Are you a nowist

I recently received a complementary book titled simply "#Now" from prolific author and fellow WBS PhD alumni, Dr. Max McKeowen. This book was very different from his previous books, namely, Why they don't buy and The Strategy Book. To be honest I initially found it quite tough to review the book. I am generally skeptical of all the self help books out there but after reading the book realised that key concepts are indeed grounded in psychological theories.

There main and very interesting concept presented in the book is about what Max calls "Nowist" behaviour and hence the title of the book. By being a Nowist and being action oriented, Max contends that we can all be effective and happy.

While reading this book, I was reflecting about myself and people in my life. Even though I believe that we are all different and our personalities cannot be grouped into very distinct categories, I realised that I am more of a #thenist person, while my wife is clearly #nowist. I am more of a wait and see guy and not very spontaneous. However, there were times when I did become #nowist, after being persuaded or forced by my wife and took a leap of faith. And thinking back, those lead to some really amazing things - like getting accepted for a PhD at Warwick with a scholarship, getting a job at Coventry and now at Nottingham.

This is an amazing book and I would recommend everyone to read it. Move away from a waiting state of mind to the #Now.

Workshop on Islamic Financial Management and Marketing Principles for SMEs

Helping create some buzz about a workshop:

Application of Islamic Financial Management and Marketing Principles: Preparing SMEs for International Business  Two-day programme for start-up owners, venture capitalists, prospective entrepreneurs from both services and manufacturing sectors. The primary focus of this training is to provide you with a comprehensive synopsis of the tools needed to manage financial functions efficiently, and to develop halal marketing strategies that are necessary for an internationally diversified small and medium enterprise (SME). The course will be delivered using presentations, discussions, case studies and role plays that will help the participants in fulfilling the financial and marketing objectives of their SMEs in a shari’ah compliant way.  Financial management and marketing strategy to prepare SMEs for International Business  Small businesses are essential ingredients of the high-growth Asian markets. Growth of SMEs, particularly that operate based on shari’ah, in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and in South Asia has been astonishing. As the local market is becoming too competitive, local SMEs are in need to expand their operation across border. Financial management deals with two major aspects: collecting funds and investing funds. A good financial manager should know the alternative methods of low cost shari’ah compliant fund collection in foreign lands. Similarly, one must know the criteria that make their investment shari’ah compliant. A good Islamic market strategy will help local SMEs in targeting their foreign customers and marketing their products in foreign lands in a halal way.  Key financial and marketing management questions from an Islamic perspective:   How to collect money for SMEs?  Where to invest money?  How to write a financial plan for loan application?  How to do halal marketing? How it is different from conventional marketing?  How to manage marketing challenge in foreign land?  How to manage typical Islamic marketing challenge for SMEs?  Learning outcomes After completing the training, you will be able: To develop an understanding of Islamic financial management for SMEs that includes an overview of the industy, opportunities and challenges. To learn how to prepare a financial plan to apply for bank/venture capital loans.  To learn how to prepare a halal branding strategy for your company/product.  To analyse the opportunities and challenges for Islamic SMEs in other countries.  Methods of training and assessment Powerpoint presentations  Case exercises  Flipchart presentations for brainstorming Presentation from participants  Programme outline Day One Module one – Financial management of Islamic business  Element of a financial plan Forecasting financial variables Applying for Islamic bank loans Understanding shari'ah compliant investments Module two – Alternative financing, operational management, and sustainability  Understanding alternative financing available Preparing cash budget and determining funds needs  Influence of taxation (GST) and the way forward Micro-equity funds and Micro-takaful insurance   Day Two Module three – Essentials of halal marketing     Elements of a halal branding strategy Target markets and customer satisfaction in Islamic business  Module four – Advertisement, branding and distribution of halal products   Social image of shari'ah compliant advertising Branding of Islamic business Creating a sustainable brand value Supply chain management of halal products  Costing and profitability of the halal product    Programme fee Early bird price: RM2,500/person + GST of 6% Normal price: RM2,600/person + GST of 6% Group of three and above: RM2,200/person + GST of 6% (for more than three delegates attending from the same company/institution) The programme fee covers tuition, case materials and tea breaks.  About the programme leaders Dr Mamunur Rashid is an Assistant Professor of Finance at Nottingham University Business School Malaysia. He has been teaching and conducting training on financial management and Islamic entrepreneurship for the last ten years. His area of expertise includes financial management, financing of small firms, Islamic business, and Islamic ethics. He worked on the “Malaysian Workforce Quality” (a Malaysian Human Resource Development Ministry project) and he trained senior officials of PVH Corp., on advance computer application in business in Bangladesh. Dr Mamunur is also the Deputy Director of the Centre for Islamic Business and Finance Research (CIBFR) at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus. He has published on Islamic finance and business, business ethics and Islamic services marketing. Dr Mamunur is a Malaysian Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF) certified trainer. Dr Dilip Mutum is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Nottingham University Business School Malaysia. Prior to this, he was attached with the Coventry Business School, Coventry University, as a Lecturer in Marketing and Advertising. He has also taught at the Warwick Business School, University of Warwick and Universiti Utara Malaysia. Before joining academia, Dilip has worked with various organisations in different capacities. This includes a short stint as a sub-editor of a magazine and as the Communications Officer for Consumers International - Asia Pacific office. Dilip has published widely in journals and books, as well as presented at national and international conferences. His research interests include digital consumption, social networking, customer relationship management, and social marketing. His Twitter profile (@admutum) has over 8000 followers.    To register, download the registration form.  For more information, contact Nottingham University Business School Malaysia Executive Education at +6(03) 8924 8303 (Ms Judy Wong; email: Judy.Wong@nottingham.edu.my) or by email NUBS.EDP@nottingham.edu.my  or visit our website at Executive Education.

Latest paper on online switching barriers and loyalty

Really delighted that our paper titled 'Constructing Online Switching Barriers: Examining the Effects of Switching Costs and Alternative Attractiveness on E-Store Loyalty in Online Pure-Play Retailers' (Yes, it is a really long title), has been published in 'Electronic Markets: - The International Journal on Networked Business'.

I co-wrote this paper with Ghazali, E., Nguyen, B. and Mohd Any, A. A.

It has been published online and should be is now out in print as well. Here is the abstract of the paper.

Abstract

Developing switching barriers to retain customers has become a critical marketing strategy for online retailers. However, research on the role of switching barriers in e-retailing is still limited. Recent trends show that when competitors are just one click away, it is questionable if customer loyalty can be achieved at all in online environments. This leads to the research question on whether switching barriers have any impact on e-loyalty in pure-play retailers. The paper examines the influence of switching barriers on customer retention (i.e., e-store loyalty) and further investigates the moderating effects of switching costs and alternative attractiveness. Data were gathered via a survey of 590 shoppers of online pure-play retailers in the UK. Findings show that customer satisfaction and the two dimensions of switching barriers (perceived switching costs and perceived attractiveness of alternatives) significantly influence customer loyalty. Contrary to findings in earlier studies, it was found that switching costs did not moderate the relationships between satisfaction and loyalty nor between perceived attractiveness of alternatives and loyalty. The paper makes imperative recommendations to develop switching barriers and to foster loyalty along with suggestions for future research.

Please let me know if you would like a soft copy of the paper: dilip.mutum@nottingham.edu.my

To cite:

Ghazali, E., Nguyen, B., Mutum, D. S. and Mohd Any, A. A. (2016). Constructing Online Switching Barriers: Examining the Effects of Switching Costs and Alternative Attractiveness on E-Store Loyalty in Online Pure-Play Retailers, Electronic Markets: - The International Journal on Networked Business. 26(2), 157-171.
DOI: 10.1007/s12525-016-0218-1

Power of advertising

What comes to your mind when anybody mentions Santa Claus- Father Christmas?

This image?

A jolly, portly old man with big white beard and wearing a red suit.

But Look closely at the image. What is he drinking?

"In 1931, Coca‑Cola commissioned Swedish-American artist Haddon Sundblom to paint Santa Claus for the company's Christmas adverts. Prior to this, Santa had been portrayed in a variety of ways throughout history: tall and gaunt; short and elfin; distinguished and intellectual; even downright frightening." - Source.



I always use this example to highlight the power of marketing (and advertising).

Santa was not created by Coca Cola, but the cultural icon we have come to associate with him was indeed created by Coca Cola. 

Also read: 5 Things You Never Knew About Santa Claus and Coca-Cola.

Minority Report: My favourite Sci fi movie

I am a big sci-fi fan and among all the sci-fi movies, I think Minority Report (2002) is the best. Not Star Wars, Star Trek or even Blade Runner but Minority Report. The movie was directed by Steven Spielberg and had Tom Cruise playing the lead character. It was based on the story by famous sci-fi writer, Philip K. Dick.

Spolier alert

This is a movie that I use as an example in a number of marketing modules that I teach. It is amazing because so many of the things predicted in the story/ movie have actually come true.

1. Predicting crime before it happens

The Los Angeles and Santa Cruz police departments working along with academics (of course) and a company called PredPol used big data to predict crime. They adapted an algorithm that has been used to predict earthquakes and fed it past crime data. According to the reports, the software was able to predict where crimes are likely to occur down to 500 square feet. yes, that's right - 500 feet. The use of this software resulted in a 33% reduction in burglaries and 21% reduction in violent crimes in LA where the software was used.

2. Computers controlled by hand gestures

Though not as advanced as in the movie, the tech is already here - in fact, it is quite common and those who have a Microsoft Xbox One would be aware of the Kinect hand gesture navigation. However, this feature was dropped last year with their latest update.

3. Completely automated Factories

Toyota is already building automated car factories run completely by robots.

4. Product Placement in Movies

Tom Cruise's character escapes using a futuristic Lexus car. The Lexus 2054 concept car was developed specifically for the movie at the request of Steven Spielberg. Though not a typical product placement in a movie, it is a good example.

5. Autonomous cars

These driverless/ self-driving cars are no longer science fiction and several car companies, as well as Google, are in the process of testing out various prototypes on the road. See Wired: Autonomous vehicles and Popular science: autonomous cars.

6. Targeted ads

The movie features retinal recognition technologies which trigger targeted and personalised ads based on the customer's preferences and past shopping history. Can you recall where this happens? Though this is not a reality yet, researchers are already working on biometric retinal recognition. A number of websites including Amazon and Facebook now deliver targeted and personalized ads based on your surfing and shopping history.

Did you notice other predictions in the minority report that has come true?

What is your favourite sci-fi movie?

Virtual worlds, social media gaming, celebrity branding and personal branding

I recently attended the ANZMAC (The Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy) 2015 conference which was hosted by the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. It ran from the 30th of November to the 2nd of December.

I presented a paper titled "Lady Gaga goes virtual: Social network gaming communities’ response towards virtual branding efforts" which I co-wrote with Dr. Ezlika Ghazali, The University of Malaya and Dr. Bang Nguyen, East China University of Science and Technology.

Here is the abstract of the paper:

"This study examines community members' response towards a one-off online personal branding campaign of Lady Gaga. Using a qualitative content analysis approach, the study critically examines forum messages from the official Zynga forums of the social game, Farmville. The findings reveal that in the context of social network games, the marketers' role is, to some extent, reduced, while the roles of consumers, especially opinion leaders, become paramount. Theoretical and managerial implications are also discussed."

The background of how I thought about doing a research on this topic is quite interesting (at least to me). While doing my PhD a few years back, I was introduced to Farmville, a game on Facebook. I think that this game as well as other social games helped me through some of the most stressful times during my PhD journey. It was around the time I was writing up my thesis that American
singer and songwriter Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, who brands herself as Lady Gaga, partnered with Zynga, the creators of Farmville to launch and promote her album 'Born this way'. As far as I know, she was the first artist to ever launch an album on a social media game.

I did a bit of preliminary research and realised that this campaign presented several research opportunities to examine the response of members of an online community towards a branding campaign.

Most studies on virtual worlds have focused on World of Warcraft and Second Life and no one has actually looked at games on Facebook. The gaming communities are different from the Brand communities on Facebook and present a totally different context. I also discovered that studies on celebrity branding mostly examined their role as a brand ambassador and specifically how the brand image fits with the personality of the celebrity. There was a lack of studies on the celebrity as a brand - which I feel is linked to concept of personal branding. To my surprise, when I looked at pesonal branding literature and how I could link to celebrity branding, I discovered that most of the papers were in human resource journals and linked to personal development.

There is of course the question of methodology. I could have used the increasingly popular Netnographic techniques made popular by Robert Kozinets. However, in the end I used content analysis method for this research.

I would love to hear from and to collaborate with other researchers who are researching in any of the areas listed here.

Academics and the dark side

Many of us grew up watching Star Wars and the various films has had an impact on a number of us. Anyway, one of my papers is titled  "Customer relationship management: advances, dark sides, exploitation and unfairness." My friend Bang Nguyen (my co-author) came up with the name. He is a big sci-fi fan and though I have not confirmed it with him, you can probably guess where the phrase "dark sides" come from. In fact, he has written a few other papers with the phrase "dark side" in the title.

Today while going through some academic papers, I came across one with "dark side" in the title. This made me wonder and a quick search on Google Scholar reveals that there are around  3,920,000 paper with the phrase "dark side" in the title. When I restrict the search results to publications which came out this year (2015),   there were an astounding 50,100 results including books, chapters and journal papers.

I further narrowed down the search to the keywords "dark side marketing" and restricted to publications this year, gave me 8,770 results.

The Force is definitely with us.

Malaysia is top market for luxury car brands in South East Asia

updated: 15/10/2015; 13/10/2015

The biggest car market in ASEAN is Indonesia (sales of 830096 units in 2014) followed by Thailand (with 579273 units sold) and Malaysia (444551 units sold) (ASEAN automative federation, 2014).

However, when it comes to luxury car brands, my research shows that Malaysia is the leading country in ASEAN.

For example, take the BMW group. 2014 was a fantastic year for them with record breaking sales through out the World (including the 3 countries listed above) with 2,117,965 BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce vehicles sold. Let us compare the sales in these 3 countries:

1. Indonesia: 9,046 vehicles, comprising 7,808 BMWs, 655 MINIs and 583 BMW Motorrads
2. Thailand; 8,386 vehicles of both BMW and MINI brands
3. Malaysia: 9,419 vehicles with monthly sales upwards of 900 units.

Mercedes-Benz, which is the leading premium car brand in all the three countries also shows a similar trend.

Mercedes-Benz Thailand sold more vehicles with 11,524 units sold as compared to Malaysia (a record-breaking 9,419 vehicles) in 2014. In the first five months of this year, Mercedes-Benz Thailand took the lead in the premium car segment in the country with sales record of 4108 units. However, Mercedes-Benz Malaysia recorded their all-time sales record in the first quarter of 2015 with 5163 units passenger cars sold. This is also higher than in Indonesia which saw sales of 1800 cars between January and July 2015.

Though I cannot generalise based on sales figures of only two luxury car makers, preliminary results from other luxury companies also show that Malaysia is one of the top markets for their cars as well in the ASEAN region.

This thus leads to some interesting questions. Besides population and income, what do marketers also need to take into account when it comes to luxury products?

Sources:

• http://www.bmw.co.th/th/en/general/bmwinsight/news_read.php?id=565&year=
• https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/asia/pressDetail.html?title=bmw-group-indonesia-reports-significant-growth-in-volume-in-2013&outputChannelId=16&id=T0166566EN&left_menu_item=node__4100
• http://paultan.org/2015/01/14/mercedes-benz-malaysia-record-sales-2014/
• http://paultan.org/2015/06/03/mercedes-benz-malaysia-best-ever-sales-in-may-15/
• http://www.mercedes-benz.com.my/content/media_library/malaysia/media_library/About_Us/events___sponsorship/2015_Events/pr-1st-half-sales-pdf.object-Single-MEDIA.tmp/MBM1H2015NewsRelease7Jul15.pdf

Call for contributions for book on Islamic finance, marketing and management from an Asian Perspective

We invite all colleagues to submit chapters for a book titled 'Advances in Islamic Finance, Marketing and Management: An Asian Perspective' co-edited by Dilip Mutum, Muhammad Mohsin Butt and Mamunur Rashid. The book will be published by Emerald.

Important Dates:

Expression of interest – a 500-word proposal – September 30, 2015
Decision on the proposal – October 10, 2015
First draft of the paper – February 10, 2016
Submission after preliminary editing/correction/proofreading – March 10, 2016
Review by Emerald – May 10, 2016
Final submission after secondary editing/correction/proofreading – June 10, 2016

Please email your proposal to mamunur.rashid@nottingham.edu.my on or before September 30, 2015.

Call for marketing case studies

There is a call for case studies for an edited book entitled STRATEGIC MARKETING CASES IN EMERGING ECONOMIES co-edited by Atanu Adhikari (Indian Institute of Kozhikode) & Sanjit Roy (The University of Western Australia), which will be published by Springer.

Important dates:

• Submission of expression of interest through case interest form: 15th August 2015.
• Decision on the case interest form to be announced: 30th August 2015.
• Submission of complete case and teaching note: 15th December 2015.
• Communication of reviewers’ comments to the authors: 30th January 2016.
• Submission of final version of the case and the teaching note: 27th February 2016.
• Communication of decision on acceptance of the case: 30th March 2016.

For submission of case related documents and for any clarification, please contact either:
Dr. Atanu Adhikari
Associate Professor - Marketing
Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode
Email: atanu.adhikari@iimk.ac.in
or
Dr. Sanjit Roy
Assistant Professor, Marketing
University of Western Australia
Email: sanjit.roy@uwa.edu.au