Harmony Case Study - Eharmony

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eHarmony also maintains a competitive advantage over sites like Match and its subsidiary Chemistry. Chemistry aimed to create a service very similar to eHarmony; however, unlike eHarmony Chemistry sold memberships to anyone who wished to sign-up, thus detracting from the legitimacy that made eHarmony’s product so unique. Another significant competitive advantage of eHarmony was the massive amount of time that other company’s would have to invest to create a relatively similar service. Developing a similar algorithm and gaining a significant customer base would take massive amounts of time and service. eHarmony’s competitive advantage rests with its difficult to replicate service as well as the high barriers of entry in the long-term relationship market.

Going forward, eHarmony must pursue strategies for short-term and long-term growth. In the long-term eHarmony should rely on its already established data to generate revenue. With an alredy established research and development team, eHarmony can begin building a network of branded-sites devoted to key life stages. This will offer support throughout the relationship process and increase traffic coming into eHarmony. By focusing on banner-ads on these sites, eHarmony could significantly increase revenues.

In the short-term eHarmony should focus on rapid growth in countries where its direct competitors do not already have a large consumer base. A particularly attractive way to create growth would be to try and expand into developing markets, such as India. In India, a large majority of the population speaks English. Also marriage in many developing country is just recently being seen as a social norm. Penetration into developing markets would offer significant growth opportunities for eHarmony.