The Eharmony Business Model

eHarmony’s strategy is based on targeting individuals who want to get married. It offers a detailed relationship questionnaire, a patented matching system and a guided communication system. The rest of the industry does not have such an extensive questionnaire leading to matching like-minded people with an intention of a serious relationship. The most important part of eHarmony’s business model is based on offering a very integrated system that includes a detailed Personality Profile, the results of which were entered into the system that had a matching algorithm; resulting in either Guided Communication or closing the match. The most important differentiator of eHarmony from the other personals web-sites was that the completion of the questionnaire
It was perceived that only the desperate would use these online personals web-sites; in addition to the common use of the internet for quick hookups and short relationships. Although this has changed due to the change in attitudes towards online dating as more people and more people started to know someone who had met their spouse online; there are still difficulties associated with verifying the truth of customer’s claims about their relationship status and physical and personality
in psychology and who was a practicing psychologist. These were the most important differences between eHarmony and its competitors and the source of its core competences and competitive advantages. After completing the extensive questionnaire, either one of the potential matches might be declined used of the web-sites services. If the potential couple decided to pursue their communication further they could continue to answer non-superficial questions which would inform the prospective partners’ about each other’s values and characteristics. After this and at any point they could either choose to communicate openly or “close” the match and cease further communication. Another distinctive service that eHarmony provided was the Fast Track option leading to open communication. Couples could mutually agree to use this method instead of the more lengthy and complicated Guided Communication method. 3- The sources of eHarmony’s competitive advantage may be easily transferred to the Turkish context since marriage is still a very important institution in Turkey. In addition, verification of personal information about any person is relatively easy in Turkey due to the fact that most information about a person’s personal attributes such as