Knowledge Update

The Future of online shopping behavior is quite complex to comprehend because the trend has a stage of maturity. There are excellent and sensational experiences like Omni-Channel marketing services, evident statistics of increasing E-commerce, swift delivery of goods through drone, product description video over traditional labeling, engaging content, augmented reality, virtual reality, and 3D configuration, among others. Research reveals that through the smartphone’s personalized approach, consumer spending increased dramatically. Behind online shopping, the scope for behavioral aspects among the customers may change over time. Shopping doesn’t fulfill the purchase of goods and services, it’s an experience, an entertainment, a stress buster, refresher, a trigger for change, a meeting point, togetherness, new places, memories, a form of socialization, etc.

The possible continuity of online purchase behavior that is appropriate and fruitful for carrying out certain services which account for less time-consuming, comfortable, agile functions and very significant factor like i.e. physical presence, doesn’t make much difference. On the other hand, if you happen to revisit history, even in the developed world, after the initial surge in online shopping, it was noticed that there was a negative trend in the market followed again by the uptrend. This volatility is common due to economical and consumer behavioral changes on a regular interval. Overall, robust technological experience and comfort, the millennials are relishing their experiences to the fullest and the overall trend is very positive, but the query remains, is it sustainable? Cybersecurity, privacy, technological addiction, lack of touch and feel, frauds, legitimacy of a website, delay delivery, lack of scope for negotiation on price, blind purchase, and mistakes, etc. are certain grey areas that need to be addressed by the domain-specific expertise based on the changing dynamics of business trend.

The economic development of a nation varies in countries based on many internal and external resources. Except for the few features, most of the online offering by the marketer become globally standardized, hence, the challenges are inevitable. The total infrastructure (IoT, ICT, digital platform, etc.) in many countries is still in the differential stage of development. Hence, the execution strategies need to be well balanced with brick and mortar strategy. Still, there is a wide gap between these two modes of business i.e. offline and on-line. The firm should follow the footstep by the incremental deployment of online strategies, after the comprehensive understanding of the marketplace and ensuring the technological capability of the firm for regular updating on demanding application software and hardware to meet the customer demand and also to seamless engaging content with the consumer.

The focus of the firm does not only remain in the online channels, but the quality of the goods and services are also important for any business. The payment gateways need to be embedded with smartphones with high-level encrypted software to have a smooth and safe purchase. Though the online platform has a lot of potentials to grow further, it can destroy the company if products and services are inferior. The way the company will address customer complaints in online sales will make a difference. 

Companies spend billions in marketing initiatives today to attract foot traffic, acquire new consumers, retain existing ones, and regain lost customers. However, few companies take the route of technology to achieve them. The rest of the companies resort to the conventional mode of marketing strategies that involve the consumption of resources (materials and manpower) to achieve the set target. At present, the world is moving towards achieving sustainability in all aspects of our life involving several initiatives for the conservation of natural resources. It is high time for the companies to resort to holistic technology-based marketing initiatives that include focusing on human connection in achieving the set goals. It is important to draw a fine balance between using technology and human connection in marketing to achieve maximum performance output i.e. achieving company goals with the least resource consumption and cost. Therefore, companies need to work on identifying an appropriate set of marketing initiatives which includes technology and human connection to achieve the mentioned goal. Looking at the existing practices of several companies, they largely use marketing strategies targeting a big group of consumers with generic and mundane promotional offers and price benefits.

To promote such initiatives, they often spend millions to reach target consumers. While assessing the performance output of using such initiatives, the outcome is not encouraging because most of the time, it fails to generate expected results due to its generic nature and focus on all sorts of target consumers. So, how such a predicament could be resolved and generate the much needed revenues for the companies? It is high time for companies to embrace technology and human connection to design their strategies personally targeting individual consumers. It would feel like sci-fi had it been discussed 30 years earlier, but with the advent of cutting edge technologies, targeting individual consumers is highly possible and achievable. The companies need to approach this aspect by integrating technology into human elements. Most of the companies take the technology route to reach target consumers forgetting the fact that their offers should be able to satisfy the expectations of consumers for the price they pay for.

It is imperative to focus on the basics of designing appropriate products/services that would satisfy and provide value to target consumers. Such aspects would encourage target consumers to share such experiences with their community, generating positive word of mouth and establishing a human connection. So producing and delivery value to consumers is a vital aspect to satisfy them, turning them into brand ambassadors, encouraging them to connect with their community and share experience, and establishing trusted human communication within the community. Once the connection is established, the companies need to bring in technology to augment and reach individual customers as a part of their retention strategy. Such technology includes big data, analytics, artificial intelligence, real-time connectivity, robust network, etc. Making customers declare their profile and important dates in their life is a major task for the companies. Such data would be extremely valuable to profile individual customers based on their requirements to establish and activate purchase triggers.

The purchase triggers would act as a stimulus to design and offer personalized offerings to individual customers based on their profile and self-declared important dates and the same to be communicated through different sources using cloud and telecommunication. Such triggers would induce customers to react positively to the offers and generate value for both customers and companies. Such an exercise would create a win-win situation for both consumers and companies. The outcome of the exercise would motivate customers to share their experience with their network, creating a continuous chain of human connection, and a cycle of events leading to revenues, profits and growth. Such aspects would reduce the usage of offline sources, thus, preserving the resources ensuring sustainability. Smart companies need to strike a balance between using technology and human connection to achieve their goals, growth, and prosperity in the transforming era of sustainability. Leading universities in Dubai offering BBA, MBA, and BSIT programs offer courses dealing with technology-based marketing, cutting edge technologies, and sustainability. 

In the past, Strategic Business environmental changes triggered organizations to delve into the sphere of what was known as knowledge management. Today digitization of business has changed the strategic analysis content, context, and process. Previously, data science and analysis were not areas many organizations would think twice about.  A decade ago, many organizations would just be content with traditional strategic decision making only. Today, that has changed. As strategy making becomes progressively contingent on analytics, connecting data science, analytics and decision making become indispensable. Due to the colossal amount of data being spewed daily by this change, organizations operating in this era of information explosion have no other alternative, other than to adapt to strategy analytics. So what is Strategy analytics? How do analytics fit into strategic management? Who are the practitioners in an organization? At what level of operations do organizations need to adapt to the use of strategy analytics? Is it a necessary evil for organizations, whether struggling or raring to advance to the next frontier? What is the eventual outcome of the use of strategy analytics? Which organizations have already embraced this? Have they been successful?

Metaphorically speaking, Strategy Analytics is the contemporary Trojan horse for organizations. Handling and dealing with big data for strategic reasons is the “in” thing today for many businesses. Strategy Analytics for business is the study of statistical and operational data culminating into the crafting of sustainable strategic alternatives and predictive models, implementation of optimization techniques and organizational capability, dissemination of information for decision making for the right and appropriate stakeholder of the organization, be it customers, business partners, or the greater organizational value system. In a dynamic business environment, strategy analytics aids an organization formulate defensible and distinctive strategies to excel in a complex technologically driven market.

In order to overcome the curse of paralysis by analysis, several organizations have realized the need for big data, even though in varying levels. It is no longer a hidden truth, organizations today need to develop data analytical capabilities. Though the outcomes of strategy analytics maybe bought, internal analytics capability is essential. This comprehension by internal users of strategy data analytics is necessary as the organization seeks to optimize its operative decision making.

Each day makes the world smarter, every day gives fresh challenges to the C-suite and operational executives, this smartness, strategic and operational challenges seem to converge at the need for data, big data. Data has become the core to an organization’s sustainable competitive advantage. Data translation gives an organization the capability to interact with a dynamically competitive environment in the right manner. For an organization to optimize its operations, to satisfy stakeholders, and to out maneuver rivals, it will highly be depended on how well it leverages the use of data, employ data analytics and implement new technologies.

 Digital business is thriving nowadays with companies like Amazon and Alibaba leading the digital business wave. Amazon made USD 232 billion in sales in 2018, a big jump from USD 107 billion in sales in 2015 which accounted for more than 100% CAGR (Compounded Annual Growth Rate) from 2015.

Today’s business world witnesses’ paradox in creating value to target consumers. Some companies travel the extra mile to create value to their target consumers, and some do nothing to create value to their target consumers. However, today’s consumers are smart and well informed, thanks to the abundance of real-time information available online, choose the companies they want to associate, buy, and continue to patronize.  So, taking consumers for granted will not be possible in today’s scenario. The companies that are doing such a thing and be successful may be lucky, but the luck will not work forever. Instead of taking the lucky route, smart companies take technology route, i.e. using technology to create value to its target consumers. In the new age of technology, smart companies use technology extensively in all the areas of operational aspects right from procurement until the consumer service. Looking at the value chain model created by Michael E Porter from Harvard Business School, USA, he developed an extensive value chain model based on the activities from the manufacturing industry. Thus, the value chain model comprises two major sections such as primary/core activities and secondary/trivial activities.

The model depicts the core activities which a business should follow to create value through its business to consumers. However, such model has been developed for manufacturing companies, whilst looking to implement such model to service companies, it needs to be recreated/redesigned suit to the required core activities and secondary activities pertinent to service businesses. Even among service businesses, different services require different value chain model such as academic services, health services, hospitality services, banking services, etc. to name a few. Therefore, the companies need to identify the DNA of each service businesses and redesign the value chain model accordingly. The basic model of value chain places technology as a part of the secondary activities of the manufacturing business. However, today dynamic business environment emphasis a major thrust on utilizing technology across any business. So, the emphasis and role of technology in any business are growing rapidly, and the companies are now acknowledging the necessity the same to create value to their target consumers. Looking at the availability of technology which could be used for businesses today, there are many leading cutting edge technologies available, however, the ones which the companies could use to value and touch points to consumers are Analytics, Internet of Things (IOT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics to name a few. Though the same technologies could be used for backend operations of the companies, using such technologies for creating customer value would likely to score more points as it is visible and measurable. Looking at the practical use of such technologies, the retail industry would be on the high end of utilizing such technologies to create value to consumers. Albeit, many industries the same technologies could be applied, the visibility is very high through the retail industry.

Retail industry could make full use of the aforesaid technologies in terms of identifying the existence of consumers inside the store through scanning of loyalty card or through facial recognition technology, upon identifying the existence of such consumers, Artificial Intelligence system can generate the purchase history of the respective consumers from its big data through analytics, and create a customized offers to such consumers and communicate the same through personalized messages to their mobiles or using public Address System (PAS) inside the store. Even, the same technologies could be used to create customized pricing (CP) for individual consumers based on their contribution to the specific store or business from a specific period i.e. year or month. So, using such technologies would create a personalized value to consumers, in turn, enhance loyalty, footfalls, and contribution to the businesses. Thus, increasing sales and profits. Even, leading universities from UAE offering BBA, MBA, BSIT use such technologies primarily online through using search engine optimization to reach out target audience i.e. students.

Strategy is the universal aspect every organization should have to achieve its set goals. A word of warning, though: some organizations may not achieve success in implementing strategy as they lack a clear understanding of the DNA of strategy and what fits to each organization. Having a strategy does not guarantee success. Therefore, the organizations should understand the DNA of strategy before devising, adopting and implementing a specific strategy. It is imperative for an organization to internalize its goals by devising a strategy and evaluating the same in achieving financial milestones. The financial milestones are crucial to any organization as they are performance indicators. Hence, organizations need to map the strategy with financial milestones.

This includes ensuring survival, achieving sustainability and focusing on growth aspects. Devising pertinent strategies to ensure survival through attaining break even (no profit-no loss) in order to keep the organization afloat, repeating of such milestone to achieve profits leading to achieve Return on Investment (ROI) i.e. sustainability. After achieving ROI, the organization needs to repeat the success by achieving continuous profits. Such recurrence of success leads to accruals of cash made through net profit, which could be used to plough back into the organization for new horizons of growth (Growth). Such cycle could be called Strategic Growth Cycle (SGC), which is very vital for an organization to internalize the strategy into its entire journey. Having looked at the ways the different organizations used such cycle, numerous organizations adopted and internalized the SGC cycle throughout their journey and attained top positions in the global business world. Wal Mart is the ideal example of using SGC throughout its journey since 1950 until now.

Arguably Wal-Mart is the number one company in the world in terms of generating sales turnover (http://fortune.com/global500/list/) with US$ 500 billion for the year 2018. Looking at the SGC journey of Wal-Mart, it is clear that it went through the entire cycle of SGC before achieving its top position. However, Wal-Mart did not get complacent by achieving top position as its turnover is stagnant for the last 4 years (https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/wmt/financials?query=income-statement) as the sales turn over since 2015 hovered around US$ 485 billion and reached US$ 500 billion mark in 2018. Looking at the profitability of the company since 2015, which has been moving towards south (https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/wmt/financials?query=income-statement) from US$16 billion to USS 9.8 billion in 2018. But, Wal-Mart did not faze with the dip of such profits, it has commenced its SGC for its new business initiatives i.e. Wal-Mart Online and Digital Business which has been paying off and is slowly making in-roads into online and digital business initiatives using its brick and mortar business model (https://www.forbes.com/sites/andriacheng/2018/08/16/walmarts-ecommerce-tactic-against-amazon-is-paying-off/#248e9782b74d).

Although Wal-Mart is a 69-year old company (since 1950), it maintains a top position through its mammoth sales of US$ 500 billion. It focuses on continuous evolution as an organization by adopting SGC for its new business initiatives i.e. online and digital business. Such lessons have been used by numerous UAE based organizations especially by the leading universities in the UAE that continuously evolve by launching state-of-the art programs in business and IT to suit the existing business and industry requirements.

Management of every organization serving any sector and operating in any industry must prioritize marketing and related activities. Understanding and improving customer experiences are important. Digitization and technology enhancement has become a need of hour. Survival is in digitization.  But to what extent? That’s the question to answer and answer lies on the quantum and scalability of operations of the company.

Marketers have to realize the increasing changing patterns and lifestyle of post millennials. Their likes are different and so are their life styles. Marketing is not only a company centric activity but a customer centric activity as well. Turning to the digital content and creating a mutual value for all stake holders through digital marketing has harvested great results. We have witnessed the marvelous growth and brand emergence of companies like Amazon, Linked-In and e-Bay through digital marketing concepts and ideas. The fact being that digital marketing approach ensures that information is available to all the stakeholders. Digital Marketing gives power to marketers to engage with customers completely 24/7 which is of course an excellent opportunity. This is what big brands are following and that is the power they have gained by digital marketing. For customers availability of 24/7 is what they want and companies are counting on each bit of content that is produced by consumers on social media, blogs and various other feed forward and feedback mechanisms.

Content has been most crucial element of digital marketing. The power of digitization is immense and is unchallenged in its position. Content may be in form of blogs, videos and written format as well. Facebook live and Bumps video content has been a latest addition in content market strategies. Companies are offering high level of interactivity to their clients through digital marketing. Social media and blogging has offered highest levels of interactivity to the customers. Clients are more empowered and confident when it comes to expressions. Digital channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and blogs have proved to be brand revamping. Hashtags, likes, shares are representing the companies in digital world. Digital marketing provides a growth and development opportunities for companies to enhance the scalability and effectiveness of operations. Digital marketing has enabled companies to improve their business profiles thus enhancing the brand power and reputation, because the content is well read by customers and on the basis of power of content purchase decisions are taken. Facebook has a major role to play in SEO and page rankings. Customers take the content on Facebook very seriously and keep following the brands they like, keep up with the information and latest happening and offerings with their favourite brands. So companies must focus on the online content more often, keep it updated and transparent to catch on customer’s positivity and brand love.

Bottom-line: Digital marketing has immense scope to reach and every segment of target consumer but how successfully companies tap the potential, that need to be looked upon. So it’s not only how we did but also how strongly and seriously we succeeded to create a useful content.

By: Prof. A M Sakkthivel, Skyline University College

Post millennium witnessed numerous disruptions in the way of doing businesses such as emergence of internet, online business, online banking, digital currency, driverless automobiles, free information to all, and many more. Such disruptions leading to creation of several new ventures focusing on creating products and/or services of disruptive nature such as UBER, AirBNB, Facebook, Tesla, Google Glass, YouTube, Instagram, and WhatsApp to name a few.  Some of them went on a rampage mode of expansion and few of them stopped abruptly. However, the momentum of disruption began which paved a way to creation of new era of disruption. Such a new phenomenon motivated companies to rethink their way of doing businesses and targeting consumers. Needless to say the role of marketing in running a successful business. Therefore, marketing in era of disruption required an innovative and disruptive approach to tackle competition and targeting consumers. Marketing managers need to rethink ways of approaches and strategies done traditionally and develop new disruptive marketing strategies to create a new market space which ensures a protection from competitors or identify a new market space which does not attract competition. Such a disruptive thinking is required to succeed in the era of disruption.   

Companies have moved from traditional P’s of marketing to newer P’s and C’s. Ever mounting competition forced marketing managers to add new P’s in their marketing arsenal such as Positioning, Payment Procedures, Promise, and People (Consumers). They also converted traditional P’s into C’s such as Product becomes customer solutions, price becomes cost of acquiring consumers/customer individual profit, place becomes convenience and promotion becomes communications. Such conversions changed the orientation of companies doing business through selling products/services into creating and delivery value to target consumers. It is a major shift from companies focus on doing business through reaching and wooing target consumers through positioning a product/service through Unique Selling Proposition (USP) into offering Unique Value Proposition (UVP) i.e. aligning and matching company’s USP with target consumers’ expectations. Top universities in UAE and MBA universities in Dubai offer state of the art IT and Management and MBA Marketing programmes understanding recent requirements of students, thus offering courses involving latest technologies and tools such as Marketing analytics, Online Marketing, Digital Marketing, Enterprise Computing, Big Data Analytics, Robotics etc.

The era of disruption requires massive use of technologies in targeting, reaching and ensuring the sales among target consumers. Thus, heavily using technologies to achieve such goals such as taking business to wherever the consumers are (TESCO Korea launched virtual stores at Metro stations enabled waiting time of consumers into shopping time, thus increased its business and connection with target consumers), ensuring reach, recall and sales by using ONE GO technology (Donkin Donuts Korea used Flavor radio advertisement spreading coffee flavor through radio advertisements MRTS (Mass Rapid Transportation System) enabled target consumers recall Donkin Donuts coffee, thus increasing its sales on coffee), know target consumers before entering stores using facial recognition technology (X stores would know the entry and existence of target consumers, thus could offer customerised offers  based on such consumers purchase history, motivating them to buy products which they have not before). Such use of technologies marked the arrival of the era of disruption and setting such trends would continue in the future. It is imperative that technologies would rule the future of the world, needless to say, their intervention and impact over businesses, specifically marketing strategies and practices. Therefore, it is up to marketing managers to embrace new age practices including such aspects into marketing strategies to survive and succeed in the era of disruption.

Shopping is an indispensable part of the ilgrimage. Religious tourists buy myriad range of merchandise at religious destinations for their survival, religious or social needs. A lot of shopping is by the virtue of traditions.

Retailers across the world have capitalized on the opportunities of marketing their merchandise to pilgrims using all the possible techniques since time immemorial. It is difficult to trace the definitive history of retailing at religious destinations, and we get some ideas through the old pieces of literature and religious treatises. We can say that even thousands of years ago, people used to shop for items for their survival at these religious places, and they also used to buy memorabilia, and many other products of religious significance for their relatives and friends. It was the part of their social obligations to bring and distribute the items of religious significance to the members of their family and society. The merchandise included various edibles, photographs, replicas, statues and so on.
The merchandise these religious tourists purchased to carry them back to their homes differed a lot according to their faiths, culture, distances and various demographic variables. Pilgrims shop religious items to adorn their homes and offices or to gift these items to their relatives & friends in future. Religious items can serve as visual reminders of spiritual beliefs as well as inspire people and give them comfort in times of trouble. With changing times, modes of transportations changed, new religious destinations emerged, social practices changed and so a lot of changes happened in the merchandise in demand, and the ways these merchandise were retailed.

In the modern era, when first time in the human history we have the facilities virtual pilgrimage and live telecast from religious centers, the enthusiasm among the worshippers and other types of tourists has not dampened at all, rather the number of people visiting the religious destinations and the frequency of visits are continuously increasing worldwide. The modern transportation infrastructure and related facilities facilitate the rapid movement of larger volume of merchandise of any size and features. To boot, the new means of promotion help in attracting the shoppers to the stores in larger number.
The retailing at pilgrim centers may not be sophisticated and high end as airport retailing, but the number of stores and volume of trade is much higher. The pilgrim retail is still largely unorganized, and we do not have many international retail chains catering the shoppers at these religious places. There are large number of small shops, and the retailing practices are still traditional.We rarely find salespeople in uniform talking in sophisticated language, and the use of plastic money is still limited. Although, some modernization is visible in a few high end hotels at these religious places, but these hotels cater to a very small proportion of religious tourists.

All these facts hint toward the huge opportunity of modernizing the retailing at pilgrim centers, which can result in better economies of scale, better merchandises, improved services and enhanced customer satisfaction. The modernization will be beneficial for all the stakeholders including retailers’ religious tourists and others. It may even help in increasing the number of tourists to these religious places, because it will bring the tourists hooked to modern retail practices in larger number and for longer durations.
Now, students have lot of options for a better career in marketing. They can pursue MBA in UAE. MBA Marketing opens up doors to a large number of career opportunities across the world. They can also opt for diploma in tourism from various universities like skyline to have promising career in tourism.

Student Name: Moath Assad Srour  

ID: 11088

Currency crises played a huge role in the economic disturbance of the interwar. Currency crisis is a type of financial crisis that occurs when there is decline in the value of a country's currency. This kind of decline in the currency impacts the economy severely and brings it to the downward trend and creates instability in the exchange rates. Due to this, the value of currency in the international market decreases drastically. One of the methods of minimizing the impact of currency crisis is by pooling adequate foreign reserves.

The world witnesses many instances of currency crisis till now. One of the recent crisis was during 1990s. The European Monetary System started experiencing a huge offloading of assets by the investors. The reason attributed to this was the disturbances in the exchange rate mechanism. Soon after this crisis followed the crisis in Asia and Mexico. It was thought that the crisis would spread to other parts of the world and would negatively impact their monetary systems. Researchers and Analysts generally do not provide any single acceptable reason as to why currency crisis would occur in some countries. Traditional models attribute currency crises to a deterioration of economic fundamentals. On the contrary, the recent models hypothesize that such crises may be as a result of the self-fulfilling prophecies or the shock effect that spreads over many countries. The different perspectives of the various models on what causes a currency crisis makes the study an interesting one and needs further investigation.

It is very important to understand currency crisis and develop mechanism to minimize its impact. One of the most important mechanism to minimize its impact is to analyze the degree of risk tolerance of investors. Past experience shows that before the financial crisis, most of the shareholders enjoyed several years of relatively good returns with little volatility. They became comfortable with the market's risk and reward proposition as long as it heavily favored rewards. As markets began to drop, many shareholders who thought they were comfortable with their risk tolerance, overestimated the risk and they left the market. Risk tolerance is unique to each shareholder. Some shareholders are more comfortable with market volatility than others.

The second strategy is to maintain a cash reserve. This strategy focuses on the need to balance both flexibility and discipline in responding to sudden events like currency crisis. This can be achieved by maintaining reasonable levels of cash reserves within an investor's overall investment and funding plans. The third strategy is to develop and inculcate good financial habits by the investor. It is important for the shareholders to realize several behavioral and environmental factors which can either assist or prevent the achievement of their targets. The shareholders should use the past lessons to build excellent financial habits which help in minimizing the stormy financial periods like currency crisis. The other strategies which can be used are Weigh Fundamentals versus Feelings and using the debt strategically.