学而思：线下到线上的机遇与困惑

On April 23th, 2013, Xueersi published its first report for the fiscal year 2013. The report showed that in 2013, net revenue was 225 million dollars, an increase of 27.3% year-on-year, while operating profit was 31.4 million dollars, a year-on-year increase of 49.4%. It’s notable that among the sources of income of Xueersi, the proportion of operating profit from online education (online school: www.xueersi.com) rose from 2.7% to 3.2%, in line with the overall growth rate of Xueersi. However, Zhang Bangxin, the founder and CEO of Xueersi, was worried about the online business: Why hadn't there been the same type of explosive growth expected from the Internet? Was it because the company's online products weren't satisfying the needs of users? What should be done to achieve breakthrough innovation? Xueersi had achieved great success offline through word of mouth marketing but failed to obtain the expected results after using the same model in online business. What kind of innovations in marketing would be necessary for Xueersi?