BUS104 Online Tutoring on SWOT Analysis of the Airtasker Company

Introduction

Airtasker is one of most famous website and app of Australia that providing job opportunities and helping clients demanding for home-based tasks at the same time. It is described as “a trusted community network that unites people who need to outsource tasks and find local services with people who want to make money and are willing to work”. It is an online platform and is the leading task-based services provider that allows users to hire on-demand workers for home cleaning, handyman jobs, admin work, promotional work, computer & IT support, photography, graphic design or even build a website. Here tasks ranges from simple to complicated one. Specifically, the company allows clients to outsource mobile and marketing tasks and activities (Airtasker, 2020c). The business model is a central component of a website and related mobile app (Minter, 2017). Airtasker’s headquarters is located in Sydney, New South Wales. It was a collaborative idea of Australian entrepreneurs Tim Fung and Jonathan Lui and they devised it in 2012. In 2013, the very first investor in Airtasker was Peter Hammond of Investment firm Exto Partners. Thirst for progress worked effectively when it came to increasing revenue to AUD$1.5 million right after the beginning. According to Airtasker, in 2014, it reached an average of around 10,000 members per month, which in 2016 grew to 25,000 members per month.

Seeking innovation in the business has acted as an agent for the company to reach 1,700,000 users. Airtasker generated around $6.1 million of revenue in 2019. Seven West Media, Exto Partners, and Morning Crest Capital are some of Airtasker’s investors. Airtasker purchased its main competitors TaskBox in 2013 and Occasional Butler in 2014. Airtasker’s top competitor is TaskRabbit. The motto of Airtasker is “the only way to do great work is to love what you do”. There are over 1.6 million people, who are using Airtasker and creating over $215 million worth of jobs. Moreover, over $15.04 million jobs are available on Airtasker per month.

Both the website and the app are client-friendly, and a basic interface exists in which one can either post a task or navigate through the tasks. The competing offers put online as opposed to an answer to the request help customers figure out the accessible workers at the best rate possible (Ma and Yang, 2018). It was the technological advances that put service providers and service users back together (Manyika et al., 2016). This is also witnessed for Airtasker where individuals working as freelancers can search for a range of opportunities based on their interests and choose them based on their choices. It makes Airtasker one of the other apps and websites that offers gig job opportunities in the gig economy (Ma and Yang, 2018).

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Table 1: Competitors comparison

Source: craft.co/airtasker

The following section will address various strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for the Airtasker Company. In addition, there is a detailed discussion part on SWOT analysis which followed by some recommendations and marketing strategies. In the last there is conclusion.

SWOT Analysis

It will enable you investigate the opportunities and threats that the Airtasker might face. It will also help to determine what Airtasker’s strengths and weaknesses are:

Discussion

Strengths

Airtasker is the trusted community that delivers people with their work to freelancer within a few minutes. It is the best website for the home-based work that enable through either its mobile app or the online network. The James Chin Moody, CEO Sendle, states “there are so many tasks that can be done through Airtasker. This removes the limitations of our company” (Airtasker, 2020d). During the last three years, Airtasker has improved massively, experiencing significant and consistent growth in online traffic. The platform recorded more than 1.1 million Total Visits in October 2019.

The tasks applied to Airtasker’s customer stock are posted online. This represents the staff’s understanding of the particular needs, expectations and specifications of stakeholders and shareholders (Doppelt, 2017). Along with this, allowing the users to review the offers on the tasks is valuation towards the purchasing power of the customers (Airtasker, 2020a). Moreover, Airtasker also work to assured safety and provide prevention to the third-party interference. It guarantees the protection and welfare of the users. The service of having the payment process safer has eased the users’ pressure of outsourcing further tasks (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). Taking into consideration Airtasker Pay has stabilized the financial parameter of the company. The decision of the users matters the most as compared to the payment (Airtasker, 2020e).

In addition to these strengths, top rated insurance is one of the other strengths of Airtasker. Preventing the intervention of third parties guarantees the protection and security of clients. Airtasker comprises of very simple and easy business model. It has also established an impartial dispute settlement process and a personal insurance scheme of $20 million to those who consider work through the Airtasker’s platform.

One of the great decisions of making partnership with two good companies such as TaskBox and CareerOne supports Airtasker to incrase the customer base. Browsing the website informs the staff about the clients and the activities they want to complete. High-rated insurance guarantee is a sign of customer loyalty, faith and dependency (Besteiro, Pinto & Novaski, 2015). Airtasker therefore also gives its clients the ability to get protection for certain Work Contracts. Various incentives i.e. deal, packages and rewards on the jobs encourage the staff to increase the public’s traffic toward the brand value. The workers select the unemployed youth from this lot to improve their jobs.

In addition, getting efficient and diligent use of the new design IT systems improves robustness in business processes (Airtasker, 2020c).

Weaknesses

Airtasker has few weaknesses that need to be overcome with the passage of time. Critics have blamed Airtasker that it pays very low rates to the workers that violated the policy of workers’ pay rates. Moreover, Airtasker revised its price list to represent higher pay scales for certain business operations. But in reality, it is just a recommendation of paying higher pay to worker due to the pressure exerted by Unions NSW, it still not implementing. Low pay constitutes one of the key reasons Airtasker doesn’t impress all Australians. Most people therefore feel that their capacity to find work on the site will be hindered if they talk publicly.

Airtasker says that a $20 million insurance policy protects the employees (Airtasker, 2020b). The policy does not provide insurance for employees in need, but only includes harm caused to the job poster by third parties. The worker has no insurance from Airtasker or the job-poster for physical damage or loss to any of their belongings.

Opportunities

Airtasker is an online job outsourcing platform that has a potential to work in all over world. It has extended to the markets of UK and Ireland but there is a long way to explore various markets around the globe. In the era of digital economy, everyone is now connected to one another and this give boost to the global expansion. All tasks of Airtasker are assigned online therefore, it has greater potential to uncover the benefits of the world markets.

Moreover, another great opportunity is the increasing trend and number of online shoppers. Everyone now is very busy in their lives that they don’t want to bother themselves for various home-based tasks and need some help from service providers. If all these tasks are available on one single platform then it will give an advantage to the company and users enjoy them. Airtasker is a two-sided marketplace, where people post tasks and other people who complete these tasks, therefore, Airtasker provides a correct mix of blend of both the sides.

Threats

Risks or threats in businesses and organizations are an indistinguishable part of the business. They differ in strength and have versatility in adding uncertainty to market position. Financial difficulties restrict workers of meeting customer basic needs and requirements (Maylor, Blackmon & Huemann, 2016). This portion focuses on the determinants that may result in Airtasker’s downside risk in terms of its business (Airtasker, 2020e).

In this era of rapid development and growth, several internet-based service provider companies have developed and is developing which may provide very strong competition to the Airtasker. As online task-based services are open to all and required very less investment therefore, there are very high chances of imitation of services provided by Airtasker.

As mentioned under ‘weaknesses’, there is a huge pressure of trade union body Unions NSW on Airtasker on the low pay rates offered to the workers. It represents 600,000 employees in New South Wales, Australia, known as Airtasker is a “superhighway to serfdom,” and reports on its site that it “egregiously completely ignores minimum wage laws and other working standards by allowing employees to fight and ridicule each other for bite-sized work pieces”

Furthermore, the core of Airtasker’s activities is online. Cyber-crime is therefore another major threat. Non-compliance to the CGU guidelines can result in utter loss. Incompetence in evaluating staff output often poses a threat to users’ personal safety and security. In addition, if the users do not get access to the websites, it is a loss for the company in terms of achieving high revenue and profit margin. Negligence of the personnel towards this issue is a threat, as it would add vulnerability in the market position of the company. If the personnel are not conscious towards the installation of the security software in the profile of the users is also a risk (Airtasker, 2020c). This is in terms of shredding off the responsibilities towards ensuring the wellbeing of the customers. This attitude puts the employment of the personnel at risk and threat the safety of the users’ information.