Dilip S Mutum PhD

Friday, 14 June 2013

Shop by video. Review of the HUGO BOSS movie - Shanghai Affairs

I received an interesting email about an innovative form of advertising yesterday. Hugo Boss has come up with an innovative way to show off their BOSS summers 2013 collection - a short movie (advertorial with a story-line?) called Shanghai Affairs starring Taiwanese model and actress Lin Chiling and Spanish model, Jon Kortajarena.

Supposedly, customers can shop products from the collection directly from the movie. At certain points on the movie, text links titled "discover this look" appears. Clicking the link takes you to a page listing the products shown in that particular scene.

However, contrary to their promise, you cannot buy the products directly online from the movie. I found out the links take you to their main web page and not to the products. In other words, if you are interested in any of the products, you have to find the the nearest HUGO BOSS outlet and buy it from there or have to search whether the product is available on their online shop.

I wonder if this a wonderful plan that was not clearly thought out in the beginning, when they realised that most of their customers prefer to shop at their outlets rather than online.

Of course I would have preferred it if the products in the movie had direct links to the product pages on their online store.

What do you think of the idea?

What are the key issues?

Would love to hear your comments.

Click here to watch the video Shanghai Affairs.

Monday, 10 June 2013

Another University, another graduation

Just received an email recently about the Coventry University graduation ceremony in July. This time I will not be one of the spectators up on the stage but rather, one of the graduates. I will be receiving my Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education Professional Practice.

This will the 5th University I am graduating from. The first was Dr. Yashwant Singh Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry in Himachal Pradesh, India. The second was University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I then became a Certified E-Commerce Professional from Informatics, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. The last university I studied in before Coventry univ. was the University of Warwick.

It was not part of a plan - it just happened. Wonder what's next?

Sunday, 9 June 2013

NVIVO 10 training

Last week, I attended the basic and advanced NVIVO 10 training sessions (2.5 hours each) on the 3rd and 6th. Some of my friends were quite surprised as I am a "quantitative" guy and one even joked "You are moving to the other camp". This actually underlines the philosophical divide that exists in academia (especially in the social sciences) between the positivists and the interpretivists in particular.

My research philosophy is grounded in positivism and my PhD Thesis was based upon extensive quantitative research, using structural equation modelling. Previously, I did not have the inclination (nor the time) to learn more about the various qualitative methods (and tools like NVIVO). However, after teaching research methods and the fact that a number of my dissertation students were using qualitative methods forced me to move outside my comfort zone. There also seems to be an increasing move towards research involving mixed methods which I feel is a good development. I am really into netnography, the process and term coined by Professor Robert V. Kozinets, Professor of Marketing, Schulich School of Business, York University.

Anyway, the session were led by Dr. Laura Venn, Co-founder and Director of Research, Innovative Futures Research, a company based in Warwick. I found the two session really useful and wish I had taken them much earlier. I have used qualitative methods to analyse discussions forums on the net (paper submitted for presentation at a Conference recently) and it would have made my life much easier. I had to download hundreds of webpages and code them the old fashioned way with a lot of cut and pasting. The ability to visualize connections by generating tag clouds, tree maps and cluster analysis are what attracted me in the first place. However a new amazing feature of NVIVO 10 is that it allows you to to actually capture all the information from the discussion forums and social media including Facebook and Twitter straightaway.

Laura did provide some examples and I know the time was quite limited but I wish we had more hands on training using actual exercises. I did learn a lot but will definitely need to play around more before I am really fluent with it. Fortunately QSR (the company which owns NVIVO) offers a number of free online webminars and I am attending one tomorrow.

You can download trial copies of the software (lasts for 30 days) here: http://www.qsrinternational.com/products_nvivo_free-trial-software.aspx

Monday, 3 June 2013

Social Media Marketing Infographic

One of the best infographics on the state of social media marketing today comes from Wishpond based on data from Experian.

Visit the post on Wishpond.

Monday, 20 May 2013

Book on marketing case studies from emerging markets

For slightly more than a year, I have been really busy on a book which I co-edited with my colleagues Dr. Sanjit Roy and Eva Kipnis. A joint effort by academic members of our department, along with collborators from other Universities and the industry, the book has a number of unique case studies from emerging markets with up to date and relevant marketing issues. The book will be published by Springer and we have sent of the final document to them last week.

The book (hard cover) is expected to come out in September this year. It will also be available as an eBook as well.

Click the link below to buy the book:

Marketing Cases from Emerging Markets

Tuesday, 7 May 2013

Structural Equation Modelling workshop

My colleague Dr. Sanjit Roy Kumar, will be running a Structural Equation Modelling Course. The course will run from September 4 – 6, 2013 at Coventry University, Coventry, UK.

This course is a three-day programme on structural equation modelling (SEM) using the software package AMOS. The main objective of the course is to enable participants to develop a good understanding of the SEM applications in the field of social and behavioural sciences.

Course outline

Day 1: Begin the course with an introduction to SEM with some emphasis on the applications of Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS)

Day 2: An introduction to higher-order confirmatory factor analysis and structural path analysis

Day 3: Finally, learn how to deal with the multi-group analysis for both measurement and structural models

For more information on the course, please visit the webpage:
www.coventry.ac.uk/structuralequationmodelling

For any further inquiries, you may email Ms. Katherine McHugh at Katherine.Mchugh@coventry.ac.uk.

Tuesday, 26 February 2013

Coventry University Blog Project 2013

I started teaching the E-Marketing postgraduate module this semester. At Coventry University Business School, this is a core option module for the MSc Strategic Marketing Management, MA Marketing Management, MA Sport Marketing, MSc International Marketing, MSc Event Management, MA Sport Business Management and MA Advertising and Marketing course. I have a few MBA students as well.

Part of the assessment of this module is via a group coursework and as I was preparing for this module right before this semester, I had several fantastic ideas. However, in the end I decided to go with something which was based on my area of expertise and with the objective to equip the students with hands-on experience of using relevant social media platforms and tools and teaching them how to practically apply the e-marketing theories learnt in class. Thus was born the Coventry University Blog Project 2013.

The students were required to work in groups with each group creating a blog based on their areas of interest. They were then given a series of tasks to complete. Besides creating compelling content, the students had to promote their blogs - both offline and online, with special emphasis on social networks. They were also required to keep track of their visitor statistics and post them weekly on a forum on the module Moodle page (the e-learning software platform used by Coventry University Business School). In the end, they will be required to hand in a 8000 word long report based on the project.

Several of the groups have done exceedingly well and I am quite proud of what we have achieved.

Given below is a list of the blogs which the students have created :