Nowadays, there are more and more people like to eat the vegetarian meals even they are not the vegetarians. And why the vegetarian meals are more popular compare with the previous time? This is because the vegetarian meals are very delicious and easy digest for those people who have a weak digestive system. The most important reason is more people are support the vegetarianism, so the vegetarian meals become more popular at many places. Today, that is one vegetarian restaurant introduced to all which is the Vegan Life located in the new town of Kampar, Perak. There is a restaurant decorated by beautiful light, some plants and even the pictures of vegetables.
The Vegan Life has provides vary types of vegetarian meals with a reasonable price, for examples the noddle dishes include soups or fried and also spaghetti with vary types of sauces, and ingredients, vary types of whole-grain brown rice, and the side dishes. Besides that, customers can also order some foods that are very delicious and recommend by the restaurant. For those spicy lover can also order the foods by refer the menu which add on a logo of chili, that means the certain food are more spicy compare to other foods. A good restaurant must also consist of many types of drinks and beverages like lime juice, lemon tea, ginger tea, organic green tea, mocha, chocolate and other tasty drinks. So the Vegan Life is a very nice restaurant to recommend for those vegetarians or non-vegetarians because that Vegan Life’s environment is very suitable and beautiful, is a good choice for having the lunch or dinner.
b) Its classification of e-commerce by the nature of the transactions or interactions.
Vegan life classification of e-commerce by nature of the transactions or interactions.
The classification of the Vegan Life is consider as a traditional commerce because that Vegan Life is only conduct the business by fully physical transactions and without any online transaction, this can let them focus on there. Because that the method of traditional commerce are more concern about the face to face interaction, and give the response within the shortest time. For example the customers can ask the waiters some question and the waiters can answer them in few seconds. This can improve the satisfaction of the customers. Traditional commerce can conduct the transactions under the situation of without internet services, so they can avoid the problem of system down and any fraud or cheating through the e-commerce. Besides that, traditional commerce also can avoid the cost of set up the e-commerce infrastructure and the cost of training employees. But without the e-commerce is also the limitation of Vegan Life has to faced due to the reason of most business are improving their e-commerce for better competitive with other competitors.
c) Its business models.
The business model used in Vegan Life is viral marketing. Viral marketing describes any business strategy that rely individuals to pass on the marketing message or products information to others by using the social networks. It creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence when message is passing from one to another. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions. Viral marketing has been referred to as “word-of-mouth,” “creating a buzz,” “leveraging the media,” if off the Internet. But on the Internet, it’s called “viral marketing. There are being a lot social networking sites such as Instagram, Facebook and more. With those internet platforms, it allow viral marketing to be done more effectively. For example, Vegan Life customers are allow to give feedback in Facebook. If there is a good feedback from customers, the review will be spread out and positive response will be received.
There are few benefits that can enjoy when using viral marketing business model. It will get tons of publicity and public awareness about the foods, products, or services. A company will getting higher exposure, it will more likely to increase the brands and this in turn generates a steady flow of traffic from potential customers. The potential customers for Vegan Life are vegetarian or vegetables lovers. It enable residents and students around Kampar area to know that there is a vegetarian restaurant.
Besides that, it help to save cost. A very low cost is needed for viral marketing compare using the old advertisement method which is more expansive. The example of old advertisement method are newspaper, brochure, television and etc. Compare with other business models, Viral marketing is more on preferring anyone who sees it will pass it along to their peers and families, thus increasing the reach of the marketing and website to the public. Vegan life is promoting their business through Facebook and the word-of-mouth from customers, it is zero rate.
The other advantages are increasing the reputation of Vegan Life. When customers recommend the nice foods to their friends and network, the reputation or credibility of Vegan Life will increase among the audiences. People will tend to visit the shop to try the foods that are recommended by their friends. Those people will recommend again to other friends after trying and this will continuosly creating buzz about the foods. Furthermore, credibility will increased with a good review. The reviews from Vegan life Facebook page showed 4.0 out 5 stars. This show that their customers are giving positive review in average. Picture below show some of the review of customers for Vegan Life.
Finally, it is easy for customers targeting. It has been noted that “since the concept of viral marketing involves passing on a message from a user to another person, most likely the user will pass it to a person whom he knows will be interested in it” (Knowles and Castillo, 2010, p.144). Viral messages can be devised taking into account specifications of target customer segment and thus they can be effectively spread within the same group through online channels. Other than that, customers will search for the information they are interested in. With the set-up of Facebook page, it will attract those potential customers to visit it.
d) Its basic approach used in marketing and advertising
Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.(American Marketing Association Board of Directors,2013) Product is produce base on customers’ needs and wants in the market. According to the National Cancer Institute, as much as an estimated 70 percent of all diseases, including one-third of all cancers, are related to diet. Vegan life found that there is a demand where consumers choose to eat healthy. More people are shifting to become a vegetarian with all sort of motive. Some want to live longer, some want to their part to reduce pollution and some loved animals and are ethically opposed to eating them. A vegetarian restaurant is just a right place to fulfil customers’ demand.
The activity of producing information for promoting the sale of commercial products or sservices defined as advertising. Vegan life has limited advertising method. They only use digital marketing as their marketing strategies to advertise their foods and beverages.
Digital marketing
Vegan life
were using social networking of Facebook, FooAdvisor and TripAdvisor.
Facebook
Social networking (Facebook) is used as a good platform to promote their products. This because Facebook having 1.19 billion users and the figure is increasing from time to time. There are no geographic boundaries and people can see it anytime, anyplace as long as they connected with Facebook. Furthermore, creating a Facebook page does not cost even single cent. The cost of set up a Facebook page by Vegan Life is zero, thus, it can cut down some expenses. In the Vegan Life Facebook page, the customers could know the business information such as the location, their opening hours, contact number and customers’ review. Some photo of foods and drinks will be attach on the wall of the page when customers check at Vegan Life.
FoodAdvisor
FoodAdvisor.my is a website that discover the best recommended food and beverage according to dish and location. This website help Vegan Life to promote their best dishes to potential customers who are specifically looking for a particular dish. This website give opportunity for Vegan Life to highlight their best foodies. However, FoodAdvisor is only available for Vegan Life Ipoh.
TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor which is a website and mobile application offers advice from millions of travelers and a wide variety of travel choices. The branded sites make up the largest travel community in the world, reaching 350 million unique monthly visitors, and 320 million reviews and opinions covering more than 6.2 million accommodations, restaurants and attractions. Besides that, This sites operate in 48 markets worldwide. So, Vegan life can easily reached a targeted customers. However, it only applicable at Vegan Life Ipoh brunch.
https://www.tripadvisor.com.my/Restaurant_Review-g298298-d8651289-Reviews-Vegan_life_restoran-Ipoh_Kinta_District_Perak.html
e) Recommendations
to improve businesses through e-commerce
In the crowded world of e-commerce, every outlet strike hard in order to compete with other competitors. There are some weakness have to be solve in order to improve their business in e-commerce world.
Firstly, we find out that Vegan used less marketing strategic for the advertising. There is a lot of free social media and it is a waste if a company cannot fully utilize all the resources. Vegan Life should take advantage of existing’ resources by creating personal website, blog and mobile apps - Wechat. This social media are free and thus no marketing expense is needed. Vegan Life can upload their menu, foods and beverage photos, sales and promotion. Those information would drive people to the website that engage visitors and among those visitors, it might include the potential customers.
Next, Vegan Life should be more sociable. Be social means Vegan Life should communicate with their customers using the social media. We found that Vegan Life less update their Facebook page. By having Facebook isn’t enough, Vegan Life need to post more updates about the products and services. For example, promotion for the month or introducing new dishes. Besides that, Vegan Life can post some questions or polls asking opinion of their valued customers. Through the comment, Vegan may get information about what kind of lifestyle their customer leads, what they interested in and what is their favourite dish. For instance, Vegan Life may share news and personal interest stories about good eating habit, the benefit of being vegetarian and more. Your social outreach should be more than just another advertising channel. Customers or visitors would prefer a source of lifestyle contain in the Facebook page.
Last but not least, appealing images of products and services is an important element too. Customer will decide to move in the website if it is interesting. The beautiful photography will incite people to look through the content. Besides that, consistent look and feel across all the photography used on your e-commerce website to help make the experience of browsing and shopping more enjoyable. An easy navigate webpage make visitor easy to browse. Visitor can find what they looking for and the information provides related to the particular food and beverage.
In the crowded world of e-commerce, every outlet strike hard in order to compete with other competitors. There are some weakness have to be solve in order to improve their business in e-commerce world.
Firstly, we find out that Vegan used less marketing strategic for the advertising. There is a lot of free social media and it is a waste if a company cannot fully utilize all the resources. Vegan Life should take advantage of existing’ resources by creating personal website, blog and mobile apps - Wechat. This social media are free and thus no marketing expense is needed. Vegan Life can upload their menu, foods and beverage photos, sales and promotion. Those information would drive people to the website that engage visitors and among those visitors, it might include the potential customers.
Next, Vegan Life should be more sociable. Be social means Vegan Life should communicate with their customers using the social media. We found that Vegan Life less update their Facebook page. By having Facebook isn’t enough, Vegan Life need to post more updates about the products and services. For example, promotion for the month or introducing new dishes. Besides that, Vegan Life can post some questions or polls asking opinion of their valued customers. Through the comment, Vegan may get information about what kind of lifestyle their customer leads, what they interested in and what is their favourite dish. For instance, Vegan Life may share news and personal interest stories about good eating habit, the benefit of being vegetarian and more. Your social outreach should be more than just another advertising channel. Customers or visitors would prefer a source of lifestyle contain in the Facebook page.
Last but not least, appealing images of products and services is an important element too. Customer will decide to move in the website if it is interesting. The beautiful photography will incite people to look through the content. Besides that, consistent look and feel across all the photography used on your e-commerce website to help make the experience of browsing and shopping more enjoyable. An easy navigate webpage make visitor easy to browse. Visitor can find what they looking for and the information provides related to the particular food and beverage.