Today, over $20 billion a year is spent on marketing/advertising/public opinion research services around the world. Spending on marketing research is $6.9 billion in the United States alone. During the past two decades, the research market has become highly concentrated, with about 54 percent of the market being held by the 50 largest worldwide organizations. The other half of the market is shared by a thousand or more small research firms. The concentration is even more pronounced in the United States, where the 10 largest firms account for 64 percent of total U.S. spending for marketing research. In the highly competitive retail market, understanding the customer is paramount. In order to fill in the gaps of consumer’s buying motive and actual buying, companies have to understand the customers, and of course, marketing research is the tool for gaining knowledge about the customers. Marketing research is a systematic gathering of information Continue reading
Modern Management Concepts
Differences Between Emotional Quotient (EQ) and Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
Intelligence Quotient (IQ) Intelligence Quotient is a number or a count of the intelligence of a person. In a standard IQ test, a person’s quotient of intelligence is compared and determined on the basis of the scores of other on the same test. These days more and more people are relying on IQ tests for a lot of reasons. IQ tests have become a parameter for educational institutes and corporate offices in conjunction with personality tests. Intelligence Quotients are used by people to find out a person’s mental age, which is the persons understanding levels and performance capabilities at a particular age. A Standard IQ test would consist of tasks that involve the use of mental ability and vary on their difficulty levels. The test includes gauging of memory, reasoning power, numerical capability, definitions and scope of recalling data. Psychologists have determined a given age at which people can correctly Continue reading
Sustaining and Disruptive Technologies
In 1997, the best-selling book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma” Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen came up with two basic categories of technologies: sustaining and disruptive. Christensen in his sequel, “The Innovators Solution” has changed the term disruptive technology to “disruptive innovation” to accentuate that it is not exactly the technology that is disruptive but the strategy of the innovation that leads to disruption. Read More:  The Innovator’s Dilemma Sustaining Technologies Sustaining Technologies is an incremental increase in the features or performance for an established product. Some sustaining technologies can be discontinuous or radical in nature, while others are of incremental nature. They basically rely on improvements along with the dimensions of performance in an already established technology. We can see some significant percentages of the innovations we come across are sustaining innovations. We can consider an example of desktop computers. The significant natures of computers have not changed since Continue reading
Entrepreneurial Motivation Factors
Entrepreneurship is the process of adding something new [creativity] and something different [innovation] for the purpose of creating wealth for the individual and adding value to society. An entrepreneur has to be creative and innovative in order to have a sustainable growing business. In fact, entrepreneurs are considered as one of the main contributors to country economy growth. Entrepreneurial activity benefit community and society as it creates job opportunity, income, products and services with his creativity and innovation to us. Important Factors of Entrepreneurial Motivation Motivation is one of the elements in influencing the process of entrepreneurship. The general entrepreneurial motivation factors, including need for achievement, locus of control, vision, desire for independence, passion, and drive. Need for Achievement: Individuals who have higher level in need for achievement are will have higher desire to involve in activities or tasks that have a high degree of individual responsibility for outcomes. Entrepreneurial Continue reading
The Concept of Entrepreneurial Opportunities
Most entrepreneurial firms are started with finding the opportunities. The opportunity is very importance. It is a favorable set of circumstances that creates the need for a new product, service, or business idea. An opportunity has four essential qualities: it is attractive, durable, timely and anchored in a product, service or business that creates or adds value for its buyer or end user. The entrepreneurs usually use three ways to identify an opportunity. There are observing trends, solving a problem and finding gaps in the marketplace. Entrepreneurial opportunities as situations in which new goods, services, raw materials, markets and organizing methods can be introduced through the formation of new means, ends, or means-ends relationships. These situations do not need to change the terms of economic exchange to be entrepreneurial opportunities, but only need to have the potential to alter the terms of economic exchange. In addition, unlike optimizing or satisfying Continue reading
Organizational Success through Creativity and Innovation
Creativity and innovation are generally understood as routine drivers of successful organizational growth. Organizations are facing enormous pressure to innovate in order to attain competitive advantage from the global environment that is increasingly becoming intricate and competitive. Due to this, organizational management has to inculcate or reinforce culture of creativity and innovation within organization; however, much of the focus in this endeavor is on the individual level but team work is also essentially encouraged. Individuals are of vital importance in creativity and the innovation process requires a supportive well-managed atmosphere that can translate novel ideas into innovative product effectively. Generally the two concepts are diverse as creativity can be production of new ideas and concepts, which are applied through a process, which then becomes innovation. This states that any innovation is a process that is based on the creativity of mind(s) and creativity is reliant on innovation to become tangible. Continue reading