iSteelAsia A Secure, Neutral Steel Trading e-Commerce...

I Steel Asia case iSteelAsia is a secure, neutral steel trading e-commerce platform created by Andrew Cho Fai in december 1999 for steel industry professionals. Indeed, iSteelAsia enables users to purchase and sell steel, network with a global community of steel traders and find informations and news concerning steel industry. 1) Describe briefly the market itself and the market conditions (positive / negative trends, opportunities / threats) under which iSteelAsia developed. Identify more specifically the threats that the company faces or may face in the near future. The market under which iSteelAsia developed is the market of the Steel in Asia. After, the crisis of 2001, the global steel market have known a development of†¦show more content†¦Moreover, there is an other danger that the players don t manage or don t want to deal with this new e-commerce kind of trading and finally prefer to trade with tradionnal companies, and that the customers stay cagey of this system of trade. Indeed, the players may not trust new technologies or may not want to change their habits, or don t have enough knowledge to feel confident to deal with this kind of companies. Eventually, the iSteelAsia have to worried about competitors, notably about US and Europe competitors (they are more advanced in e-commerce technology). So they have to all the time innovate and up-to-date their skills and knowledge to don t lost their market share. Also, there is an other risk because of the Asian boom technologic. Indeed, there will be a lot of news local start-up, so a lot of news competitors on the market. Besides, the news competitors should have better knowledge because they just graduated from graduate schools. 2) Describe what iSteelAsia offers to the market (use the value delivered to the customer  « benefits/costs  » framework) and more particularly the way through which iSteelAsia used e-commerce to offer more to the customer, compared to its previous,  « tradionnal  » operations. IsteelAsia proposes a neutral vertical portail, offering online trading and informations about the steel industry. Globally, it proposes a global view of the steel market, for instance about the prices and the economic trends. It