Shelby Sitzman
Colorado Technical University
01/14/2012
What is a business model? A business model is something that businesses use in order to generate a business base, a ground for creating a profit. There are simple models such as a company creating a product and selling it to consumers at a higher rate than the cost to make the product in order to create some profit and then there are some more in depth business models such as broadcasting. Broadcasting takes place over radio waves that are freely available to any person with radio access. There are many different types of business models out there, and some businesses even use more than one. I am going to briefly discuss several of them to give you a better understanding. The first category of business models I am going to discuss is a brokerage model. A brokerage model is one that has brokers and market makers that bring together buyers and sellers to expedite transactions. Brokers play a significant role in Business to business, business to consumer, and consumer to consumer transactions however they usually charge a fee or gain a commission based on the transactions. Some examples include Orbitz, Priceline, E-bay, and Pay Pal; all of these companies mentioned gain a profit by helping others companies sell products and collect money. Orbitz, Priceline, and E-Bay all have options for using Pay Pal to transfer funds. The second type of business model is the advertising model. The advertising model builds on the broadcasting model, this model mostly deals with web advertising such as banner ads a good example is Pandora internet radio. The free app always has banner ads for different companies. More examples for banner ads are on Facebook and twitter; places with a large amount of traffic are ideal for the web advertising model. More examples include google, monster.com, and craigslist. Another type of business model is the merchant model. The merchant model is for wholesalers and retailers for goods and services. Some examples of these are Amazon.com and Itunes for apple products. Next is the affiliate model, the affiliate model is a model in which tried to seek purchase from any website that has a high volume of traffic. Affiliate model makes it possible to make a purchase of a good or service advertised from anywhere that you may be surfing the web. Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com are good examples of this business model. Last but not least is the subscription model. This is a business model that gets people to subscribe for an amount of time in order to receive a product. One example of this is magazines such as cosmopolitan and another popular business using the subscription model is Netflix. These are not the only models out there but they are popular in this generation. (Rappa) The two companies that I am selecting is first Barnes and Noble, and second Dell Computers. Barnes and Noble used two types of business models, the first being the Merchant model. Barnes and Noble is a click and mortar company meaning they have a storefront and a web-based store. Many people such as me love to just go into a Barnes & Noble bookstore and explore all of the different kinds of books offered and sip on a coffee from the café (Starbucks usually) while others know exactly what book they want so they log on through their Nook and purchase the E-Book through the web-store; some even purchase books and have them shipped to their home or office. The second business model Barnes & Noble uses is the affiliate model. B&N make it possible for buyers to buy books online through banner ads and the like from anywhere on the web that they may be surfing. The two business models that Dell uses is the Merchant model, because