Competitive Advantages

Introduction

In the current context of globalization and competition, e-business strategy became a priority for executives and managers in the global development strategy of their company.

It’s now a good way to have a good external and also an internal communication always to attract new customers, and increase profits. An e-business strategy has to be drawing up between all protagonists of the company: employees, environment, clients, suppliers.

Introduce the e-business notion into the strategy became necessary to distance itself from competitors and to adapt the offer any time, at the hour of the web 2.0 where time and distance became practically nonexistent.

I chose to take an interest in a small sized company of the music/culture industry. The business model of this industry is changing and the new strategy in this sector enrols totally in the new logic of e-business.

1) Stage one : Business and E-business strategy of Ekler’o’shock

Ekler’o’shock is an independent record label of music. It takes part of the multiple “indie” labels which have been created these last ten years. Founded in 2002, this label arrived in a difficult economic context in musical industry, with the crisis of the disc, the peer to peer, when the business model of music had to change and in the explosion of Internet.

The principal activity of this small sized company is to sign artists, negotiate to sell to retailers and promote their music through diverse means. There are two label managers: one is in charge of promotion, production and artistic, the second is in charge of the events and logistic. There is also a web designer, a graphic designer and interns.

Even if it’s a French record label, lots of artists are international.

- The economic context :

Sales of online music in France continued to increase with a two-figure growth in the first semester. In the detail, sales on Internet earned 32,3 % in the biannual balance sheet of industry. If numerical sales blow up, those, on the other hand, on traditional support continue falling. A fall of 17,7 % in 243 million euros, in comparison with 2007 over the same period. A fall superior in France when we see that the worldwide deterioration is estimated in 12 %. The latest recording industry statistics show digital music sales are rapidly increasing as a percentage of total industry sales, but not by enough to offset a dramatic fall in compact disc sales.

On the other hand with the emergence of blogs and Internet, musical offer is bigger, there is more and more new artists who try to create “buzz” to be famous.

- The strategy of the company :

As we saw before,