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ENTREPRENEURSHIP
BUS- 305
Sec-05

Case Study on- Yelp
Submission Date-24-03-2013

Submitted To- Submitted by-
Bilkis Sabiha Md. Shariful Islam
Senior Lecturer & Instructor ID-103011167
Ulab School of Business Department of B.B.A
University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh University of Liberal Arts
Bangladesh







University Of Liberal Arts Bangladesh



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Yelp!: How a willingness to let its Business plan quickly evolve helped a start-up get its
offering right

Discussion Question:
QUESTION #1: Go to yelps Website and look up one of your favorite restatements. What you
think? Do you think the company has an attractive enough offering that it will continue to
increase its number of user? Will you use the service again why or Why not?
Answer:
Yelp has local search feature where visitor or user can obtain information about certain
locations, by inputting address, city or country, and postal code or zip code you look for.

Yelps Website and look up one of my favorite restatements
Also automatically Yelp is able to detect visitor location according to IP address
Sweet & Sara
Categories: Dessert, Vegan Outdoor:
43-31 33
rd
ST Seating: No
4
th
FI Good for: Dessert
Queens, NY 11101 Alcohol: No
Neighborhood: Long Island City Wheelchair Accessible: No

Good for Group : No Price Range: $
Accepts Credit Card: No Good for Kids: Yes
Attire: Casual Takes Reservation: No
Delivery: No
Take Out: Yes
Waiter Service : Yes


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Yelp places search result in a map by using Google map so it is easy for finding
restaurant.
o Unfortunately location and business using that Yelp have, now only for place in
US, Canada, and some countries in Europe
o Use for Yelp seems like some of cussed on business field so that it is not used for
general use yet like face book, MySpace, Twitter
o But it is not bad at all and not much more attractive also. Google map can also
help us to find anything. But it has a plus point that it has a customer review and
rating system which is good, because it will help you to select the best restaurant
for you. So YELP is good.
o So If YELP carry on their service and improving it they may increase their
customer.
o Finally I want to say that, YELP is good to their service, so I will use the service
again.


QUESTION #2: What are the most important assumption that yelps initial business plan is
based on? How about it revised business plan? Compare and contrast the two.
Answer:



Assumption of initial plan: Though no one had created a web site to help the people so YELP
did this and they thought that it will works and help the people to find out their favorite
restaurant , doctor, barber or any service provide in a specific place.
All the request and recommendation are provided by mail. The massage included a link that
allowed the friend to easily provide a recommendation.
No one had created a web site to help people
that are looking for only services geographic
area
Request and recommendation provide by mail
Assumption of
initial plan
New plan dropped the mail and focused on
providing a productively write review of local
business
The website itself was also redesigned
Assumption of
revised business
plan
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Assumption of revised business plan: New business plan followed a new system. The new plan
dropped the mail and focused on providing a productively write of local business. The web site
itself was also redesigned. Since most of the user are female, so YELP changing the color
scheme from a masculine gray and blur to softer more feminine color. They also tweaked their
name.


QUESTION #3: What changes to yelp did the companys founders make to effectively
implement their revised business plan? Were the change obvious or did it take careful
observation on the founders part to know what changes to make?
Answer:
Based on people opinion and comparing with other site like Craigslist and City search they
decided to change Yelp



QUESTION #4: What do you think would have happened to yield after it revised its business
plan if it had decided to go nationwide all at once?
Answer:
Yelp strategy for entering new cities
First
The founderds decided not to pay for reviewers and let
people share their experience
Second
Following the craigslist model and build Yelp city by city
Third
Add credibility to their site with the idea of requestiong
reviewrs to profiles
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Yelp can hired Scout who were paid to seed the site with content
Problems that YELP will be face:
Language barriers- Yelp has to manage the language barriers for the others country.
Lack of acquainted with Yelp in different city yelp would have manage the lack of
acquainted with their different city.
To involve expenses- Yelp has to think about the cost of their expedition that they will
get the profit or not after expand their business.
Legal barriers- Gets Sued because of Posting Negative Yelp Review in London

APPELICATION QUESTION
Answer 1:
A mission statement for yelp:
To give people significant opportunity to have:
The most integral evaluations on required local business-
Increasing touch point of users-
Enlarging the covering area to a worldwide operating web site-

Answer 2:
1.
Hired Scouts who were paid to seed the site with content
Write previews and sprade the world
2.
Community managers were also hired to build a community of loyal
user
3.
Yelp will add a new city to Yelp list when there are enough requests
from users to add their particulars city
4.
Call businesses for adverising
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Think of a time when I:
Committed myself to achieve something substantial:

Thinking of time when my:
My first few attempt to achieve is failed:

1) A revised business plan

Industry analysis
Market analysis
Marketing plan

2) Implementing new decisions
I eventually found a way to be successful. what made me persevere despite my early
failures-
1) Commitment on a business.
2) Making profit of exploited opportunity and its attractiveness.
3) The size and growth rate of target market.

Compare my experience to experience of YELP owner:
Summay
business
plan
Discovering and exploiting the opportunity
Test the waters
Full
business
plan
Funding and financing
Blue print for companys operations
Operatio
nal
business
plan
Providing guidance to employees and operational managers
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Some recommendation for YELP

They need to make it easier (and cheaper) for businesses with multiple locations to claim
and access their locations.
Yelp also needs to provide better analytic information to business users,( summary of
stats across all of my locations or an easy way to look at all reviews for all locations
sorted by date.)
Yelp also needs to play better with Google and the two of them need to figure out how
Yelp reviews can appear in the Google Local Business Pages
Finally, Yelp needs to make it easier for a team of people to manage claimed locations
on Yelp.




yelp Group 2
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