a website like ours.. Nat. sit. n. al. er. io. Madrid.. y. Below please find the annual variation on the renting price among the cities in. Ch. engchi. 6. i n U. v. http://www.idealista.com/news/archivo/2011/01/04/0286823-analisis-distrito-a-distrito-del-mercadode-viviendas-nuevas-en-madrid-tabla (12/03/2012) 7 http://www.josilva.com/blog/Posts/show/analisis-de-mercado-sobre-el-alquiler-en-espana-388 (12/03/2012). 11.

(19) Table 1: Average Rental Price and Variation Rental Price in Madrid. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學 sit. y. Nat. er. io. Also, as it was explained in the first part (2.2 The Markets), according to our. n. research, Spanish peoplea used to buy newspapers ads v to offer rooms/apartments. i l C n they wanted to rent out. Moreover, looking for an apartment/room to rent h e npeople gchi U were going directly to look in the newspapers. However, the new trend is. offering properties online and that is the reason of the existence of our competitors. As mentioned before, we want to offer a platform where agents, owners and people willing to rent a room/apartment can make business in a friendly and safe web-based environment. We will be the intermediary party in their businesses but we will facilitate the communication among them. We will make much more easy for owners to offer the properties to rent out and in doing so, we will create. 12.

(20) a great value proposition generating a lot of communication in between people interesting in renting a room/apartment and owners/agents. People will go directly to the website when they are interested in renting a room/apartment. We will offer them a safe environment to find a good place for them without any charge, which is the main concert of individuals. Likewise, agents/owners will find a perfect place to offer their properties to rent out by paying just 1.5% (average) of the price they are asking for one-month rent.. 政治大. Table 2: Financial Comparison between Singapore and Spain 8. 立. ‧. ‧ 國. 學 er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. n. v i n C the InternationalUMonetary Fund, we can see that Based on the data taken from h engchi the situation between Singapore and Spain is very different. In Singapore the buying power is much more better than in Spain as well as the GDP and the unemployment rat. That is why in the pricing we lower the percentages compared to those in Singapore. This information will be showed in the pricing section.. 8. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2012/01/weodata/weorept.aspx?sy=2011&ey=2017&scsm=1 &ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=0&pr1.x=63&pr1.y=4&c=576%2C184&s=NGDPD%2CPPPGDP% 2CPPPPC%2CNGSD_NGDP%2CLUR%2CLE&grp=0&a=#download (08.06.2012). 13.

(21) 3.3 SWOT Analysis: STRENGHTS -. WEAKNESSES. Excelent customer service Six years of experience Different packages for customers Good culture and working environment. Low price Outstanding management team. 立. OPPORTUNITIES. -. Difficulties to build trust among users Low entry barrier Difference market. 政治大 THREATS -. Competitor intention of getting into the niche we are targgeting Loss of key staff Lack of budget if the business does not get profitable in the early stage. ‧. ‧ 國. Financial crisis Low purchasing power  rent Niche target market. 學. -. -. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. 3.4 Porter’s Five Forces of Competitive Position. Ch. engchi. 14. i n U. v.

(22) 3.5 Customers: As mentioned before, in this business proposal we are targeting two groups: a) the owners of rooms/apartments and, b) real estate agents. Indirect customers would be the tenants because if we could not get people interested in the offers posted on the website, then we will not have business and owners or agents would be not willing to pay for our service. As it will be explained in the forecast, we will charge a certain percentage as. 政治大 depending on which package 立 they choose. On average we will charge 1.5% once. commission to the owners/agents when they list their offers. It will vary. ‧ 國. 學. they input the monthly rent they expect to be paid by renters. For instance if they say they want to charge €1,000 per month we will charge €15. This fee will. ‧. include the option of have their offer listed for two weeks and they will be. er. io. sit. Nat. This will apply for owners and for agents.. y. notified via email of the customers interested in renting their room/apartment.. Nevertheless, agents will have the option to become a member of our website. n. a. v. i paying a monthly fee ofl €15. they will have the C If they becomenmembers. hengchi U. advantage that they will be able to list as many offers as they want as long as they want. People interested in renting apartments/rooms will be able to use our platform as a source of possible rooms/apartments to rent without any charge in the service, a vast variety of options but most important a very safe way to find what they are looking for in a friendly user platform.. 15.

(23) 3.6 Distribution: Our distribution channel will be Google AdWords. We don’t need a minimum budget to use it. We can spend as little or as much on Google AdWords. We also will pay a Search Engine Optimization firm to help us rankTop, the Search. Engine. Optimization. (SEO)(netmark.com)(highervisibility.com). specialists gets its clients on page 1 on Google, Yahoo, Ninemsn, using Whitehat methods (White-hat methods are generally approved by the search engines. 政治大 tactics that is against the立 search engines' terms of service such as spamming the and tend to produce results that last a long time; whereas Black-hat SEO uses. ‧ 國. 學. search engines; attempt to redirect search results to particular target pages) 9 and keep them rank top by monitoring and maintaining Search Engine Optimization. ‧. on a monthly base.. sit. y. Nat. With the two mentioned means we will reach the segments of the market we are. io. er. targeting and it will be easier for them to find us. We will also control how many hits per day and per week we get to transform that into sales.. n. al. 3.7 Supply. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Due to the nature of the business it only requires a proper maintenance of the website. One of the members of the management team is already in charge of this maintenance but in the future, after our plans of expansion, we will have to hire a full-time programmer to be in charge of this matter. Hiring a programmer does not represent any constraint on our ability to maintain the website because currently we can do it by ourselves.. 9. http://www.ozwebs.com.au/blog/Spamming+the+search+engine (12/03/2012). 16.

(24) Our customers are divided in two groups: a) Owners of rooms or apartments; and, b) real estate agents. Each group have a different treatment in the website because the agents have more frequent postings on a website like this, so they cannot get the same benefits. 3.8 Competitors: Currently, there are some competitors in the market and I will briefly explain what the main competitors offer:. 政治大. Apparently, they don’t target any specific group because their apartments are. 立. very diversified and the price varies a lot.. ‧ 國. 學 ‧. Table 3: Competitors Comparison. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 17. i n U. v.

(25) 3.9 Competitive Advantage: Our competitive advantage will be based on the following:  User-friendly website: The website will be very straight forward, it immediately shows the list of all the rental offers but at the same tame shows the option to go to the agent or owner area. It does not have many options so we make it easy for the user to interact with the platform.  Customer oriented service: Since we create the website very user-friendly,. 政治大. we show that we care about our customers. Immediately after their. 立. registration in the website we will contact them to ask them if they have. 學. ‧ 國. any inquiry or if we can help them in any form. Although the website is very easy to use, some customers might have struggles to use it, in that. ‧. case we will be glad to offer assistance them on how to use it to get the. sit. y. Nat. best from it.. er. io.  Good customer service: In the middle term we will have available a. n. person assigned specifically to chat with ourvcustomers so we can offer a. i l C n instant response to them. h eThe i Ube available 24/7 and they can n gchat c hwill contact us whenever they need. Also, we can detect from our server when. the person is in our website for more that a certain amount of time and we can ask him/her if he needs any help or assistance. Moreover, in the case of agents we will send them periodically emails giving them special discounts to post more offers in our platform.  Registration process: Agents and owners have to register but the registration process is very simple and once they are registered they will. 18.

(26) have free access to the options they will have according to the plan they choose.  Employees: Once we start to hire people to work with use we will create such a culture that they will be happy to work with us. We also want to create a great working environment where people feel comfortable working for us as a team. We would also like to offer some training to people interested in joining us and inculcate an entrepreneur spirit so they. 政治大. will come out with good and innovative ideas to make the working place better and better.. 立. ‧ 國. 學.  We do care about our earnings but most of all we would like to offer a great satisfaction for our customers when they do business with us and. ‧. also with our employees so the whole atmosphere will be enviable for the rest of the people that are still not part of our community.. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat 3.10 Pricing:. i n U. Ch. v. i e nthegtwo c hgroups Our pricing strategy is different for we are targeting. For owners we will charge 1.5% of the price they are asking for a monthly rent payment. Based on previous experience we already know this percentage is fair and people are willing to pay for it. However, for agents, we know they like this type of service and they will post more offers, thus we will charge them the same percentage as for normal (individual) users but with the option of becoming a members. Becoming a member gives them the opportunity to post as many offers as they want and the fee is €15 per month.. 19.

(27) Table 4: Different Plans For Customers Average monthly payment in Madrid €871 10. 政治大. 立. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. 10. Ch. engchi. See Appendix 5 for further details. 20. i n U. v.

(28) IV.. Operations. The concept is fairly simple. In the first stage, we will have to find offers from people offering their apartments or rooms and put their offers in our website. It will be for free but it will also be just to make the website popular. Later on, once people already know about our website they will like to keep using it and it will work by itself. We will be in charge of replying emails sent by customers and reply to them as. 政治大. soon as possible.. 立. 4.1 Differences. ‧ 國. 學. Benefits we offer:. ‧. - An attractive website. y. Nat. - Easy and secure payment. sit. - Experience on this kind of business. al. n. - Good reputations. Ch. engchi. - Safe place to do their business. er. io. - Easy signing up process. i n U. v. - Friendly user website. - Special offers and discounts. - 100% refund if they cannot rent out their apartment/room after 1 month.. - High quality customer service. 4.2 Processes. The operational processes involved are as follow:. 21.

(29) Short-term: - Yearly payment of the domain of the website; - Creation of the website; - Design of the website;. - Sign in on PayPal and create the payment option via PayPal to offer a secure payment process for clients;. - Make available our website for advertisement (other source income); - Find existing offer in the market and include them in our website;. - Daily response of emails sent by customers; - Permanent analysis of the market. Long-term:. Nat. sit. y. ‧. ‧ 國. -. 學. -. 治政大 Monitoring the traffic of the website; 立 Monthly payment of Google Adwords;. - Analysis of international markets. al. v i n Analysis of the feasibility of the business model in C h of the implementation engchi U other countries; n. -. er. io. - Expansion to other countries (Latin America and Europe). - Establishment of procedures and systems; - Personnel management; - Staff training;. - Liaison with lawyers. - Improve the design of the website. 22.

(30) 4.3 Systems: In the first stage of the business we will need to create the website and design it. Afterwards we will like to buy the McAfee SaaS Endpoint Protection to make sure our website is secure for everybody. Endpoint Protection Suites unite industry-leading endpoint security and data protection with centralized management. McAfee SMB security solutions block malware and viruses, defend against cybercriminal activity, and safeguard a. 政治大. mobile workforce with comprehensive endpoint protection — both on and off. 立. the network.. 學. ‧ 國. Moreover we will include the option of a CAPTCHA in our website so we can protect our website against bots by generating and grading tests that humans can. ‧. pass but current computers programs cannot. For example, humans can read. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. distorted text as the showed below, but current computer programs cannot: 11. Figure 2: CAPTCHA. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Likewise, we will also implement the reCAPTCHA, which stops spam and help digitize books at the same time! The words shown come directly from old books 11. http://www.captcha.net/ (14/03/2012). 23.

(31) that are being digitized. In that way we will contribute to make a better world. Figure 3: reCAPTCHA. 立. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學. 4.4 Regulatory control:. Our team has decided to establish the headquarters of our company in Taiwan,. ‧. in order to do so we will have to fulfill the following requirements:. y. Nat. sit. 1. Use the online application (http://onestop.nat.gov.tw) to search the name,. er. io. apply for incorporation and tax registration, apply for Labor Insurance, National. n. a l Plan Report with thei vBureau of Labor Insurance Health Insurance and Pension n U i Labor Affairs e nCouncil and register for work rules with the g c h of. Ch. 2. Make a company seal 3. Submit a CPA audit report showing that the amount of capital invested is sufficient to cover company establishment cost.12. 12. http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/taiwan,-china/. 24.

(32) V.Organization Structure 5.1 Team: Research shows that the most important factor for investors in evaluating a proposal is the management team. ‘A good management team can ‘make it’ in a poor market or a declining industry but a weak team won’t survive even in a boom market’ (Venture capitalist).. 立. David Vega, Attorney at. 政治大 Law, IMBA candidate. ‧ 國. 學. Markets Manager (aged 31). (2012) Spanish Speaking. Cofounder of this project, having been a Legal Manager of Deloitte (Guatemala). ‧. for two years. He was one of the three Legal Managers of Deloitte responsible to. sit. y. Nat. generate business in the Tax and Legal department. Previous experience includes six years working in the legal field.. er. io. n. a Sebastian Ang, Information Technology Engineer, v IMBA candidate (2012) i l C n h e(aged Singapore and Europe Manager n g32) chi U. Cofounder of this project, having been a full-time development lead at roomsDB.net Pte, Ltd. Singapore. He was in charge of the Development of PHP/HTML code, Development of relational database structure and SQL queries, Integration of E-Commerce payment systems, Integration of Ajax based web services, JavaScript programming, API programming, CSS development and Server deployment.. 25.

(33) Albert Iglesias Nabau, BSc Business Administration, specialization in Finance, IMBA candidate (2012) Controller (aged 30) He was in charge of leading and coaching teams between 2 and 6 people in several ad hoc audits in multinational companies in retail, pharma and industrial products industries. Reporting in IFRS, US GAAPs, New Spanish GAAPs. Performing consolidated audit procedures, SOX compliance, internal control assessments, and Due Diligence analysis.. 政治大. Figure 4: Organizational Structure. 立. n. Africa Manager. John Doe I. C India h eManager ngchi. i n U. John Doe II. Controller. y. sit. Sebastian Ang. er. io. al. Singapore and Europe Director. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. Nat. Latin America and Spain Director David Vega. v. Asia Manager. John Doe II. Albert Iglesias. In the first stage of the business implementation Sebastian and David will be in charge of everything. Both of us will be in charge of hiring people. The only difference will be that in my case I will support Spanish-speaking (in the. 26.

(34) medium-term also Portuguese speaking) customers and Sebastian will be in charge of English and German Speaking customers. We are two persons with strong principles and very goal-oriented. We want to implement and apply all the knowledge acquired during our studies for our Master’s degree and specifically we want to create a different company that cares more about people. The current structure of the organization shows that we have expansion plans. 政治大 them. We will apply the 立 same concept we applied for us. First we became. and we would like to get to know the people we are going to hire before hiring. ‧ 國. 學. friends and after realizing that we can work together in good terms with a constant feedback of our behavior we decided to work together. We would like. ‧. to create a great culture in our company where everybody feels happy working and willing to give the best all the time. This feeling will automatically be. y. Nat. er. io. sit. transmitted to our customers.. Mostly all of the current websites don't care much about their customers or at. n. a. v. l Cway to make customers least they haven’t found the n i feel they are well treated.. hengchi U. We want to change it and create a great relationship among customers and our company.. 27.

(35) 5.2 Operation Process: Figure 5: Business Model: Multi-Sided. 政治大. 立. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. 5.3 Financial Plan: 5.3.1 Proposal: Our proposal consists in creating and launching a website for people interested in posting their apartment and rooms offers and generate enough traffic to get enough interested tenants in the offers posted. The website is intended to be very friendly user and at the same time with high quality customer service in order to create a profitable enterprise.. 28.

(36) We want to obtain the 25% of the market share in the industry in Madrid. The first tree-four months we want to be in the top list of Google search engine to get people to know our website and the services they can get if they join us. If we can keep the name of our website in the top list, people will almost always click on our link and in that way we will create brand awareness (product recognition). Later on beginning from the 6th month we want be profitable and at the end of. 政治大. the 1st year we will get the 10% of the market share. Turnover in that year is projected to be €3,000.. 立. 學. ‧ 國. We estimate that by the end of the third year we would have achieved our goal of 25% of the market share in Madrid. By then the business will achieve show a. ‧. 100% return on investment by 2014.. Nat. sit. y. The investment required for the first year is €60,000, which includes a. er. io. contingency of €5,000 to cover the risk of a slower growth than anticipated. The. n. money required for the a initial invested is dividedv in two, so each of the cofounders are giving. i l C n €15,000 h efrom i Upockets n gour c hown. and with some money. from our families and the rest we plant to obtain it from angel investors. This is a growing market and we want to differentiate from other being a great team and having a great culture in our company. We are very hard workers and we are decided to provide our customers with he best experience they have ever had when renting out apartments and rooms.. 29.

(37) 5.3.2 Forecast: We intend to invest on Google Adwords, this is they way how it works: 1. Every time a user enters a search query into Google, all the advertisers that have chosen those keywords are automatically entered in an auction. 2. For every keyword in your AdWords account you assign a maximum bid, which is the amount you are willing to pay per click. 3. In most PPC programs, the algorithm is simple. The higher you set your. 政治大 Figure 6: Bidding 立Example. CTR, the higher you rank on the search results page.. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. i n U. C. v. h eyour On AdWords it depends both on n gmaximum c h i bid and your click through rate. Rank = Maximum bid x CTR (click trough rate). This is how AdWords rewards for writing relevant ads. Often we will have to pay less than our maximum bid. The AdWords system automatically calculates de CPC we need to maintain the position of the competitor below us, and charges us only one cent more to display our ad first.. 30.

(38) In our case we will use the option of ‘Automatic Bidding”. Automatic bidding allows us to set a daily budget for each of our campaigns and then AdWords work to bring us the most clicks possible within that budget. We can even set a CPC bid limit to make sure the system doesn’t bid more than we are willing to spend per keyword. This is the part when we have to consider the value of a click, how much is a visitor to my website worth and how likely is it that this visitor will turn into a customer?. 立. 政治大. 5.3.2.1 The sales forecast:. ‧ 國. 學. It is not possible to detect whether the person clicking on our website through. ‧. Google AdWords is a potential renter or a potential customer (owner/agent). Usually in this industry, and because of the Spanish economical situation,. Nat. sit. y. people clicking on the website will be potential customers (people looking for a. er. io. place to post their offers). In that case, we estimate that at least 75% of the. n. clicks will be from potential a customers. Since we know v that our website is very. i l C n professional and friendly user,hwe i U85% of the potential costumers e nproject g c hthat will be willing to post their offers on our website (85% of 75% = 59.5 of the clicks will be willing to post their offers). Based on our previous experience, we know that we can start bidding with €0.15 and we will get the top of the list. We have an estimated budget of €900/monthly for Google AdWords which. means that we will be able to have 333 clicks per day ((€900/30 days)/ €0.15), denoting that we can even pay more per for the bidding, or save the money for other type of advertisement. 31.

(39) Since the average monthly payment for renting an apartment is €871 and we are charging 1.5% for our services (please refer to Appendix 5) Table 5: Singapore Revenue A The following table shows the current situation in Singapore and the revenue generated.. 立. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學 ‧. Table 6: Singapore Revenue B. y. Nat. The following table shows the same information as the previous one but adding. n. er. io. al. sit. the members who generally pay a membership.. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Table 7: Madrid and Singapore Populations Comparison This is the comparison of population between Madrid a Singapore and the proportion of customers estimated for Madrid compared to those in Singapore.. 32.

(40) 5.3.2.2 Cost Structure. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 33. i n U. v.

(41) 5.3.2.3 Income Statements until Horizon Worst Case Scenario. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學 y. Nat. n. al. er. io. sit. Most Likely Scenario. Ch. engchi. 34. i n U. v.

(42) Best Case Scenario. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學 sit. y. Nat. 5.4 The exit. er. io. Once we are close to the horizon period, we expect to offer the company by. n. private offering to similar companies. As an vestablished platform, the a. i l C n investment would be considerably h eincreased n g c h iitsUvalue to that time.. 35.

(43) VI. References 1. http://www.redflymarketing.com/adwords-tutorials/adwords-basics/howto-bid-on-google-adwords/ 2. http://www.scribd.com/doc/56153346/Madrid-Doing-Business-Guide 3. http://support.google.com/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer= 81986 4. http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2010/04/26/good-click-through-rate. 政治大 6. http://almeria.angloinfo.com/countries/spain/re_rental.asp 立 7. http://www.ozwebs.com.au/blog/Spamming+the+search+engine 5. http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/clickthrough_rate/. ‧ 國. 學. 8. http://www.idealista.com/news/archivo/2011/01/04/0286823-analisisdistrito-a-distrito-del-mercado-de-viviendas-nuevas-en-madrid-tabla. ‧. 9. http://www.josilva.com/blog/Posts/show/analisis-de-mercado-sobre-el-. Nat. sit. y. alquiler-en-espana-388. er. al. n. 1_63.html. io. 10.http://www.spainhouses.net/es/estadisticas/espana/comprar/resumen_st0_l. Ch 11.http://www.captcha.net/. engchi. i n U. v. 12.http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/taiwan,-china/. 36.

(44) VII. Appendix 1. 政治大. 立. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. The previous graphic shows one-month statistics based on number of visitors, average visit duration and also the new visits. In one month we had 49,079 visits (average 1,636 visits per day).. 37.

(45) Appendix 2. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. The graphic above shows the number of visitors in a month based on their location. Most of the customers are from Singapore but as showed in the map, a lot of people around the world visited the website during the year. This shows the impact it had the previous year.. 38.

(46) Appendix 3. 政治大. 立. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. In the table above it’s important to highlight that the 50.07% of visitors are new. This reflects that the website gets more and more popular which is a good indicator. It is also consistent with the visitors the site had in one month and that are showed in the chart below:. 39.

(47) Appendix 4. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 40. i n U. v.

(48) Appendix 5. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學 y. Nat. n. er. io. al. 13. sit. The current average price in Spain is €87113.. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. http://www.spainhouses.net/es/estadisticas/espana/comprar/resumen_st0_l1_63.html (12/03/2012). 41.

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