Differentiation

views updated May 18 2018

DIFFERENTIATION

In terms of e-commerce, differentiation is, simply, how one company sets its e-commerce products and services apart from those offered by competitors. In some cases, the differentiation might be in name recognition. In a world filled with Internet startups, the familiarity of a name like Hewlett-Packard or Microsoft could be an important distinction to some customers looking to purchase e-commerce technology and services. Pricing, product functionality, and the comprehensiveness of services also are common areas where Internet-based businesses look to differentiate from competitors.

BizRate.com, one of the Internet's busiest retail centers, successfully differentiated itself from other online business ranking sites via the method it uses to gather the information that makes up its ratings. Unlike rivals such as Gomez.com, BizRate uses data from actual shoppers to create ratings, rather than hiring a staff for that purpose. The site was created in June of 1996 by 27-year-old Farhad Mohit, who wanted to help online shoppers find trustworthy merchants in the rapidly expanding Internet marketplace. Mohit envisioned a site that would allow consumers to peruse objective information about an online store before they actually purchased merchandise from it.

At the BizRate site, potential shoppers can see how previous shoppers rated their experience with an online merchant. The rating criteria cover everything from customer support, live phone support, order tracking, and on-time delivery to site performance, ordering procedure, product information, pricing, and privacy policy. BizRate also acts as a shopping hub. Rather than going to individual sites, shoppers can use BizRate to search for a product they want, either by searching the entire site or by searching one of nineteen product categories including apparel, books and magazines, computer hardware, computer software, DVD and videos, electronics, flowers and garden, office supplies, and pet and hobbies. Shoppers who identify a product they wish to purchase may link directly to the vendor selling the product. Once the transaction is complete, shoppers are presented with a BizRate ranking screen, which solicits information that is immediately dumped into BizRate's rankings database. If Bizrate's traffic rates are any indication—roughly 7 million different visitors were frequenting the site each month by 2001—Mohit has successfully differentiated his business from competitors.

The Dow Jones Internet Index (DJII) is an example of an e-commerce venture that used name recognition to differentiate itself from a host of rivals. Since its early 1999 launch by Dow Jones and Co., DJII has gauged the stock performance of Internet companies based in the United States. Dow Jones established the DJII in response to the intense Internet stock trading that started to occur in the mid-1990s. Highly successful initial public offerings (IPOs) by firms like Netscape and Yahoo! sparked the trading frenzy, and in 1999 an unprecedented 240 Internet-based firms conducted their IPOs. According to Dow Jones Indexes Managing Director Michael A. Petronella in Information Today, "Internet stocks have rapidly become among the most volatile, popular sectors of the equities market. This has led to the need for an Internet benchmark that can be the standard Internet stock measurement tool for all investors." Many firms agreed with Dow Jones, prompting the launch of several competing indexes, such as the Business 2.0 Internet, USA Today Internet 100, Internet.com 's Isdex, and the Inter@ctive Week @Net Internet index.

Along with its recognized and respected name, Dow Jones believed that a set of tangible inclusion standards would help to differentiate DJII from rivals. Therefore, the companies listed on DJII must secure at least half of their annual revenues from the Internet. Also, the firms must be valued at $100 million for a period of three months, must have operated as a public company for at least three months, and their stock prices must average a minimum of $10 per share.

Sapient Corp. offers a third example of differentiation. The firm offers Internet integration services to governmental entities and to firms like iwon.com, Janus, Nabisco, Staples, United Airlines, and Wal-Mart. Sapient was founded in 1991 by Jerry Greenberg and Stuart Moore, who decided to create a client-server integration services firm like no other. Like many other client-server integration consultants, Sapient helped clients determine how networking technology could streamline operations. However, the firm went several steps further than most rivals by also building, implementing, and supporting whatever technology they decided to use. Another point of differentiation came with the contracts Sapient offered clients—at the time, they were the only technology consultancy willing to commit to prices and deadlines before a project began. Also, employee pay was tied to customer satisfaction.

The firm's differentiation strategy paid off throughout the 1990s as sales and earnings grew consistently. An IPO in April of 1996 raised $33 million and allowed Sapient to make acquisitions that shifted its focus to e-business integration services. Eventually, the firm offered a comprehensive suite of e-commerce services that included the planning and creation of online stores. With sales exceeding $500 million in 2000, Sapient became the first pure-play Internet integration services firm added to Standard & Poor's 500 stock index, a fact which earned it further distinction from its rivals.

differentiation

views updated May 14 2018

differentiation The changes from simple to more complex forms undergone by developing tissues and organs so that they become specialized for particular functions. Differentiation occurs during embryonic development, regeneration, and (in plants) meristematic activity (see meristem). The mechanisms involved in the differentiation of cells and organization of tissues in animals has been most intensively studied in experimental organisms, notably the fruit fly Drosophila. In this insect the general body plan is established in the early embryo by proteins called morphogens, which are encoded by maternal genes of follicle cells and diffuse into the developing embryo. The various morphogens set up a pattern of concentrations that activates genes in different zones of the embryo to different extents, creating the basic pattern of body segments. A class of genes within the embryo itself, the segment genes, further refine this pattern. Within each segment the differentiation of appendages, such as limbs, is controlled by homeotic genes.

A Dictionary of Biology

differentiation

views updated May 18 2018

differentiation (dif-er-en-shi-ay-shŏn) n.
1. (in embryology) the process in embryonic development during which unspecialized cells or tissues become specialized for particular functions.

2. (in oncology) the degree of similarity of tumour cells to the structure of the organ from which the tumour arose. Tumours are classified as well, moderately, or poorly differentiated. See also grade.

A Dictionary of Nursing