Strategic Group Map For Eharmony

Strategic Group Map eHarmony is in a competitive market. Figure 1 is a strategic group map, which compares dating sites by the means of a number of users and user targets. This criterion helps identify a company's rivals and displays what a competitors focus should be in order to make rational business decisions. Although Figure 1 demonstrates eHarmony as a leader in the wholesome and marriage market, there are other dating sites performing superior to eHarmony. For instance, the number one dating site is AdultFriendFinder.com (32 million users), the second largest user holding dating site is Match.com (15 million users), and eHarmony holds third place with 20 million users (Kidd, 2008). The gap between users shows that eHarmony has room for
Within each of these competitors, we have even more specific websites such as Match.com, christianmingle.com etc. that are all part of different website categories, yet all have the ability to compete with eHarmony. Although many of eHarmony’s competitors have completely different customer segments and target markets, they do pose threats to eHarmony with their similar features. Moreover, eHarmony can learn from the different websites on how to make itself even more unique. Features are what differentiate firms from each other, and it is crucial to have higher quality features or completely unique ones to be the leader in the market. For instance, quality matches or the ability to have an algorithm in the dating market is a unique feature many firms do not have. eHarmony and Chemistry.com are two of the only firms that carry patented algorithms to find people quality matches. Other websites such as Yahoo Personals, or social media websites do not carry such an algorithm because the customer is the one who searches for a match independently. In Figure 2, we can see the quality of the features for every website through the strategic canvas. Similarly, we see that eHarmony and Chemistry have high-quality profiles because of their detailed questionnaire when signing up. This allows for people to be matched accurately
This feature is rarely found but it can be done on do-it-yourself websites or social media because the individual has the ability to search for someone that has the attributes they look for. eHarmony and Chemistry lack this because they try to find people who best match personality traits, and the customer cannot specify what they would like. For instance, eHarmony does not even allow people to choose which gender they prefer a match in. Price is a feature that truly affects how many people sign up to use certain websites, and with eHarmony’s high price, they create a disadvantage for themselves since there are so many cheaper options for consumers. The bargaining power consumers have is high, because they can switch so easily from eHarmony to another website from the same industry. The feature of looking for a serious relationship only exists for eHarmony and Chemistry who were created just for that reason. eHarmony was the creator of this new market segment with the blue ocean strategy, but Chemistry soon was created to compete with eHarmony. Other websites focus more on a casual relationship or a one-time affair. Finally, member base is another vital feature that majority of websites have a lot of. Yet, social media and free do it yourself websites all have a much higher member base because of the price. eHarmony and Chemistry have a