Phantom Markets - iBelong.com.docVIP

 PAGE \* MERGEFORMAT 4 Phantom Markets - iB Affinity portals are trying to commercialize association ties. Association members stick to their special interests. They may look like consumer markets, but don’t act that way. The premise id iB is that affinity groups - unions, professional associations, alumni groups , - can extend the affiliation of their members into many regions of personal and social life. Joe and Harry are members of the Teamsters. Therefore, there are likely to select teamster-oriented news, teamster touted apparel or white goods, Teamster authorized travel and vacation spots - a veritable Teamster Weltenschaung. The Journal reports that iBelong has rolled out 41 portals for membership organizations, including the Teamsters and twelve other unions. For $ 12 a month, iBelong accesses members to its parallel portal and provides tailored news, financial information, shopping, advertising, chat areas and other services. It carries the cost of marketing these sites to the membership and retains 75% of accrued revenues, returning 25% to the sponsoring organization. The company has already reported that amp;quot;roughly 20% of those who visit the shopping area buy something amp;quot;. iBelong is aiming to own and manage portal sites for hundreds of organizations with memberships of 100,000 or more. iBelong is in company with M, M, and iP in building community markets on the Internet. Will it work? The first question to ask is why the organized associations themselves don’t extend their offerings to members. Why don’t they offer to their members what iBelong is proposing to do for them? If these are captive markets for commerce, why should the associations give away their margins? Why contract with a surrogate web site like iBelong’s rather than meet member captive needs directly. In fact many organizations do this for what they consider collateral needs. ASTD has a shopping cart for books on training. The ABA has special travel and hotel offers fo