Look carefully at the following text on Lastminute.com which continues to play an important role in the leisure, sports and hospitality sectors. Then answer the questions which follow. ‘Last Minute.Com' Lastminute.com (www.lastminute.com) is a business that relies totally on the Internet. The objective of the company is to use the reach of the Web to put offers from service providers in front of consumers. It gives service providers an outlet to sell items such as airline tickets, hotel rooms and theatre tickets for any date in question, right up to the last minute (hence the name). The later the consumer leaves the purchasing, the more likely they are to get a bargain. The co-founders of lastminute.com are Brent Doberman and Martha Lane Fox. The company launched in 1998 with a modest £600,000 of funding to cover start-up costs. An additional £6.5m worth of funding was secured in June 1999, from an investor group led by Global Retail partners and also including Intel Corporation, T-Venture, Amadeus Capital partners and Harvey Goldsmith. In March 2000, lastminute.com launched onto the UK stock market. The company was valued at over £570m, with its share price at £3.80. The company grew quickly, from just a handful of staff at launch, to 100 in the UK, with another 30 staffing offices in Paris and Munich. Lastminute.com aimed to build on this initial success by establishing relationships with new business partners and providing a quick, efficient service for its customers. Given the large number of Internet-based firms that have gone out of business, Lastminute.com has done well to survive in a turbulent environment in which the competitiveness of the e-commerce market, combined with fears of the levels of security of shopping online, contributed to the sharp decline in lastminute.com's share price. At one stage the share price fell to 80p, £3 lower than its original launch value. However, the company has recovered strongly from this position, with its share price rising above £3 in 20034. Lastminute.com started out with offers mainly centred on the travel, entertainment and gift industries, with a heavy emphasis on items such as theatre tickets, flights and hotel reservations. The firm's suppliers include 30 airlines, over 500 hotels, 75 holiday providers, 400 entertainment suppliers, 60 restaurants and 120 gift providers. Partner companies include British Midlands and Amazon UK. The company has now diversified into other areas such as cleaning and laundry services, taxis, hairdressers and other services, in the hope of building on the number of registered users. If the company is to achieve its aim of developing lastminute.com into the ultimate one-stop-shopping experience, it will need to continue to forge relationships with new business partners and satisfy its existing registered users in order to halt a further decline in numbers. Indeed, in March 2003 it acquired Holiday Autos, a car rental broker, and in January 2004 First Option, a hotel-booking agency that owns kiosks in railway stations across London. The latter was the first acquisition involving a physical rather than virtual presence. In March 2004 it also acquired Online Travel Corp, with its impressive client list which includes Thomas Cook, Lunn Poly, The Times, Tiscali and Free serve.

Questions You are an independent marketing consultant called in by lastminute.com to produce a report including the following:

(a) review the firm's current position in the market;

(b) suggest suitable types of promotion lastminute.com could use in order to further strengthen its position;

(c) recommend other possible business partners for lastminute.com.