Business Plan of Household Diet Management and e-Commerce

This business plan is about a system that integrates the process of diet from planning, execution, and result tracking. The author has noticed the wide penetration of smart phone in Taiwan, and the unique benefit of health care mobile device application software (“Apps”) in preventing diseases and managing individual health that traditional medical service fall short to offer. She also has witnessed the growing trend of ecommerce in Taiwan that the items being traded online have further expended to food and grocery. Her idea is to link the diet plan, grocery shopping, and body measurement tracking all together on the same platform to provide household a simple, efficient, and effective way to lead a health life. The system of this business plan doesn’t involve with any new technology, either is it the first diet related software on the market. But it is the first one that links the process with online food and grocery shopping, which is able to help consumers save a lot of time. Another competitive advantage is, unlike competitors offering single objective/method of diet, the nutrition knowledge on this system is designed to be open-sourced, which means it can be applied on diet of all purposes. Consumers are able to choose the diet method that is most effective on them. The business plan is meaningful to carry out. First of all, the usage of Apps is proved to have the positive effect on users’ health. It helps them to understand the linkage of their behavior and health level. It also increases users’ self-accountability on their own health. Second, this system is expected to boots behavior of cooking at home by mitigating the pain in shopping and providing incentive by it with diet. Cooking at home is foundation of healthy eating. The two together is able to enhance the health consciousness and health management implementation at both individual and household level. If wildly adapted, it will be able enhance overall health level of the nation. It will save medical expense, and burden on national health insurance. People of Taiwan will live in a high quality life with better health status. This business is also profitable to carry out, if executed properly. Unlike other items, food and grocery are things that customers have to purchase periodically. Thus, it brings in most stable and sustainable sales. The reason online food and grocery grows slower than other items is because it required substantial trust from customers, which is possible to achieve with sufficient quality control and promotion. Once it is built, such revenue is more resilient than other items which can stand economy downturn. The online shopping of this system is also designed to be an open platform which linked with multiple sellers. The revenue is transaction fee. By investing in this attractive and value added system to customers, investors will be able to enjoy the benefit from growing online food and grocery market. However, since this system doesn’t involve with new technology, it might be mimicked by competitors quickly. The key to success is to attract as many users as possible in a short period of time, leaving no room of survival for late comers. Therefore, this business is more suitable for blue-chip internet/software companies, like Yahoo, or eBay, or Amazon in US, books.com in Taiwan(博客來) …etc. With their existing experience in system development, customer service, and abundant capital, they are able to make this move fast and accurate. To them, developing this business is like opening another revenue stream with the least effort