Deliverable A-Business Case Statement

Our group will create a SaaS (Software as a Service) web and mobile solution for animal shelters and rescues that matches adoptable pets with interested adopters based on their personality preferences. Use of the site and mobile app will be free for both shelters and their customers in order to attract consumer interest and to support shelters’ efforts to engage and screen adoption candidates.

Users will be able to create accounts, manage personality preferences, search database of available pets, “like” and hide pets from list of recommended matches, inquire for more information about individual pets and submit adoption applications online.

Value Proposition

The value proposition for shelters is the attraction of customers interested in adopting pets as well as simplifying the search for adoptable pets by proposing matches based on pet and user personality characteristics.

For end users, the site will present a list of available pets who best match the user’s personality profile, where other sites may simply list available pets. This will help end users to quickly find the best match for their family, home and lifestyle from all of the area shelters. Additionally, the site further streamlines the adoption process by facilitating communication between users and shelters and allowing users to submit applications online.

Finally, our website/mobile app offers convenience to those interested in adoption and can cultivate an instant connection with the animals even before visiting the shelter.

Category of E-Commerce

The site/app falls within the B2B category in the service we provide to animal shelters - a SaaS solution for promoting available pets for adoption, gathering and qualifying leads (end users) and accepting adoption applications. There is a B2C component to the site as well, as we will attract consumers/end users interested in adopting pets and present them with customized lists of the most suitable pets available for adoption based on matching the user’s and pet’s personality characteristics.

Similar sites/services include:

http://www.petfinder.com/index.html
http://www.thepetconnection.com/
http://www.jaxhumane.org/adopt/personal-pet-matching.aspx

Intended Customers

The intended customers of the site will range from a variety of backgrounds. These backgrounds will include people of all ages that are animal lovers. There is rarely a specific age range for an animal lover, although, some people might become animal lovers later on in life. Many of these people will be emotionally invested in looking to adopt an animal or to connect with shelters in their area to make a direct donation through the shelter’s website. Our proposed site/app will provide a useful and playful guide to support the perfect match.

From a B2B perspective, the site will target animal shelters and rescues in a major metropolitan area. The site will reduce the human effort required to promote pets and screen candidates, and will expand the shelter/rescues’ reach throughout the metropolitan area.

Demographics of intended customers (excluding shelter/rescue admins):

Gender:

Male - 40%
Female - 60%		 Geographical:

Rural - 35%
Urban - 35%
Characteristic Age Groups:

Looking to adopt: 23-55
Looking for someone to adopt: 18-23 and 55-70
Looking to donate money: 27-55		 Age Range:

Children - 5%
Teenager - 15%
Young Adult - 20%
Adult - 40%
Elderly - 20%

The e-commerce site will initially support animal shelters and rescues within a single metropolitan area and will then expand to additional metropolitan and rural areas as the demand grows.

A majority of our customers that will spend time on the site will be women.

The majority of people adopting an animal will be adults 23-55, whether for children or the elderly, these tend to be the main adopters from animal shelters.

Many elderly going into caregiver homes might not be able to bring their pet will need to find appropriate adoption for their pet (ages 55-70). This is also often true for the young adult that impulsively adopts a pet and then finds themselves needing to move, or travel, and will no longer be able to keep their pet (ages 18- 23).

The majority of people looking to donate to the maintenance of the non-for-profit site will most likely be avid animal supporters in the community that have disposable income to contribute to an important cause.

The majority of the visitors of the site will not be impulsive in their decision making and rather will be patient in selecting a pet most suitable to their profile.

How We Will Attract Customers

An example of the hedonic experience is the personalization of the available pets list which produces the most suitable adoptee results based on the user’s profile characteristics. This will allow patient and analytical buyers the chance to peruse a more relevant and targeted list of adoptable pets and their bios, and more quickly view relevant results throughout the metropolitan area rather than viewing a list of all available pets sorted by date, shelter or another metric.

The site may provide an “act now before someone else adopts” hedonistic experience to impulsive customers while the more patient customer will take more time in choosing a pet and can return to saved results at a later date when a final decision has been made.

Implementation of Value Chain

Attract Stage
The site will attract customers through a combination of social marketing, online advertising and word of mouth through our shelter customers. We will use targeted Facebook ads based on interest in pets to bring people to the website. The focus on social marketing will attract a wide and diverse age group that is accustomed to spending time online and most likely making purchases online.

Stories of successful person/pet matches will be highlighted on the homepage to encourage visitors to join and use our site.

Shelter-led word of mouth will help raise awareness of the site by attracting members of the community who are used to a more face-to-face interaction.

We will place banner ads on popular pet-oriented sites such as AKC and ASPCA, especially focusing on sites devoted to information about pets and focusing less on pet supply retailers. In order to keep the budget small, more priority will be given to grassroots campaigning and social marketing.

Interact Stage
Initially, users will be greeted with information about the site and with a pitch of why they should use our service. During the account creation process, users will develop a profile by specifying personality and lifestyle traits to match with available pets. Upon finalization of settings, the user’s profile will contain a customized list of available pets that match their personality. This list will be dynamically generated in order to include the latest available pets and account for changes the user makes to his or her preferences.

From the list of matching pets, users can view individual pet profiles to learn more information, contact the shelter and submit an adoption application. Users can directly link to the website of a shelter of their choice to read shelter news, look at a calendar of upcoming events and read success stories which will encourage donations to support the shelter’s ongoing operations.

Act stage:
The system will capture submitted adoption applications and email the applications to shelters. Additionally, the system will facilitate communication between users and shelters by capturing and forwarding the messages via email to users and shelter admins.

React stage:
The system will automatically generate and send confirmation emails for adoption applications and messages sent by the end user. Applications and inquiries will be emailed to the shelter and will contain contact information for the shelter to follow up with users.

In a later iteration, the system will also send emails when relevant matches enter the database. The frequency of email alerts will depend on settings within the user profile (i.e. how relevant the matches must be, whether to send immediately or to gather the information weekly).

Revenue Model

The organization will be for-profit and the following revenue models will be in place to support its operations and maintenance of website:

Use of the website and mobile app services will be free for both shelters and their customers. Our revenue model will involve selling advertising space to pet-related companies, especially those promoting holistic and healthy pet lifestyle products.

Users will be able to directly link to shelter websites to make donations. We will not be processing donations for any animal shelter or rescue.

Technical & Design Overview

The site will be built using PHP as a server side language, XHTML and HTML as front end with Javascript and CSS for design purposes. Access will be used to create the database.

The following modules may be in place:

Possible second-generation modules include:

Member Contributions

Mykle Brossette:

Brian Green:

Satyam Kaneria:

Jessica LoPresti: