Questions : INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

➢ Regarding the domain sharks issue, must Har Adir by all means keep Etrip for his different websites, or can he gives different names in different countries?

I think it can be a bad idea to change the webiste names in different countries. For many reasons :

- he'll have to change at least one element of design in each website
- wording will have to be changed as well, with all errors that can happen
- he won't be able to build a notorious european brand and will scatter his efforts to get people's attention. It's very important when you're new in a market.

Vincent_Alliaga wrote:I think it can be a bad idea to change the webiste names in different countries. For many reasons :

- he'll have to change at least one element of design in each website
- wording will have to be changed as well, with all errors that can happen
- he won't be able to build a notorious european brand and will scatter his efforts to get people's attention. It's very important when you're new in a market.

I think he has to keep Etrip name at all cost because it is part of brand building. With a strong brand image, customers will come back and he may attract potential ones.

Vincent_Alliaga wrote:I think it can be a bad idea to change the webiste names in different countries. For many reasons :

- he'll have to change at least one element of design in each website
- wording will have to be changed as well, with all errors that can happen
- he won't be able to build a notorious european brand and will scatter his efforts to get people's attention. It's very important when you're new in a market.

I totally agree with you Vincent, I think it will be confusing for the customers to change the website name

Especially with very few financial resources, Etrip can't afford to build several brands.

chloé_laluc wrote:

Vincent_Alliaga wrote:I think it can be a bad idea to change the webiste names in different countries. For many reasons :

- he'll have to change at least one element of design in each website
- wording will have to be changed as well, with all errors that can happen
- he won't be able to build a notorious european brand and will scatter his efforts to get people's attention. It's very important when you're new in a market.

I totally agree with you Vincent, I think it will be confusing for the customers to change the website name

Hoho you own me a beer by the way.

I was thinking back to this question, and I still wondering why etrip hasn't went directly for an international domain name (finishing with .com). I see here a major strategy mistake.

Moreover his marketing plan won't be efficient if the name of his brand is different across different countries. For instance, if he wants social networking to be one of the main tools to spread his project, having a different name in each country will just lead to a total failure. And it's the same with his buzz marketing idea... if there are different names for his concept, people won't be able to promote it because they won't know that it also exists in other countries. Eventually he will have to adapt his campaigns in each country, that means more costly and he has got a very limited budget.

"Eventually he will have to adapt his campaigns in each country, that means more costly and he has got a very limited budget"

I agree with the post above, is it absolutely necessary to have one brand name that can be promoted in all countries. However, Etrip is not up and running yet, so it is not too late to change, better now in the early stage than never. I do not see any other solution considering the budget constraints. If they want to expand, they either have to spend a lot of money or change the name in the future.

What is more clever? Change the name now and risk loosing exsiting customers or change later at high costs?

I also agree to Betul and Alexandra that ETRIP should follow the idea of corporate identity. But there are several ways so deal with the domain problem and stick to the name ETRIP.

I think most of the people don't type www.etrip.com in their browser, but use the Google of LiveSearch field in their browsers to visit the website. So it won't be a problem to name the website www.etrip-online.com/.de/.fr or www.IuseETRIP.com/.de/.fr or something like that.

@Alexandra:
Sorry, that was not a concrete answer to your question. Rather a third way to get out of that situation.

I'm agree with you guys!
Using different names or websites is not only more expensive, but it scatters efforts for bulding an international brand, too.

luis_guerrero wrote:I'm agree with you guys!
Using different names or websites is not only more expensive, but it scatters efforts for bulding an international brand, too.

I'm curious to see what other people will have to say, but it seems everyone has the same answer

I agree with you Janick, etrip must be part on the url in every country. As you said, the customer will google "cheap flights tickets" or at the very best "etrip"... And as long as he will see etrip in the name of the website, it'll be okay.

"Har Adir realized he would most likely have to choose between two future
paths: renaming Etrip or using different brand names in different countries." (from the case page 11).

Assuming these are the only choices he has, I would rename Etrip to avoid paying the domain sharks. Etrip is a catchy name but if he thought hard enough he may think of something even better!

By looking at the website it looks like he decided to stick with Etrip after all. He was not able to get www.etrip.com or the UK or French versions though. He only has www.etrip.nl. This is going to either cost alot to get the domains when they expand, or be really confusing as mentioned by everyone in this forum

To me, it is indeed a dilemma for Etrip.

I agree with all the posts saying that it should keep its name worldwide (if it goes worldwide). Some companies indeed may be able to use different names, but it is only possible if they offer a real product i think, because the logo and the fame of the brand will be known by evrybody.
Yet, when a company is offering services, and by internet in addition, customers have to access its services always by the same way -->by googling it or knowing the website.
If the firm decides to launch itself with different brands, it will make it harder for a customer used to the name Etrip.

Yet, using different names could allow Had Adir services to be referenced several times in Google (one at least for each different name), and there might be also more chance for a customer to choose it rather than an other one...

Considering Har Adir's low marketing budget and the fact he's still searching for investors (so I understood from the case), I don't believe he should put the large capital investment needed to acquire the "Etrip" domain names. I think it would be better to use the capital they can get in order to develop and improve the product and services offered.

However, since it is important to have a consistent brand name, particularly when relying on buzz marketing and social networking for marketing and reaching more users, I believe, like Brodie, that they should choose a more 'original' name, especially at the point where the product is still in an infant stage and before the costs of changing the name will be too high.

In any case, Etrip, although somewhat catchy, could be confused with many similar sounding brands, like Ebbokers or Etravel. I would choose something more distinct, like Travelocity. I'll let you know if I manage to come up with something good before 12PM tomorrow .

Vincent_Alliaga wrote:I think it can be a bad idea to change the webiste names in different countries. For many reasons :

- he'll have to change at least one element of design in each website
- wording will have to be changed as well, with all errors that can happen
- he won't be able to build a notorious european brand and will scatter his efforts to get people's attention. It's very important when you're new in a market.

I agree with Vincent for the third reason. A brand name is very important for a company to expand its market and gain its market share. But the premise is that Etrip have been a well-known brand. I think in Taiwan it is not famous at all and even never been heard of. In this case, Etrip may come up with some other domain names that are impressive and have no IP problem to enter the flight ticket market in other countries.

I have to say I agree with what everyone says about having a different name in different countries. It would be too much of a hassle and will not create a name brand for etrip. For example, if a person in Europe and Australia both used etrip but it was etrip in Europe and lets say is was atrip (for the lack of finding a better name) in Australia, then people would think the company was different. This would take away from the expansion of the company in my opinion.
Also, this change of name in different country would be costly for the company which would be a waste of the capital. I think if the company was a much more larger, successful and known then changing the name in different countries would than be a strategy for Etrip to be more global and cultural.

I agree with you to say that Etrip should keep the same name for every countries.

From the technical point of view, it should create one website by country which would increase the cost and would be not very efficient.

From the marketing point of view, it is better to communicate on one big brand, because for this kind of offer customers trust the big brand which are said to be more serious.

Naomi has made a very good point. We all know that a universal brand name is important, but Etrip has limited financial resources now and has to use its money selectivelyl and wisely. It will be a trade-off between spending the money here or there, but not to have everything.

I'm agree about what Professor Huang and Naomi say about the limited financial resourses, but i thing it's easy to manage that trade-off without giving up the objective of building an european brand, furthermore using many domains and names would contribute to waste the limited financial resourses that the company has.
Etrip could invest its whole resourses just in one country, but without change the domain or name for the rest of Europe.

I agree with other people that they should have one name for all the countries since otherwise their marketing plan, through online social networks, would not work. Most online social networks are quite universal and in Europe people tend to use not only the local sites for searching the cheapest flights but also other countries' search engine sites to get the best deals. For this reason, it would be extremely hard to build a brand image in different countries with different names and it would require a lot more investment than they are inteding to do.

luis_guerrero wrote:I'm agree about what Professor Huang and Naomi say about the limited financial resourses, but i thing it's easy to manage that trade-off without giving up the objective of building an european brand, furthermore using many domains and names would contribute to waste the limited financial resourses that the company has.
Etrip could invest its whole resourses just in one country, but without change the domain or name for the rest of Europe.

Actually, getting a domain name in .com is the same price that getting a .nl domain name. But I think the domain etrip.com must be already taken by some domain name ninjas and will be sold to the most offering.

Another proof that choosing a name must be a wise and pondered choice. I'm not sure the website owner has checked before creating the domain. And the usual procedure is buying all the others close domain names, it's not that expensive if you don't use them.

I agree with everyone about having the same name in different countries except for one point.

In some countries, you could have other search engine with a very close name. For example in mainland China you have this famous travel website whose name is ctrip.com. Etrip and Ctrip are very close and can be confusing for users, and etrip could have problems with this competitor.

What do you think could be a good strategy in that case ?

I think in e-trip case, domain name in .com maybe helpful to attract more english users to visit. However, I believe these native or non-native english users who are willing to place order to e-trip instead of buying from local tickets providers must be looking for really cheap tickets otherwise why they spend so much time on a far far away company that can't offer direct contact or further services, such as rescheduling, to that trip. If so, then e-trip must make sure that she has enough cheap tickets to be ordered from or people will just leave and turn to bigger company that can offer more tickets and that they are most familiar with.

I will say traveling tickets seem to be a good international business, but travel business itself should be very locallized to it's own custormer's taste, that is local service! If e-trip is only aiming for the cheapest ticket providing company in the world, the profit should be pretty ugly in the end of the day. We all know west european love to travel! It's like their second life. They spend a lot when traveling and yet e-trip only want to make a bird-bite of money from it. I think that's why e-trip has a problem with raising more venture fund mentioned on it's own blog.

I think the best strategy for e-trip now is to find more alliances like nokia or siemens who already have a very powerful cell phone online network, then e-trip can have the access to those heavy smart phone users, mainly business man/woman I assume, and sell them cheaper first class or business class tickets to make more profit. Once you chose to go social networking, everyone counts! The bigger customer pool you have, the more powerful you are. Espceially if you have a quantifiable amount of "high quality customers" namely those who can and are willing to pay higher price for your products.

But there comes another problem, why nokia and siemens should work with e-trip instead of working with other bigger company? Actually, nokia and siemens can be a huge ticket broker themselves, if they want. But I will say the profit is too small for these two giants so far, or maybe they haven't realized they can kill almost half of the current travel agenies in Europe.

Hi Doris, I agree with you. I think the only value of Etrip is multiple media devices and its affliations. The telecom company could save time and energy to develop themselves.