Martyn Fox        07185165        B2B

Critically evaluate a B2B organisation of your choice

In this report it is my aim to critically evaluate a B2B organisation in order to gain a sound knowledge of the business, the area it operates in and also to be able to make recommendations in how the organisation can improve. Typically B2B organisations tend to be out of the spotlight of customers, as it is there nature to operate business to business. Examples of these kinds of organisations include IBM, EMAP and obviously more well known Microsoft. They operate on a grand scale within the B2B sector and are obvious choices when discussing B2B organisations. However within the current e-climate, which sees more online B2B organisations arise I decided to evaluate a less obvious choice. On the Internet, B2B also known as e-biz, is the exchange of products, services, or information between businesses rather than between businesses and consumers. There are many B2B websites such as Company Web sites, Brokering sites, Information sites and portals. The organisation that I have chosen to critically evaluate is Yahoo! which is a search engine that is not often seen as a B2B.

Yahoo! is an Internet service provider that serves both users and business globally. The company was founded in 1994 by David Filo and Jerry Yang who were attending Stanford University’s PhD program. Yahoo! Inc. began as a hobby for Filo and Yang and has now evolved into a multifaceted brand that serves internet users worldwide. Yahoo! Inc. has become the world’s largest global online network of integrated services. According to the Yahoo! Inc. website, they have become one of the leading search engines on the World Wide Web. Yahoo! Currently has 500 million users worldwide that visit the site each month and is provided to users in more than twenty different languages. The company also has office locations in Europe, the Asia Pacific, Latin America, Canada and the United States. The headquarters can be found in Sunnyvale, California. Yahoo! Inc. was incorporated in California in March of 1995 and it first went public on NASDAQ in April of 1996. At this time Yahoo!’s stock opened for $13.00 per share. At the close of its first day of the IPO, Yahoo! stock had reached a closing price of $33.00 per share. At this time the company only had 49 employees which saw the company reincorporated in Delaware in May of 1999.

In 1996, Yahoo! Inc. began entering into joint ventures with SOFTBANK, through this initial joint venture, Yahoo! Inc. was able to create Yahoo! Japan. Subsequently Yahoo! Inc. has teamed with SOFTBANK to create markets in Germany, United Kingdom, France, and Korea Yahoo! Inc. and SOFTBANK have also created GeoCities Japan Corporation to create and manage a Japanese version of the GeoCities website. Yahoo! Inc. has also teamed in a joint venture with VISA to establish Yahoo! Marketplace. This joint venture occurred in August of 1996 and has since then created a navigational service focused on information and resources for the purchase of consumer products and services over the internet. This joint venture alone created a new market for Yahoo! Inc. Most recently, in January 2006, Yahoo! Inc. and Seven Network Limited, also known as SEVEN, have teamed in a joint venture. The Australian media firm, signed an agreement with Yahoo! Inc where Yahoo! contributed its Australian internet business, Yahoo! Australia and New Zealand, and SEVEN contributed its online assets, television and magazine content. Yahoo! Inc. has a fifty percent equity ownership in the joint venture which will operate under the name Yahoo7. Yahoo! Inc. also operates Flickr, a photo sharing and storing website. The company also provides its users with web mail, instant messaging, music, video, personals, and much more.

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Yahoo is a master of portals, but they have let their search product suffer. They have long built out their offering in such a way to add value to their users through functionality while they hoped that revenue would be made in the process. There was no clear attempt to either target those users with advertising or extend any real value added services. Search is a product of users making their way through the Internet, rather than the core of their business. Yahoo sees their core business as being Yahoo News, Finance and Mail. They have made acquisitions such as ...

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