The article discusses how a company is valued for the public domain and the reasons behind that.

Appropriate subject areas(s):

Entrepreneurship, marketing, future trends, investment

Key questions to explore:

• How are consumer shopping habits changing?

Students will do some research on consumer buying habits.

Introduction to lesson and task:

Students will explore online platforms to understand how they attract customers.

Action:

1. Survey the class to see if they shop online. If so, what kinds of products do they purchase? What platform are their favourite stores using to sell online?
2. Distribute the article for reading.
3. In small groups, ask students to brainstorm what factors are impossible for Shopify to predict or control in the future.
4. Have them discuss which factors threaten the company’s ability to operate successfully.
5. Have students create a grid using the ideas generated in 3 and 4. For example, on the X axis, the number of new customers is a critically uncertain factor: on one end of the axis will be a large number of new customers and on the other end a decline from the current number of customers. Do the same on the Y Axis for ideas generated in question 4.
6. In the quadrants have students brainstorm solutions for the specific scenario created by combining axes x and y.
7. Share as a class.

Consolidation of learning:

• Have students research the Shopify platform and identify its attributes. Have each student select another online shopping platform and compare and contrast to Shopify. Why does Shopify have such a high valuation?

Success criteria:

• Students understand the attributes of a successful online selling platform.

Confirming activity:

• Ask students to graph the stock price of Shopify and the other shopping platforms they identified earlier. How do they compare? What is the rationale?