Harrison Kirby: Business Analysis

As an Intern for a small business owner, Harrison Kirby, research needs to be conducted on solving a problem he has faced while improving his business. Kirby does not have the amount of inventory or the amount of data necessary to create intelligent systems that his competing online golf stores do. This is creating a hard time for Kirby, because every product he carries has plenty of resources to help his customers make a decision, but those resources are available on his competitor’s websites. Amazon for example, does a fantastic job of using their data to provide their customers with “intelligent” suggestions, give them percentages on items bought and looked at, and even suggest relative products and combinations of items to buy. Although

The site provides numerous customer reviews seen on one of their products called PING G30 Driver. This product has 77 reviews and is rated 4.8 stars (Golf Galaxy, 2016), unlike Golf Discounts that has the same product. This website provides their customers with a lot of information on their products and reviews for their customers to make a decision on. Golf Galaxy does not have any related product information. They only present similar items from the same category selected on the website. They also do not show related products that people purchase after looking at a specific item or what people purchase instead of the current item. This website may provide a lot of information on products and how customers feel about them, but this site does not offer suggestions on combinations of items that customers typically

The site provides customers with a section at the bottom of the page called “Other Great Gear to go with your…” (RockBottomGolf.com, n.d.), which is combination of different items that customers typically purchase with that searched item. Rock Bottom Golf’s website shows the manufacturer images and description of products. They also provide users with a price comparison to the manufacturer. On every product they have this information present, such as on a pair of shorts the manufacturer’s price is $55 and Rock Bottom Price is $19.99 (RockBottomGolf.com, n.d.). This is a cool feature and lets the customers know the percentage off the price and what they are saving by buying the product on their website. The site also offers users with related products. Rock Bottom Golf has a “You May Also Like” (RockBottomGolf.com, n.d.) section too, containing items that may be similar to the search or what customers have bought. Users on this site are able to make decisions on purchases with the help of customer reviews. The majority of their products do have more than one review, which means they could potentially be using a third