For information and reference only – not to be submitted as your own work.

This MKTG903 sample answer shows how a 2,000-word e-business case analysis could be structured for the MKTG903 Global Marketing e-business case analysis brief. It uses Xero, a New Zealand-founded cloud accounting company, purely as a worked illustration. Your own company is agreed with your lecturer, so you must run your own desk research. For a step-by-step method, read how to approach an MKTG903 e-business case analysis.

Company facts below come from Xero’s published results and website, and the sources are listed at the end. Any figure marked illustrative is a teaching example, not company data. Check current numbers before you rely on them.

Planning table

The brief sets a 2,000-word limit (check your brief for the tolerance and what is excluded). The split above is a suggestion that follows the mark weighting.

Task 1: Current e-business use

Company snapshot

Xero sells subscription accounting software to small businesses and their advisers. In the year to 31 March 2026 it reported operating revenue of about NZ$2.75 billion and roughly 4.9 million subscribers (Rask Media, 2026). Its product is delivered wholly online, so almost every part of the business depends on internet technologies.

Internet technologies in use

Four technologies carry most of the activity. Cloud hosting delivers the product through a browser and mobile app. Secure connections to banks bring transactions into the ledger for reconciliation. Open interfaces let third-party developers connect their software, and Xero states that it connects with more than 1,000 apps (Xero, n.d.). Finally, an AI assistant, branded JAX, is promoted on the product site for answering business questions (Xero, n.d.).

Sales are also digital. Xero’s New Zealand site lists four monthly plans, from Ignite to Ultimate, with introductory discounts and a one-month trial offer (Xero, n.d.). This is a classic subscription, low-friction acquisition model of the kind described by Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick (2022).

Framework: Business Model Canvas

The Business Model Canvas describes a business through nine building blocks (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010). It suits e-business analysis because it shows where internet technologies create value, not only where they sit. Table 1 applies it to Xero.

Table 1. Business Model Canvas applied to Xero (selected blocks).

Evaluation

The canvas shows a business whose value proposition and revenue stream depend on the same asset: the connected ledger. Strength is high in customer segments and revenue streams, because subscription pricing is transparent and scalable. One signal of change is that reported gross margin fell from 89% to 83.9% in FY26 (Rask Media, 2026), at a time when payments revenue was being added to the subscription base. That suggests the revenue-stream block is shifting. A fuller answer would test this against a second source, such as the annual report itself.

Task 2: Critical evaluation of one function

Chosen function and justification

The function chosen is the partner and app ecosystem, meaning the marketplace and integrations that connect third-party software to the core ledger. It is justified on three grounds. First, it appears in the canvas as both a channel and a key-partner relationship. Second, Xero itself foregrounds the integration count in its marketing (Xero, n.d.). Third, ecosystems create switching costs that protect subscription revenue (Jacobides et al., 2018).

Industry insight

Platform theory explains why an ecosystem matters. In two-sided markets, value rises as each side attracts the other, and the platform owner must price and curate to keep both sides engaged (Rochet & Tirole, 2003). Parker et al. (2016) add that the platform wins when it lowers the cost of interaction between producers and consumers, and that quality control is as important as scale.

Teece (2010) argues that a business model is only as strong as its ability to capture value, not just create it. Applied here, a large app catalogue is not itself a success measure. Value is captured when apps raise retention, plan upgrades or payments volume.

Assessment of current performance

Table 2. Ecosystem function assessed against platform criteria.

Breadth is Xero’s clear strength. The gap sits in the middle of the customer journey. A small business owner who opens a catalogue of 1,000 apps faces a choice problem, and the Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick (2022) emphasis on relevant, personalised communication suggests that guided discovery would lift conversion. The evidence for this is indirect, and an honest answer should say so.

Best-practice comparison also helps. Large app stores in consumer technology rank and recommend apps using usage signals, not just category lists (Parker et al., 2016). Where a B2B platform does less of this, the opportunity is not breadth but relevance.

Task 3: Recommendation

Recommendation

Introduce an in-product app recommendation journey for New Zealand small businesses, triggered by setup choices such as industry, payroll status and invoicing volume. For example, a café owner who creates payroll would be shown point-of-sale and rostering integrations that already work with the ledger.

Justification

The proposal follows directly from Task 2. Breadth is already strong, so the constraint is relevance and trust. Guided discovery turns the ecosystem from a catalogue into a retention tool, which supports value capture (Teece, 2010; Rochet & Tirole, 2003).

Implementation and measures

Table 3. Illustrative measures. These are teaching examples, not Xero data.

Risks include favouritism complaints from developers, privacy concerns about using setup data, and extra cost to maintain quality scoring. These can be reduced with published ranking rules, clear consent wording and a pilot in one industry before a wider release.

If you want help applying this structure to your own company and framework, our team can support you through marketing assignment help, or you can see how a different AIS brief was handled in the MGMT902 agentic AI change management sample. For a wider approach to company analyses, see case study help, or start your order on the submit assignment page.

References

Chaffey, D., & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2022). Digital marketing (8th ed.). Pearson.

Jacobides, M. G., Cennamo, C., & Gawer, A. (2018). Towards a theory of ecosystems. Strategic Management Journal, 39(8), 2255–2276.

Osterwalder, A., & Pigneur, Y. (2010). Business model generation: A handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers. John Wiley & Sons.

Parker, G. G., Van Alstyne, M. W., & Choudary, S. P. (2016). Platform revolution: How networked markets are transforming the economy and how to make them work for you. W. W. Norton & Company.

Rask Media. (2026, May 14). Xero (ASX:XRO) share price on watch after 31% growth in FY26 result. https://www.raskmedia.com.au/2026/05/14/xero-asxxro-share-price-on-watch-after-31-growth-in-fy26-result/

Rochet, J.-C., & Tirole, J. (2003). Platform competition in two-sided markets. Journal of the European Economic Association, 1(4), 990–1029.

Teece, D. J. (2010). Business models, business strategy and innovation. Long Range Planning, 43(2–3), 172–194.

Xero. (n.d.). Xero accounting software New Zealand [Product and pricing information]. Retrieved 5 November 2026, from https://www.xero.com/nz/