Competitive intelligence is defined as a systematic process that transforms random bits and pieces of data into strategic knowledge. This information comprises about competitors, customers, technological, environmental, product and market in. other to make a good strategic decision. Competitive intelligence is described as those activities a company undertake in determining and understanding its industry as well as identifying and understanding the competitors, also determine and understand their weaknesses and strength and anticipate their next move(s). This definition of competitive intelligence tends to identify/determine, understand and anticipate industry and competitors. Furthermore competitive intelligence is a process of monitoring the competitive environment, with the aim of providing an actionable intelligence that will enhance a company competitive advantage over its competitors. Competitive intelligence propels the decision makers to smarter more successful decisions, thereby minimizing risk, avoiding being blind-sided and getting it right the first time.

Finally, competitive intelligence is a “process” because it involves gathering, analyzing and applying information about product, competitors and the entire environment which includes the supplier, regulatory body, partners and so on and it’s a “continuous activity” because the business environment changes as the world changes which usher in more competition. Also, its gather adequate “relevant” information at an appropriate “time” because it is vital a company gets its decisions and moves correctly at the first time.… Read the rest

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Applications of Business Intelligence

The implementation of business intelligence helps organizations to achieve their goals in an effective way. Its application is not restricted to limited segments. It has a wide-spread use. It has now become mandatory for organizations to implement BI to sustain and maintain their market share in the competitive market. Some of the industries in which BI can be implemented are listed below:

• Retailing: Business Intelligence can be used to forecast the demand and analyse its fluctuations over time. This will help in optimizing the size of inventory in order to meet the customer demands. It will also help the companies to better understand the consumer behavior in order to direct their marketing campaigns. It will also help in enhancing relationship with suppliers.
• Banking: BI will help the banks and financial institutions in identifying the customer base. This will help them in planning their marketing strategies. It will also help the banks in deducing performance metrics and benchmarks in order to measure the business performance.

… Read the rest

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There are four types of green strategies: Lean Green, Defensive Green, Shaded Green and Extreme Green. Following Green Marketing Strategy Matrix illustrates the need for companies to identify their position in regards to substantiality of green market segments and differentiability of greenness in order to choose the right strategy to enter a green market.

Promotions tools adopted by this strategy are rather quiet such as public relations versus mass advertising. The Shaded Green strategy puts some secondary emphasis on greenness in its more overt promotional efforts and also pursues green product development as well. Extreme Green strategy involves heavy use of all four marketing mix elements, including place as distribution systems, massive advertising, retailers etc.

Differences among these four green strategies can be seen by considering how the 4Ps of the marketing mix are utilized in each strategy. The Lean Green strategy is the one who mainly focuses on product development, design and manufacturing. The Defensive Green strategy also pursues greenness in product section but additionally, it involves the promotional aspect of the marketing mix.

Green Strategy 1: Lean Green

Companies that choose lean green strategy indicate that they are low at both substantiality of green market segments and differentiability of greenness.… Read the rest

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This philosophy of marketing argues that firms are not really providing goods, but are actually rendering a service to consumers through their goods. This new service-dominant logic view of marketing has already made a huge impact on both the strategic marketing and relationship marketing of firms and will continue to further impact future marketing strategy.

For nearly a century, firms have placed the marketing emphasis on their products. Companies focused on the benefits and competitive advantages that their specific product provided. Whether it was a car, a toaster or a can of soda, the marketing stemmed from what was great about that product. This goods dominant logic was based on economics and the movement of goods from producer to consumer. This philosophy was unchallenged until the early 90s. Then it was questioned as the discrepancies between goods marketing and service marketing came into view.

This philosophy of Vargo and Lusch redefines marketing so that it is primarily, a service providing activity.… Read the rest

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This approach is called stealth or covert marketing, which employs marketing activities easily into consumer’s lives without awareness. These campaigns stay away from traditional advertising, where consumers are continuously aware that they are being sold something. This new form of advertising is discreet when communicating messages to consumers, working best by “flying below the consumer’s radar”. Since this new form of advertising is so hidden and is able to take on multiple forms of media and public communication, consumers stand to lose privacy, trust, freedom of choice, and control due to the fact that they are unaware that they are being persuaded, taking away their power of consent.

Stealth marketing presents new products and services by creating a “buzz” around it. By quietly letting a few individuals know of a product or service it gives it a sense of exclusivity and “cool”. This relies heavily on consumers spreading the message to others in a unique way, making sure the product is talked about without appearing to be an advertisement or company-sponsored.… Read the rest

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Ambush marketing occurred when a non-sponsor of an event attempted to pass itself off as an official sponsor. Ambush marketing is defined as the practice whereby another company, often a competitor, intrudes upon public attention surrounding the event, thereby deflecting attention toward themselves and away from the sponsors. In simple words, non-sponsors to gain benefits available only to official sponsors exploit ambush marketing.

When a sponsor purchases a sponsorship program, he aims towards orchestrating public attention onto its company or brand. In a typical sponsorship arrangement the sponsor purchases the sponsorship property rights and uses support promotion to further draw public attention to its involvement. The practice whereby another company, often a competitor, intrudes upon public attention surrounding the event, thereby deflecting attention toward themselves and away from the sponsor, is now known as “ambush marketing.”

The term ambush marketing was initially coined to describe the activities of those companies who sought to associate themselves with an event, without paying the requisite fee to the event owner. They thereby ambushed the legitimate sponsor in terms of giving the impression to consumers that they – the ambusher – were in fact the sponsor. While this narrow view of ambush marketing still exists, the term is now often used more generically to also describe a variety of wholly legitimate and morally correct methods of intruding upon public consciousness surrounding event.

In the current context, the following definition covers the concept comprehensively – Ambush marketing is a form of associative marketing, utilized by an organization to capitalize upon the awareness, attention, goodwill, and other benefits, generated by having an association with an event or property, without that organization having an official or direct connection to that event or property.… Read the rest

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From the earliest definitions of ambush marketing as a derogatory term involving ‘unauthorized’ practices, has emerged not only an acknowledgement of the considerable vagueness that surrounds the concept but also a conceptual framework of ambush marketing that more accurately reflects the balancing of sponsors contractual rights against the rights of non-sponsors to maintain a market presence during an event through legal and competitive business activities, although it has been cast as an “amorphous concept” along with being branded as a somewhat devious, unethical tactic, and an unfair marketing practice. Despite this ambush marketing has recognized its place as a legitimate marketing strategy.

Ambush marketing can be broadly described to encompass activities that exploit the publicity value of an event. This can be seen as an attempt by a company to cash in on the goodwill or popularity of a particular event by creating an association between itself and the event without permission from the relevant organisation and without paying the fees to become official sponsor. In a narrow sense, ambush marketing refers to the direct efforts of one party to weaken or attack a competitor’s official association with a sports organization acquired through the payment of sponsorship fees.… Read the rest

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The concept of guerrilla marketing was set up as an unconventional system of promotions based on time, energy and imagination instead of big marketing budgets. Typically, guerrilla marketing campaigns are unexpected and un-conventional, possibly interactive, targeted consumers in unexpected places. The aim of guerrilla marketing is to create a unique, exciting and challenging collaboration Guerrilla Marketing is specifically geared for small businesses and entrepreneurs. There is speculation in guerrilla marketing. Should be based on human psychology, not experience, judgments and assumptions. Instead of money, basic marketing investments should be time, energy and imagination. Basic statistics on where your business is profit, not sales.  On the basis of understanding the science of psychology, Guerrilla marketing focuses more on building relationships with customers and provides confidence to sell the product or service. … Read the rest

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Innovation can be defined as the implementation of new created ideas for generating business value. Many times, people use the term ‘innovation’ for ‘innovation creation’. But there is a difference between the two. While innovation creation is an important aspect of innovation processes, so is the ability to search for and identify relevant external innovation, applying existing innovation to new contexts, understand and absorb unfamiliar external innovation to blend and integrate different bodies of innovation together. Thus innovation processes are much more than innovation creation process.

Innovation is the creation, evolution, exchange and application of new idea into marketable goods and services, leading to the success of an enterprise, the vitality of a nation’s economy and the advancement of society. In simple words we can explain the term innovation as generation of novel ideas and their implementation to create new products and services to gain competitive advantage and achieve new heights in the market.

Definition of Innovation Management

There is no agreed definition of Innovation Management. The term refers to a process of generating value to the organization through the creation, dissemination, renewal and proper application of innovation.… Read the rest

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Concept of Open Innovation

According to American organizational theorist Henry Chesbrough, Open innovation is the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively. Open innovation assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as they look to advance their technology.

As mentioned by Chesbrough, there are a total of 5 paths to “Open Innovation”.

1. Firstly, the old fashion model. It work like a fortress, the firm will take ideas internally to market. This path works the same as a closed innovation concept.
2. The second path would be opening up the abilities for others. This can be achieved by bringing in ideas internally; ideas that does not fit into the firm business but might be useful for others.
3. The third path would be acquiring ideas externally. Ideas are everywhere; firms can acquire ideas from university, individuals, start-up companies and etc. They can then come out with new opportunities and solutions using these acquired knowledge by taking them to a new market; a market that the firm might not have gotten into.

… Read the rest

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Crisis management is the process by which the organisation manages a wider impact, such as media relations, and enables it to commence recovery. Crisis management is an essential component of the public relations profession and when in practice, must be used as comprehensive and meticulous as possible.… Read the rest

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The Hogan Personality Inventory is a personality test which is a measure of normal personality and is used to predict job performance. This tool has many uses and is used by both organisations and individuals. The HPI was specifically designed to aid business and commercial use and can be used throughout the recruitment process and to identify areas of a person which could be developed.

The Hogan Personality Inventory originates from a man called Robert Hogan and is sold by his company Hogan Assessments. Robert Hogan is a well known expert and international authority in psychology and he is widely credited with demonstrating how personality factors influence organisational effectiveness in a variety of areas. He has a Ph.D from the University of California and is a fellow of many different universities. Robert Hogan has quoted that “between 50-75% of managers are bad managers and this is due to the fact that they can interview well based on technical knowledge but they have bad leadership skills”.… Read the rest

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In the 1990s this concept gained momentum after the introduction of the idea of internally developed core competencies or organisations distinctive capabilities as essential means to develop a competitive edge rather than the environment by Hamel and Prahalad (1990) in their work. And there has been considerable debate over this topic in the field of strategic management as many theorists have presented different views and a consensus has not been reached. Porter considered as an important theorist advocates the positioning view and his strategy formulation technique dominated in the 1980s and since the 1990s the resource based view of the firm has increasingly come to dominate the field of strategic management.… Read the rest

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Important Role of Creativity and Innovation in the Entrepreneurial Process

Every sector of business and every sector of life is subject to creativity and innovation. If is strange that when the word creativity is mentioned most people think of painters or sculptors or even photographers and when the word innovation is used they think of technological advances, like 3D TVs, and companies like Apple and Siemens. If for example the banking industry is used as an example of innovation in a lecture, the majority of people from the audience will most like wonder about the appropriate of the use of the word, when it comes to financial institutions such as Goldman-Sacks, J. P. Morgan and even the Royal Bank of Scotland. However, the financial institutions that compose our economic system are the epitome of innovation. Their continuous innovation in creating new financial products and finding ways to generate wealth is what led to the technological, commercial, entrepreneurial and consumption “boom” that started after the end of the 2nd world war and is still going strong now, even after many financial crisis that this same system produced, with the most serious being that of 2008 with many countries and millions of people still experiencing its effects.… Read the rest

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Country Image: Precursors to Country of Origin Effect

Country image can be defined as the sum of information in the consumers’ mind about a nation/country. It has been a long known fact that “Made In” label is just as powerful and just as valuable as a “Made By” label. German engineering, Japanese miniaturization, Italian flair, Swedish design, British class, Swiss precision – those are brand values which rub off onto all the products that come from those countries

Country Image is the reason why, in the early 1990s, Americans bought Toyota Corollas (which were quite expensive) rather than Geo Prizms (which were quite cheap), even though they were exactly the same car, made in the same factory.… Read the rest

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Organizations should focus on designing a sustainable career package that supports a graduate’s continuous professional and personal development. It is important that an organization keeps track of each individual’s changing needs and priorities. This will be down to the job of a coach or a mentor who should carry the long-term and important responsibility of coaching and mentoring the graduates. Being new to the organization, graduates require continuous feedback and coaching to help them to assimilate well and be successful in their role.

Companies are placing high emphasis on employer branding on tertiary education campuses by engaging students through campus activities. Besides workshops and recruitment talks, the organization also offers business games. They also place emphasis on its employer branding to attract graduate talent. It’s about continuous on-going engagement, delivering consistent messages, following a segmented approach, and diversifying the media they use to communicate with the graduate community. Aside from conducting campus talks and attending career fairs, it has a digital media strategy using Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook to improve the awareness of company.

Organizations offer graduates a number of ways to develop their skills.… Read the rest

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Background of FedEx

During the late 1960s, Frederick Smith (Smith) chanced upon an idea to start an airline courier company. During this period, it was common practice to send packages as cargo on commercial carriers like American, United or Delta Airlines. This practice had a number of drawbacks because passenger airlines usually operated during the daytime and were grounded at night. In addition, freight forwarders (the company responsible for carrying the packages from the airport to the destination address) usually did not offer home delivery. Smith felt the need to start an airline courier company that would address all these problems. During his college years, he recognized that the United States was becoming a service-oriented economy and needed a reliable, overnight delivery service company designed to solely transport packages and documents. He wrote a Yale term paper on this idea, and received ‘C’ grade.… Read the rest

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The term data warehouse or data warehousing was first coined by Bill Inmon in the year 1990 which was defined as a “warehouse which is subject-oriented, integrated, time variant and non-volatile collection of data in support of management’s decision making process”. When referring to data warehousing as subject oriented, it simply means that the process is giving information about a particular subject rather than the details regarding the on-going operations of the company. Moreover, when data warehousing was referred to as integrated it means that the data or information which are gathered from a number of sources are then all gathered to synthesize a coherent whole. On the other hand, data warehousing being time variant simply means that the data available were identified on a particular period. Lastly, data warehousing as being non-volatile means that the data is stable and when a new data is added to the system, the old data are never removed, instead they just remain there and this enables the organization to be able to give the management consistency in their business.

In the existence of modern times with the advent of technological advancements inevitably affecting the businesses in major ways, there has also been a development and emergence of new measures, practices, and techniques which used technology to be able to provide an unwavering solution to the problems in the organization with regards to the level and kind of information that the organization needs to be able to survive and prosper amidst the increasing competition in the market.… Read the rest

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1. Customer Markets

Customer markets are characterized by long-term relations between buyers and sellers. Long-term relations evolve if buyers trust sellers to provide high quality and if sellers are trustworthy. However, changes in the terms of this implicit contract may antagonize customers and disrupt the relation. We experimentally show that mutually beneficial long-term relations frequently prevail in markets for experience goods, and that price rigidity after a temporary cost shock is much more pronounced if price increases cannot be justified by cost increases. Hence, long-term relations on customer markets mitigate market failure of the “lemons” type, but are prone to price stickiness.

Customer markets are the center of attention amongst the Six Markets Model. Customer should always remain the main focus in all marketing activities. The marketing activities needs to primarily directed at maintaining a relationship with customers, an importance on obtaining and building a long term relationships.

2. Referral Markets

The ‘referral’ market domain of the Six Markets Model consists of two main categories- customer and non-customer referral sources. Frequently, the best marketing is that done by an organization’s existing customers; which is why the creation of positive word-of-mouth referral, through delivery of outstanding service quality, is critical.… Read the rest

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Crisis can come from nowhere at any time; natural disasters, human error, and industrial accidents can all cause crisis. Sometimes the cause of a crisis is management itself; managers may insist that they face no crisis, and they fall into the brink of lying and rejection of its existence. Then, when the time of the deadline comes their answer to why the job is not finished will be: “We faced trouble and stopped the operation.” Some managers fall into the crises fallacies, and they overdo their denial of its existence. With time, the problems accumulate, causing absolute failure.

It is the management responsibility to try to solve the crisis using everything it can, beginning with self confidence, going through using all the skills, and ending by having the ability to absorb the public’s anger or fear without harming the firm’s income or reputation. If a crisis is solved by a manager without the public hearing about it then the manager has proven his brilliant capability.

Stages of Crisis in Organizations

Crises, like any business activity, have stages.… Read the rest

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