This week we’ve been looking at the theories behind Digital Business Models which in definition terms is a set of planned activities designed to result in a profit in a marketplace (Laudon and Traver 2007). Therefore when thinking about Business the key factor is CUSTOMER VALUE and Digital Businesses like every other business focus on this same value, the only difference is this value needs to be translated onto a different interface.

With this in mind the Digital Business Model, THE MERCHANT MODEL, particularly stood out to me. This model is a combination of retail store and online component.

I do freelance social media consulting for companies that are interested in learning how to improve and further accelerate their online presence and online consumers. The biggest question I get asked is ‘How can I target my Social Media consumers to come into my store?’….Yes this is an important question but I ask them have you also tried using Social Media as your store too?  WOAH MIND BLOWN I KNOW !!!!!

So the vintage store I consulted ‘A perfect Match’ located on Johnston street, Fitzroy needed an example and I gave the business ‘THE DROBE’….

The Drobe has a physical store, online store and also Instagram account. However predominantly the business makes majority of their sales via Instagram. This occurs through their high following and simple post uploads that is ‘trendy’ on social media. The post features a girl who’s headless through cropping techniques wearing the sale item in an interesting pose with a simple background and clean editing tools.  The caption reveals the name of clothing item and initial bidding price. From here a bidding war begins through a chain of comments with a time limit of how long one can be bidding for. The final bidder receives a comment to invite them to private DM the account to go into details of purchasing etc.

Meaning . Social Media today isn’t the collaborative, pretty picture . posting creative it initially established itself to be. It’s now a place businesses can thrive and connect to their customers at ‘in time’ rates and directly sell to them through the simplicity of an image.