Introduction

Second life is 3D virtual online world, runs over the internet where users of this virtual network

can explore, collaborate and participate in all activities, it can be considered as a birthing ground

for new industries and transform business, commerce, marketing and learning. The main idea

hiding behind the direct 3D virtual contact with others through your own made world where you

can express, share and comment on what you are seeing

Companies can use Second Life as a business tool for online Marketing for their products,

companies can establish their own markets on SL where they can show their latest products for

more than 15 Million Customer around the world. The customers on their turn can experience

the good they are interested in (virtually) and can have as idea about what they are going to

experience in reality. The 3D imagery could give people a better idea of what real products

actually look like.

Second life also allows businesses to use new tools that increase its processes efficiency and

creating new approaches for marketing, product development and build a new brand image.

Companies can use second life as a business tool for interaction with their customers and get

their feedback about their products. Renaud, chief architect of networked virtual environments

for Cisco said: "I bump into customers and partners multiple times a day in Second Life. In 11

years at Cisco, walking through the parking lot in San Jose, I never get people come up to me

and say, 'I'm a Cisco customer, have a second?

Virtual Second Life world will become an indispensible business tool and vital to the strategy of any company

intent on reaching out to the video-game generation and expand its work and its customer base with providing

high competitive advantages. As a part of the Service wedding industry, we already having a well established

wedding Services firm in Amman, Jordan. We are intending to expand the current business of this firm toward

more technological structure and more competitive services portfolio that helps us increasing our customer’s base

and enhance our current market share. The Second Life attracted us

Porter's Five Forces analysis of Wedding services in Second Life

To examine the competitive structure of having Wedding services business over second life, PORTER’s Five forces model was chosen

According to this Model, we attempt to analyze the attractiveness of doing Wedding Services business through Second Life by considering five forces within the market. According to Porter, the likelihood of firms making profit in a given industry depends on the following five factors:

1. Traditional Competitors:

We have inducted a deep scan for the firms that are providing wedding services over the second life, there is few number of firms that provide just a virtual online wedding parties for second life Avatars Only, without matching it to the real life wedding services which lowering the degree of competition between the existing firms and our intended wedding services business.

The cost of leaving the industry is very low because of low level of investment. This means that existing firms will not fight hard to survive because they can easily transfer their resources elsewhere

The Market of business through Second life is expanding, so there is always open opportunities for the firms providing wedding services to expand and enhance their services to gain higher market share without fighting to save their share of falling sales. Also the easiness of market entrance can bring higher level of competition but still the thread of losing high percentage of share is not appearing at this stage.

There is a little brand loyalty so customers are likely to switch easily between the firms providing wedding services in the second life.

2. New Market Entrants

a. The barriers of entry are low, the second life community is widely used all over the world and there are no barriers for anyone who want to establish a business in the second life (if he has the technological capabilities and knowledge).

b. The Entry cost is very low: all what you need to start a business in second life is just a premium membership, we can make a business in second life with very low capital cost (starting from 7.5$ monthly).

c. Technological knowledge about development over second life is a fundamental requirement for establishing wedding services business over second life community.

d. The government policies does not prevent establishing Wedding services business over second life.

e. The existing competitors have no control over supplies, since our business is intended to take all the supplies from a real established firms located locally in Jordan.

3. Substitute products and services:

We have studied the business of wedding services in the second life that have a link to the real life wedding services business, there was no competitors as stated earlier and so there is no perfect substitute for our service, although we have to consider that people can find substitutes in the real life wedding services firms which provide planning services for wedding parties, but they will lose the competitive advantages that we are providing such as wedding party simulation, one place to customize all wedding requirements, and sharing knowledge experience from previous wedding parties…etc.

4. Customers:

The customer power will be weak since in our business, we are providing a new experience with low cost which lowers down their power. They are still can shift easily to the real life competitors but they will lose the previously stated advantages.

5. Suppliers:

The suppliers power will be weak because there is relatively high number of alternatives to choose and we can switch easily to another supplier, according to our value Network, we have large number of actors providing the same service category with different prices and options which lowers down their power.

Finally, Using Porter’s five forces analysis, our business is likely to generate high revenue because of the following:

1- There is limited level of competition in this industry2- There is no substitute in the second life, substitutes are only

considered in the real life industry3- Customers are relatively weak4- Suppliers are relatively weak.

SWOT Analysis

The analysis is based on the assumption that an effective strategy derives from a sound “fit”

between a firm’s internal resources (strengths and weaknesses) and its external situation

(opportunities and threats). A good fit maximizes a firm’s strengths and opportunities and

minimizes its weaknesses and threats. Accurately applied, this simple assumption has

powerful implications for the design of a successful strategy.”

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT)

"Play back your wedding" SWOT Analysis

Location of Factor TYPE OF FACTOR

Favorable Unfavorable

Internal

Strengths

Easy to access &

communicate.

Experienced event team.

Virgin industry.

Opportunity to grow globally.

New idea in the wedding

services industry

High level of efficiency.

Wide range services.

Weaknesses

Wide range of services may decrease the quality level because of control.

Services may not fit people traditions and believes.

Lack of contacts. Ineffective promotions. Unfit decisions because of

this new business idea.

External

Opportunities Large community.

Low level of competition.

Technology development.

New life style trends.

High level of knowledge.

Customer loyalty

Threats No government support

Technology development and

new virtual communities.

New wedding services ideas.

Loss of experienced staff.

Low level of market demand.

Our Business:

Our Business idea is to extend our already existing Wedding services business to be done also in the 2nd life. Currently our company is providing a variety of basic services for those who are about to marry such as picking and reserving the wedding halls, choosing the flowers, music and sound effects and light effects. We are facing a lot of difficulties currently in matching the customers’ needs and preferences with the available large diversification of services and products for different target segments. Information technology revolution permits different industries worldwide to create and enable different kinds of services and achieve a high level of operational excellence that enabled them to capture more customers and enhance their market share. As the “Second Life” community is getting larger year after year, it started to attract more businessmen to expanding their existing business through it to get the full benefits from the advantages and opportunities it can facilitate as stated in our introduction. We take the advantage of the presence of Second Life community to add a new Line of services to our existing company where our business is having high customer contact, high sensitivity and relatively high cost. And our aim is to satisfy our customers’ needs through giving them a full idea about the details and structure of their wedding day details using a 3D virtual environment.

In our business, we will establish a virtual location for our company in the second life. the following business flow diagram illustrate the flow of data in our virtual company.

The previous diagram shows the way our business will be conducted with the following details:

- The customers will enter our virtual company where they can find screens around the walls that shows the details of our services and market our real life company through previously recorded videos.

- When the customer took an idea about what we can do, he can register his basic information as:o Community guest: who can participate in our community by posting his suggestions

from his previous experience and comments on other’s experience. The data that he will post in the community will be available for any customer so he can get the benefit from it and take it into consideration for his wedding.

o Business Actor: who is willing to establish a business with our company or advertise for his good or services through our virtual community. An appointment will be assigned for this customer with the Communication department and a confirmation mail will be sent to both having the meeting date and time.

o Customer: who are willing to meet the planner to get the benefit of our business. he is requested to mention more detailed information about:

Wedding date (range) Budget for wedding.

Number of guests.

Those basic data will help the planner to match them with the varity of choices that we have as will be stated below. An appointment will be assigned for this customer with the planner and a confirmation mail will be sent to both having the meeting date and time. The meeting will be held in the second life through a video or voice basic communication supported by the Second life.

- According to the registration data, the planner will have initial idea about what the customer is really need and will prepare the interview accordingly.

- During the interview, the planner will ask questions to know details about the personality and preferences of his customers and directly enter them to the customers database which is linked to our suppliers and service providers database to sort out the best alternatives sorted according to their preferences. The customers DB and suppliers DB will be connected through a small In-House developed DSS system that can match the preferences of the current customer along with the previous choices from similar customers with the available choices from suppliers DB and sort them accordingly.

- The Planner will start introducing the available choices that match the customer’s needs on the screens of the meeting room (as pictures and small videos) which contains:

o Available Hotels or wedding hallso Flowers arrangemento Songs that will be played during the wedding (customer has also the choice to choose

from what he saw in the community or to pick the music from our online music store)o Lightning effecto Type of “Zaffeh”o Dinner and Cakeso Cards Designo Saloons for both the bride and the groomo Bride dress and groom suito Plan the honeymoon

The customer will chose what suits them from each category, and directly the planner will enter them to the customer DB. Once this process is completed and agreed between the planner and the customer, they will arrange a date for the 3D Simulation of their wedding in the second life that will contain all the previous mentioned preparations.

- Customer and planner will attend the second life wedding party simulation and both will take the notes if anything needs to be adjusted. Once the process is completed and the customer agreed on those preparations, another appointment will be arranged between them and the sales department in our firm to sign up the contract and start the real preparation.

- After the wedding and the honeymoon, the customers will be encouraged to enter our competition and post pictures, videos and feedback about their wedding in the competition page so others can view it and rate it. The couple who will get the highest votes will win the semiannual competition with a valuable prize.

Business strategy:

Business strategy is one of the most important stage need to conduct the business that it's decide the way you run and shape the business decisions. The strategy should be compatible with the type of business and the industry you working with. Business strategy should be incorporate with the business mission and objectives and it create an effective way to achieve them. First of all we will state our suggested mission as below:

Mission" providing a one stop location for your wedding services needs and requirements, and let you taste the experience of professionalism and play back your wedding day"

The previously stated mission of our business lead to plans and strategy that we will follow to achieve our goals, where we will follow the differentiation strategy to differentiate from our competitors that will lead to the success.

Our differentiation strategy implement by providing the value to our customers through a unique features and services over our competitors where we offer an innovative services which differentiate in a number of ways as follow:

1- Unusual and unique service: 3D wedding day simulation.2- One stop location: where customer can experience the wide range of services and products that

may be needed in their wedding day.3- Create a community for sharing opinions and previous experiences so customers and

community members can participate in a more dynamic way to support their decisions for their most important and sensitive day “the wedding day”.

4- Provide services and suggestions that exactly match customer's needs and preferences.

The design of the Business Model:

The business model is fundamental to any organization because it provide powerful ways to understand, analyses, communicate and manage strategic oriented choices.

We will begin to adopt a suitable business model for our new business to achieve our competitive positions and maintaining our business strategy to improve our ability to respond quickly and guarantee high quality of business decisions.

Accordingly, we will follow the “UNIFIED FRAMEWORK OF THE BUSINESS MODEL CONCEPT” which was developed by Dr. Mutaz Al-Debei & David Avison (Mar 2010). Based on that, it is suggested that when designing a business model, we need to address 15 critical concept organized in 4 dimensions in a term called V4 service model ontology which is illustrated in the below figure

Where this design’s dimensions and elements are interdependent that performs the model in a sufficient and effective way. Now we will provide a more in depth details for each dimension.

1- VALUE PROPOSITION:The value proposition dimension impresses the first 3 concepts of designing designing wedding services business1.1. Product-service:

Our business is to provide comprehensive services for those who are preparing for their wedding day where they can find all what they need in one place within the lowest time period, our services consist of: i- Provide over all solution for the weeding day containing the following:

o Find and reserve the wedding hall that match the customers perception and budget

o Provide the needed flowers arrangements for the tables in the wedding hall and for decorating the whole theme of wedding

o Pick and choose the music that will be played during the weedingo Choose the suitable Light effects o Prepare and reserve for “Zaffeh” o Choose the needed type of cakes drinks and provide them accordinglyo Design the wedding card o Reserve for the saloons for the brideo Pick the suitable Design for the dress of both the groom and the bride and

coordinate with designers accordinglyo Arrange for the honeymoon vacation with a travelling agency and set the whole

program for this vacationii- Perform a 3D simulation for the wedding day using the second life community to

play back all the preparations that were agreed by the customers so they can imagine how their wedding will be.

iii- Create a community for sharing opinions and previous experiences so customers and community members can participate in a more dynamic way to support their decisions for their most important and sensitive day “the wedding day”.

1.2. Intended value element:Our business idea is mainly looking to provide a variety of values that satisfies our customers as follows:i- Safe time, efforts and expenses: throughout our one stop location company that

provide all the needs for the wedding day just through going with the steps arranged by one planner. Usually and according to our traditions and our perception toward the wedding day, the wedding couples are spending weeks and even month in their preparations for the wedding day. They are picking each and single service separately from its service provider and that is much costly and waste of time. Our business can offer all those services to the couple just in time.

ii- Eliminate the ambiguity and improve the trust: the 3D simulation service we offered play major role in eliminating the ambiguity of their choices about the elements they choose to build up their wedding day and the overall wedding day expectations.

iii- More socialization and create more relationships through participating in the created community: people there can share their experiences and opinions to others, they can have discussions about what will be good and what will be bad in the wedding day. People are getting more socialized and we –as business makers-

can get benefit from the opinions of the crowd to develop more services in our business.

1.3. Target Segment:Our target segment is the young engaged couples in Jordan who are willing to prepare for their wedding day to take the benefit of our service’s diversity. Here in Jordan, the second life community is not spread enough to depend only on it to generate the needed revenues for us as business makers. So the membership in the second life is not a must. For the couples who does not have a membership in second life we will do the necessary registration for them and give them their free membership and the steps to visit us in the second life community when they visit our real life premises.For the couples who do not have the enough computer literacy to use the second life, still we can assign them an appointment to visit our real life premises where in our location we can log them into the second life and help them to preview their 3D simulation.So in our business model, our target segment involves all the engaged couples regardless their membership in the second life and regardless their computer literacy.

2- VALUE NETWORK:

The value network dimension represents external arrangement that revolve around the collaboration and communication our wedding services company through it 6 main concepts:

2.1. Actor:

This concept is identifying the core actors with whom the wedding services company communicates and collaborates in order to deliver our services. So in our business the main actors include services providers:

Hotels and Halls Flowers shops Music and DJ stores Light Effects Makers Zaffeh Bands Cake Shops Cards Designers Saloons Dress Designers Travel Agencies Second Life Community.

2.2. Role:

This concept describes the main role of each actor. In our business Model, our internal Planners our internal communication team is playing the major part in coordinating and reserving what was ordered by the customers. So the role of each actor is to provide the prices and the available dates for each service then do the necessary job if it is signed by the customer.

2.3. Relationship:

This concept is identifying the sort of links that our company establishes with our value network actors. We will perform a strategic partnership relationship between us and all the service providers mentioned previously

In our business model also there is no need for intercommunication between our partners since the communication team will do the necessary partnership preparation from the service providers, enter them in the suppliers DB separately and the planner will pick what suit the customers accordingly.

2.4. Flow Communication:

This concept addresses the material communicated among various actors connected in value network. So there are 2 scenarios of material communication in our business model:

o Material flowing between the company and our customers: which includes Money, agreements and services. This can be done through physical presence to our premises, also Second Life community is considered as a channel for the 3D simulation service that we provide.

o Material flowing between our company and our actors: also includes money and agreements (continues line in the below graph) and services (dot line)

2.5. Channel:

This concept describes the communication ports used to communicate materials among actors. We have two types of channels to accomplish our business:

o Physical channel: where our operational team along with the actor team will physically move the needed material from its location to other actor’s location

o Internet: to transfer the data from all actors toward our supplier DB containing the available dates, prices and available services.

2.6. Governance:

This concept examines the powers and controls of each actor within the value network. In our business there is no power or control for any actor among the others because of our huge service providers DB that lower the level of control of everyone.

3- VALUE ARHITICTURE

The value architecture dimension specifies all necessary technological architecture arrangements and organizational infrastructure arrangements by the following 3 concepts:

3.1. Core resources:

This concept creates useful information of the needed assets and resources to develop new services. In our business the following are our core resources:

1- Communication team: responsible about making partnership agreements between the company and the other actors and vice versa. It is also responsible about collecting the data needed from actors and store them is the suppliers DB, then make the reservations and the needed arrangements once there is agreement about the service by the customer.

2- Wedding Planners: responsible about the communication with customers and do the needed design for the weeding day according to customers DB and Suppliers DB. It also assure the excellence of the job that will be done

3- IT developers: responsible about deploy and maintain the infrastructure of the organization and maintain the availability of suppliers and customers DBs. They are also maintaining the internet connection with our actors to keep the DB always updated. Part of this team should have the ability to program and develop over second life community to develop the 3D simulation of the Wedding day.

4- Sales Team: responsible about finalizing the deal with the customers and reach agreement about the prices and signing the contracts with each actor

5- Operational Team: responsible about executing the agreed preparations that were signed by the customer involves coordination with actors to deploy the ordered services.

The following assets and Information technologies are also needed in our business:

1- Intranet connection between all teams and departments to flow the needed preparations2- Internet connection to connect our suppliers DB with the external actors and facilitate the

access to the second life.3- Second life premium membership to start establishing the business over there (establishing our

virtual branch in the second life) and including 3D simulation.

3.2. Value Configuration:

This concept refers to the ability of our company to integrate organizational and technological core resources in a way that allows efficient and effective role out of successful services where it identify and examine the key processes that allows core competences to emerge. The following graph shows the value configuration of our business:

3.3. Core competences:

This concept holds information that our company can do more efficiently and effectively than our competitors. Our differentiation strategy implement by providing the value to our customers through a unique features and services over our competitors where we offer an innovative services which differentiate in a number of ways as follow:

5- Unusual and unique service: 3D wedding day simulation.6- One stop location: where customer can experience the wide range of services and products that

may be needed in their wedding day.7- Create a community for sharing opinions and previous experiences so customers and

community members can participate in a more dynamic way to support their decisions for their most important and sensitive day “the wedding day”.

8- Provide services and suggestions that exactly match customer's needs and preferences.

4- VALUE FINANCE:

The value finance dimension is a description on the core arrangements needed to insure the economic viability of the offered services including cost and pricing method where it is composed of free main concepts:

4.1. Total Cost of Ownership: this concept deal with the financial information about the overall costs with respect to all core arrangement that are needed to maintain the wedding services. In our case, we have already a running business in the real life which has its already established TCO but in our model we are introducing expanding our value network actors with more vendors and create both customers and suppliers DBs with connecting them through an in-house developed DSS system. Also we introduced expanding our business toward the Second life community.

TCO calculations will include extra team member in Communication team to increase the number of actors in our value network. TCO will also include the costs paid in searching and making partnership agreements with the newly added value network actors.

The TCO for our proposal contains the cost of hiring extra IT team containing of 3 IT developers one of them specialized in the second life development and 3D simulation.

TCO also will include the cost of establishing both customers and suppliers DBs and connecting them through our DSS system including the entire needed infrastructure to do so.

The cost of premium membership and the cost of establishing our own premises in the second life is also included in TCO calculations.

4.2. Pricing Method: this concept contains all information about the prices of different services provided by our wedding services firm along with the adopted pricing mechanism and billing methods. In our business, we will provide a comprehensive package contains everything needed by the engaged couples for their wedding day so the pricing method that we will follow is:

- a dynamic pricing method consist of a percentage of 10% of the whole services ordered by the customers, since the customers will choose their needed service from our value network actors, the

prices of the those services will be exactly according to the prices of the vendor (this is the amount that we will pay for each actor upon signing for the services) plus a 10% percent of the whole package which will be considered as our revenue.

- 50 JD will be paid by the customers before preparing the 3D simulation if the customer ordered it, this amount is will not be returned for them if they did not agree on buying the services from us but it will be deducted from their total price if they agree and sign for their wedding services with us.

- a special discount from our percentage (to be 8% instead of 10%) for the couples who promote for our services and bring another couples who signed for the services with us

The customers will pay their invoice by attending to our real life premises where they can pay either by cash or by VISA cards.

4.3. revenue structure: this concept contains information regarding the generated revenue, and shows how generated revenue is broken down among different economic participating actors. In our wedding services business, we will purchase the agreed services by customers from our value network actors according to their set prices then we will sell it to the customer with 10% profit margin. So our revenue stream can be illustrated by the 10% profit that we got from customers after paying the actors for their services.

Another major source for revenue can come from the special discounts that we can get from our value network actors by time when partnership agreements were signed between us.