Final Project Guidelines

CS 5261: Telecoms and International Network Final Group Project Guidelines Mobile Commerce: New Applications and Business Models 1. Important Deadlines: i. Please post the topic and target country of your group before Week 8’s class (October/06/2009). ii. An electronic copy of slides is due before the class on the presentation day (November/10/2009). (upload to IVLE, no hardcopy submission is needed) iii. Final term paper is due before the class on the presentation day (November/10/2009). (ONE electronic copy uploaded to IVLE and ONE hardcopy submission to me for grading.) 2. Topic and Target Country: i. Target Country. Basically most countries are acceptable. However, I believe both your group and the rest of class will benefit more if you pick a target country that may be related to your future career: typical examples include Singapore, China, India, Japan, USA, Australia/NZ, European countries…etc. Again, any reasonable country is acceptable. But if your group plans to analyze countries like Maldives, Tahiti, or Palau, please consult with me first. ii. Target application or new business model. Basically you have the freedom to choose any business models or software applications that the main profit/revenue income is from the mobile platform. The company that provide that innovative product/service can be the mobile service operator or an independent company. The following criteria are also important: Make sure you can collect sufficient information and data to answer ALL of the required project questions. The more innovative the application or business the better. For example, if you analyze selling ringtones or selling a simple game on mobile, then it is not that attractive unless there is something different from the ordinary cases. DO NOT pick a case that is too simple or too complicated for your analysis. iii. In principle ONLY ONE team is allowed for the same country. The first team that posts their topic on IVLE gets the priority. If there are two teams that plan to work on the same country, the second team must consult with me first and convince me the topic will be very different from the first team. It is fine that you investigate similar application in different countries. For example, mobile payment is one of the most promising applications and it 1

is fine that you investigate similar m-payment business models in different countries. 3. Presentation: • Each team should target at 12 minutes. • Due to the limitation of time, I have to stop you right at 12 minutes. Your grades will be adversely affected if you exceed 12 minutes. • Only ONE presenter. Since the presentation and slides accounts for (5+5)/30, pick a teammate who is a good presenter. • Your grades will depend more on the quality but not the quantity of the submission. • Due to the limitation of time, I suggest you focus on presenting only the interesting and important findings of your team. 4. Grading: (30% of your final marks.) • The same group will receive the same grade. This is grading policy adopted in many MBA program in the USA. The point is to mimic the real world’s business environment. Many professionals lost their job in the finance industry now not because of their faults. Similarly, they (sometimes) enjoyed bonus before the finance crisis not because of their contributions. • Presentation and slides: 10% (Roughly from 7 to 10) • Final term paper: 20%. The term paper will be graded based on relative quality similar to the presentation (14-20). Groups that provide complete, correct, and creative answers to the questions that I mentioned in the last section will have higher grades. 5. Term paper: • Font Size: Times New Roman, 12. Line spacing: 1.5. • Default margin of A4 paper, no more than 60 pages of main text. No more than 75 pages including appendices, tables, figures, and references…etc. Please list the references in the appendix, including the web addresses where you quote, cite, or download data. • Your grades will depend much more on quality than the quantity.

6. The term paper should at least cover but not limit to the following information: 1, 2, 3, and 6 are required. Pick ONE out of 4 and 5 for your target company. 2

1. Introduction: overview of the relevant background information of your target company and its new application/business model. Also, explain in details what is your target new application or business model. 2. Five Forces Model: Apply five forces to your target company’s industry. Depending on your application, some of the five forces may be more or less important (even irrelevant). You can decide the focus of your analysis. Also, if your target application is tightly integrated into the mobile service operator, it is fine to investigate the mobile service operator industry, although the industry analysis of the target application is preferred. 3. SWOT Analysis 1. (Important) Perform SWOT analysis on your target company and also the number one competitor, which means the strongest competitor for your target company’s product or service. Apply SWOT analysis on these two firms. 2. Based on your SWOT analysis, provide several strategic suggestions for your target company. The strategic recommendation is an important part of the exercise. Please do not omit it. The goal of your target company should be how to promote their installed customer base and dominate in their market segment in the long run, especially prevent other second-mover entrants. 4. Pricing Strategies 1. List the current pricing plans of your target company. Provide the pricing plans in the appendix and briefly summarize or explain the properties of these pricing plans. 2. Based on the price plans you’ve found, what are the price discrimination strategies used by these companies? Could you categorize them by first-degree (personalized pricing), second-degree (versioning), third-degree (group pricing), or bundling pricing strategy? 3. Based on the concepts you learned from this module, could you recommend more pricing strategies? (The more interesting ideas, the higher your grades will be. In other words, simply listing senior citizens discount, student discount, or NUS discounts are correct but not the type of excellent answers that I am expecting for. This kind of answers helps only when other teams provide sloppy answers) 5. Value Chain Analysis 1. I do not cover this part in the past two years. In case that some of the applications are not appropriate cases for pricing analysis, you have the option to conduct 3

Value Chain analysis to your target company’s supply chain and come up a list of recommended strategies for your target company to improve its profitability. 2. That is, you only need to conduct either analysis 4 or 5. 6. Conclusion: 1. Summary of your major findings and conclusions about the current status of the target company? 2. Can you predict the future of the new industry, new market segment, or your target company? • •

Please feel free to email me or post your questions on IVLE. You are welcomed to contact me about how to search more information for your project.

Lastly, categories of potential topics are listed for your reference and for further discussions with your team mates. You can freely pick a topic that is not in this list. • Mobile payment • Mobile banking • Mobile shopping • Mobile advertising • Mobile ticketing and reservation • Location-based mobile services: e.g., GPS related services. • Mobile entertainment industry, such as music, ringtone, mobile TV, and games.

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