Cconma.com in South Korea: An Innovative E-Commerce Platform

Summary

In August 2012, the chief executive officer of Cconma.com, an online shopping mall based in Chung-Ju, South Korea, is considering his company’s future. The company has grown substantially since it was founded in 2005 and is now preparing to further expand into Hong Kong, China or to a second location in the United States. The company’s vision, rooted in an ethic of corporate social responsibility, is to build a happy and healthy community, including employees, customers and sellers. By focusing on its customers’ basic necessities, products for a healthy life and the needs of its producers to minimize sales costs, the company has found its niche where no other online retailer has dared to venture. Its success demonstrates that it is possible to be good and profitable at the same time. Expanding to a new location will bring myriad challenges, some of which can be anticipated while others will need to be resolved on the fly. The management team needs to focus on defining the specifics of their go-to-market plan. When should they enter? With which local players should they collaborate? Will an increased marketing effort or local outreach be necessary?

Learning Objectives

The case can be used in courses for undergraduate or first year MBA students on the business model innovation of e-commerce, corporate social responsibility and e-commerce platform strategies. The learning objectives are:

• To explore how one company finds its niche market based on a vision of corporate social responsibility and redefines its business model on that basis.
• To explore how corporate social responsibility can be used as a strategy for an e-commerce start-up company.
• To assess the link between the corporate social performance of the company and its financial performance using the service-profit chain model.

Links

• Publisher website