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Page 70 GO IT ALONE!
Specialization in Retailing
We are witnessing the rise of specialization in several distinct ways. The first area, highly targeted retailing, seems relatively obvious. It is now far easier for anyone who wants to make a living offering a specialized service or product to find sufficient customers to make this possible. CleanAirGardening.com is one example. A store dedicated to ecologically oriented gardening supplies probably could not draw enough traffic in the physical world to survive—there might not be sufficient interest in any particular local community. However, in the online world, the store’s potential community expands to at least the entire United States. Within this far larger community, there are enough people with an interest in ecologically oriented gardening supplies to support at least one dedicated store. Search engines make it possible for such people to learn about the store. Similarly, the majority of eBay stores cater to a very specific interest. The owners of these stores make money because eBay helps them aggregate customers.
Unbundling and Specialization in Corporate Organization
The second aspect of specialization, which most likely has more far-reaching consequences, is that global networking inherently leads to the unbundling of just about everything. Two business that are examples of such unbundling have already been discussed: Mr. Trademark, which unbundled the trademark search process from the lawyer’s job of interpreting the results of the search, and Speed Anywhere, which unbundled the broadband sales process into three separate tasks of (1) finding potential broadband prospects, (2) selling specific services to these prospects, and (3) installing the broadband services. To provide a frame of reference for your analysis of business opportunities, this section briefly explains the theoretical basis for the unbundling of businesses.
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GO IT ALONE! Copyright 2004 by Bruce Judson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
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