Custom Writing Services Market Overview

In this article the author is going to carry out custom writing services market summary providing comprehensive survey of the market divided into the following categories: market identification, market size, market segmentation, market growth speed, market customers, principles of operation, business characteristics, regulations, and different categories. The research is structured in such a way as to group related issues in a logical order.

Market identification

Custom writing services market is a sector of the e-commerce industry. Custom writing services are fee-based.

Market size

The precise size of custom writing services market is unknown, tho' several rough estimate could be made. The number of competitors in the market approaches nearly 200. It is as well best-known that about 30 pct of organizations in the industry have annual turnover equal amounting to $120,000 approximately, whereas different 70 pct have all but double as low annual turnover. Total turnover, market size, is calculable at $10,800,000 annually. The size of the market in relation to the economy is yet unknown.

Segmentation

Segmentation is the process of allocation of particular homogenised sub-markets inside a heterogeneous market. A market is a multitude of sub-markets that have similar motivations.

In the case with the market concerned, segmentation is understood as follows. Companies that operate inside the market could be divided in accordance to specialization differences into such categories: (a) generally-oriented companies; (b) particularly-oriented companies. Generally-oriented companies are those that produce custom-written papers on a wide variety of topics. As a rule, such organizations hire writers representing several specialties or just those able to perform on appropriate level in one or several fields. Companies ascribed to another structure category commonly operate inside a narrower framework. In the market there are companies that offer custom-written papers alone on math, physics, sociology, the African-Americans, William Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte, etc.

Other products and services offered by the industry representatives include proofreading and piece of writing services, and pre-written papers.

It is noteworthy that there are companies in the market that offer several custom-written and pre-written papers. This, however, may have nothing to do with violation of ethics, but what just about privacy of those students who antecedently ordered a custom-written paper, which power have been later re-sold to another student?

Growth speed

Growth rates of the market are varied over the time. Thus, in 2000 there were nearly 25-30 companies offering custom-written/pre-written essays, term papers, cases studies, and different types of research papers. Over the 5-year period the number of companies in the market grew up to nearly a hundred and a half.

The leap in growth rates of the market is detected to take place in 2003-2004 once explosive change in rating occurred. The number of companies in the market accumulated all but 30 pct and now calculable about 80 companies. This leap was probably caused by the tendency towards ecommerce solutions being new to hoards of entrepreneurs in a number of developing countries like India, Ukraine, European nation and different countries. Companies with headquartered in these countries began offering similar services but with lower fees as compared to those set in the U.S., Canada, or Australia. Much on rating policies see in Pricing.

Today, market's growth speed is rather low as the market is full-fledged due to a variety of services offered by market participants.

Geographical distribution of services

It is worth mentioning that the researched market is a subdivision of ecommerce industry. This gives ground to conclude that either products or services create by industry's parties are of intangible character rather than of tangible. This especially concerns custom writing services market, which offers its customers intangible products delivered to them mostly via email.

It should be clean that no matter wherever a institution holds its general/backup office, it operates worldwide.

The only principle that regulates geographical distribution of custom-written papers is linguistic attachment. Among major countries mistreatment the service are: the United States of America, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and several European and Asian countries.

Seasonal character of the market

Another aspect of the market is its seasonality. Seasonal character of the examined market is sharply defined. As services offered by the market participants are bound at student necessarily throughout the academic year only, the season of active sales all but coincides with the academic year. The 1st half of Sep - commonly passive - is paid with several weeks in June.

Such seasonality of the market explains its instability of prices. It was detected that prices for services increase throughout the year with peaks in Gregorian calendar month - Jan and Gregorian calendar month - May; and drop dramatically during the summer season.

Customers/Clients

Customers of online services such as custom writing services are commonly students of high schools, colleges, and Universities, of 16 to 25 years old. As rating in the market is comparatively low, target group of the market covers the so-called middle class and higher. A research shows that in 2005 from 14 pct to 23 pct of students (considering seasonality correction) have in due time applied to custom writing services. In different words, one-seventh to one-fourth of students has bought at least one paper during 2004-2005 academic years. The same research provides data that gives ground to conclude just about the growth of the market. It is declared that in 2003 peak rate of students who applied to the service at least once was 25 percent, whereas in 2005 it is calculable to reach 36 percent.

Customer loyalty

Customer loyalty is apparently a behavior incontestable by frequent or systematic purchases of a company's product or service. Consumer loyalty could be achieved through customer-friendly rating policies, various discount programs, incentive plans etc. Consumer loyalty is as well an aspect of a company's consumer retention or loyalty programs. Consumer retention programs are commonly complex systems that include two or much elements listed above. As regards the market of custom writing services, the following was detected in the course of the research command by the author: (a) much than 80 pct of the market uses basic techniques in deed consumer loyalty such as for good variable prices that depend on demand for the product or service throughout the year, bonus plans (such as bonus key that allows up to 4 pct reduction), and different techniques; and (b) nearly 10 pct of companies inside the market use complex consumer loyalty programs such as flexible discounts (som!

etimes up to 30 percent!) in a combination with weekly feedback bonuses, personal selection of a writer, order status check, 24/7 consumer care, and different modes of consumer attraction.

Factors that influence buyer's select

Among factors that have impact on customers' select in the market of custom writing services are price, quality of products and services (including exclusiveness, professionalism, and compliance with the requirements), and delivery time.

As to cost and quality of a specific service, these two factors are the most important. It is vital for companies to balance between cost and quality values since optimum correlation between these two categories benefits several a service provider and a customer. It is worth mentioning that there are companies that offer papers written by Ph.D.s for "as low as $8.95 per page". Quality of a paper is directly related to its cost and vice versa.

In respect of the delivery time, many a companies offer imperative order accomplishment inside 12 (and sometimes even as 8) hours. Several of them limit the volume of an order to certain number of pages, tho' there are several companies that accept imperative orders without volume limitation.

Pricing

Custom writing services market has been experiencing a decline in prices lately. As it was mentioned earlier in this research, there had been fall in prices in 2003-2004 caused by explosive increase in market's growth rates. By far, average fees are unbroken at the level of $15 per page for regular (5+ days) orders, $20 per page for imperative (24 to 48h) orders, and $30 a page for extremely imperative orders (within 24h).

There are companies offering custom-written papers half cost as compared to average pricing. This fact may indicate that a institution either hires instant workers from developing countries or is new to the market and provides such a low rating policy in order to enter the full market and gain certain status.

Principles of operation

Principles of operation are the same throughout the industry. Intangible nature of products create by competitors in the market implies single system of relationships between a institution and a consumer disregarding of an organization's capacities.

Companies that offer custom-written papers (essays, term papers, case studies, literature reviews, executive summaries, dissertations) operate through their websites. Websites are supplied with all necessary and ex gratia features such as credit card process system (necessary), online consumer service (optional), and auto-responder to provide existing customers with automatic convey yous and newsletters, and different features.

A consumer places an order, which is then forwarded to a writer. This step is omitted in small companies wherever two or three folk wear several hats, e.g. one person could perform as an administrator, a writer, and a consumer service representative. If there ARE a couple of writers working for a company, one of them accomplishes an order, which is then delivered to the consumer via email.

It is worth noting that major attention is paid to a company's website. It is common for a institution producing custom-written papers to have as many a webmasters as writers. Hard to believe? In your opinion, what is the correlation between webmasters/programmers and book reviewers working for Amazon.com?

Competitors and leaders

As mentioned above, the number of competitors in the market estimates nearly 120. Leadership in the market wherever companies offer custom-written papers of any kind is defined alone due to a company's website's ranking in various search engines. The most powerful search engines are Google, MSN, Yahoo!, Altavista, and Alltheweb. Moreover, websites are hierarchal in accordance to their content bound at several key words. Thus, several websites could be leaders in the same search engine, tho' for several keywords or phrases.

Regulations

Being a subdivision of the ecommerce industry, custom writing services market is regulated by nothing but several codes like BBB Online that refer to web entrepreneurs. In general, ecommerce industry is poorly regulated.

Current trends inside the industry and market success factors

Among current trends in the market particularly three aspects are worth mentioning: (a) constant fall in price; (b) constant increase in the number of competitors; and (c) diversification of services offered by companies.

Constant increase in the number of competitors is apparently caused by simplicity of operations and growing number of freelance writers who once definite to start out their own business.

Permanent fall in cost is caused by growing number of competitors and similarity of services offered by companies in the market.

Finally, diversification of services is a logic consequence of the same increase in the number of competitors.

Among factors for success in the market the following issues could be mentioned: [...]

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About The Author

Serge Chepurko is one of the better - tho' comparatively young - writers employed by Your Personal Writer. Over the year that Serge's been writing for living he create much than 100 quality essays, case studies, research papers and term papers on management, sociology, history, and literature. Cloth is MA in structure management. Get to cognize Cloth better at http://www.personal-writer.com/. We're not offering you custom written essays and term papers, we offer you freedom.

s.chepurko@personal-writer.com

This article was denote on Sep 07, 2005