Internet Marketing Strategy Expedia.com and its main competitor Travelocity

Extraits de l'étude de cas

[...] S&P Daily News, March (retrieved via www.lexis-nexis.com on March 30, 2003) Barton, Richard. ?Expedia?. Business Week, January (retrieved via www.proquest.com) Business Brief: Expedia Inc.: Online Division Is Launched For Use by Corporate Customers. The Wall Street Journal, Nov (retrieved via www.proquest.com) Chaparro, Barbara and Ashley Gibson. ?Planning Your Next Vacation: Orbitz, Expedia, or Travelocity?? Usability News http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/41/travel_usability.ht m (April 2003) Expedia, Inc. Press Release: Corporate Travel single-solution combines powerful technology and full array of travel management services.? (retrieved via www.hoovers.com) Expedia, Inc. [...]

[...] Since customers, especially leisure travelers focus more and more on price, online competitors are eroding the power of the offline travel agencies. The competition between online players is intensive too. However, as the travel market is still growing very fast, competition does not jeopardize the existence of all players, at least at the moment Complementary Parts Complementary parts include all possible third parties that enhance the value provided to customers, and in turn help online players to capture more value. [...]

[...] - The designs of Expedia and Travelocity websites are very different: On Travelocity, an entire portion of the business travel homepage is dedicated to vacation planning deals, and the rest of the homepage is far more travel-oriented than on Expedia. - The Expedia website focuses on the advantages and features of its corporate travel offer, whereas Travelocity directly emphasizes the practical details related to travel like travel information, travel preferences, booking etc . - This difference is probably due to the fact that Expedia's corporate site is only 6 months old and, hence has the need to explain its offer, to increase its market share Internationalization Effort Expedia has shown an interest in internationalization, in comparison to Travelocity. [...]

[...] Expedia is now the No.1 on-line traveling site in the US. Mike Trigg, as many others in the industry, wrote way back in 2001 that the existing players lack a sustainable competitive advantage, and that the on-line traveling industry is not attractive because of low barriers to entry, and lack of consumer loyalty (Rex Moore, ?Online traveling still soaring?). What Mike Trigg and the others did not understand is the scalability effect due to low variable costs, the brand name effect, and the learning/trust building among consumers and Internet transactions. [...]

[...] According to Greenfield online research, Expedia has more loyal customers than any other travel site. In comparison to Expedia, Travelocity has committed more resources to online communication. It has exclusive strategic partnership with both AOL and Yahoo. Only the four-year contract with AOL costs $ 4 million. In contrast, it spends much less on other mass media. There were only few TV commercials about Travelocity, until recently Competition in the corporate market The US corporate travel market was worth $70 billion in 2002, which was about half the size of the total travel market in the US. [...]