The+6+environments

__Competitive environment__

Phenu.com is a restaurant seach engine that targets university students within the downtown core and Mississauga.

UTMDeals is Phenu`s recent competitor, competing for UT Mississauga`s students population.UTMDeals is a Groupon like concept that emails a "deal of the day" to its subscribers.UTMDeals does not specialize in restaurant or food deals but might pose challenges for Phenu due to their aggressive **marketing** on campus.Supposing a minimum number of students sign up for a service/product listed with UTMDeals, students can then receive up to 70% discount. Now, there are a few problems with this concept for food/restaurant search:people need immediacy in choosing a place to eat; people do not like a service with "ifs, thens"; people want to be able to choose from variety offered.However, UTMDeals might be powerful when planning en mass events ahead of time. Also, the web site and the concept at this point are far less developed than Phenu`s; the company is on the outreach for clients to subscribe for its service.

Another major competitor and the leader in restaurant searching is Urbanspoon.com. It covers the same geography (but has a much wider scope, it is more like a restaurant yellow page) and covers the same demographics (also targets other segments as well).Urbanspoon is one of the most popular restaurant recommendation with Canadian, Australian, UK and American restaurants. It's pretty powerful as noted: "Every month more than 12 million consumers decide where to eat on Urbanspoon.com." (urbanspoon.com)

In our competitive **market research** steps, we compared urbanspoon.com to phenu.com.The conclusions are as follow: Not only does Urbanspoon.com appear first in Google results, it also features site links under the web site, of which one Toronto. The site links are an important part in SEoptimizing a web site and this is done automatically by Google.Urbaspoon segmentation is different than Phenu`s, they basically have categories under "fine dining"; "casual dining"; "cheap eat" etc. Prices are not explicit on Urbanspoon, unless someone links out to restaurant`s own web sites.Second, the site has links to Urbanspoon apps available for different platforms.Both web sites feature user created content.Also, both web sites allow people to vote/like/review a restaurant/meal/photo.

__Technological__

The technological environment is very dynamic. The market for restaurant search is a popular niche both for mobile and desktop searching. However, the mobile side has really taken off considering the **trend** of mobile apps. One popular app for Android device is Open Table (there are apps for different platforms/OSs). This is a free app for 15,000+ restaurants in the US, Canada, Mexico and UKRestaurant Reservations (Android Market.com). For the Apple`s iPhone, the top 5 apps are Restaurant Finder(free); Urban Spoon (free), Yelp(free), Find a restaurant (.99 cents), Where to eat ($2.99).(izinearticles.com) This is a screen shot of Google Trends chart presenting the volume of searching for "restaurant apps" on a time line:



However, this trend translates into a more competitive environment as well.

__Political/Legal__

The political/legal environment has a fairly limited influence on Phenu`s operations.Phenu offers a service which means its intangibility and no physical assets involved in the transactions make things simpler. However, they need to feature a professional legal statement limiting their liability for any conflict or under-delivering by restaurants presented on their web site. Phenu only provides its service within Canada, thus no trade embargoes or other internationally inflicted crisis situation could affect its operations.

__Economic__

Phenu earns income from the B2B business arena, (but also must be very strong in a B2C sense as their target B2B market is directly dependent on what Phenu can do with the B2C). They sell their service by listing restaurants on their engine for a fee (**penetration pricing**, $19.99/moth) and market to increase their potential customers outreach, i.e.students. They do not perform globally at the moment so they are not affected by exchange and other economic uncertainties abroad. However, their future goal is to expand into the US market so under these circumstances the economic environment might become a factor of importance.

__Geographic__

Targeting campuses in different cities is a good approach, however Phenu needs to expand its service to more universities/colleges.There is a vast market untapped yet, among the more significant ones being the cities Waterloo, Ottawa, London and out of province.

__Social/Cultural__

The diversity of student population in Toronto and Mississauga as part of the social/cultural environment is an advantage to Phenu. The student population in these two cities is open to trying new food, in and outside of their own culture. Possible issues with the web site that this environment poses are language barriers, but assuming the target population attends Canadian university this should be of minimal importance. Advantages that pertain to the social/cultural environment is word of mouth. This population likes sharing and interacting. Food is also a very social activity in itself too.

Works cited: "Open Table".//androi//dmarket.com.Androidmarket.com.Web.n.d.26 March.2011 "5 best iPhone apps for chooing a restaurant".izinearticles.com.Izinearticles.com. Web.n.d. 26 March 2011.