Eharmony Case Summary

Shi­Mei Everette, Matthew Mosch, Jason Reed & Devard Wharton

eHarmony Case Analysis
Brief Introduction & Key Issues eHarmony in essence is an online personals service whose main clients are marriage­minded individuals. The online client profile is an extensive relationship questionnaire along with a matching system and a guided communication system. It’s biggest competitor at the time of the article was Match. This online personals service was designed simply for people to seek out like­minded people with the same interest. It’s goal was not necessarily for you to find your mate. You were able to look for free with the hopes of you finding someone interesting and become a paying customer. It had some of the same features of E­Harmony to remain
Match decided to create a similar company called Chemistry and price it 10% lower.
This was one issue for eHarmony. The next would be the popularity of new online social networks and free personal sites. This dilemma posed the question of “would this be the end of eHarmony. The CEO of eHarmony had to make a decision on how to continue to grow financially and keep the goals and standards in the forefront.
External Analysis (Five Forces)
Entry – The barrier to entry for other companies to enter this type of market is low. The companies would have to come in offering the same product eHarmony and Match is offering at a very competitive price. eHarmony has a strong client base and a new company would have to

Shi­Mei Everette, Matthew Mosch, Jason Reed & Devard Wharton

prove that it is offering the same type of service on the same scale. They must also meet government regulations for online businesses of this nature.
Rivalry – eHarmony’s main competition is Match and Yahoo! Personals. A new company again would have to offer at the least a few of the same products these companies are offering and at a considerably lower rate or for free. With the number of free social media sites that have
An expansion of its TV and

Shi­Mei Everette, Matthew Mosch, Jason Reed & Devard Wharton

radio advertising allowed eHarmony to achieve 3 million registrations with 40% being active users, despite charging a premium for its services.
Strategic Recommendation and Justification
The four options for recommendations on how to proceed were all well thought out. They all would benefit the company but at what cost. As seen in the case study, eHarmony’s management team stayed within their means as far as cost was concerned. All of the options would entail some type of marketing. We are suggesting that eHarmony pursue the second option of broadening the customer base to include casual daters. This will allow them to compete in another area of dating and consider referring the customers who were previously rejected during the profile questionnaire. There are individuals who are looking for relationships but not necessarily looking to get married. This added feature would allow them to tap into this market and increase its revenue. eHarmony’s patented matching algorithm would provide a strong point of differentiation in this area. The number of singles using paid online