Relationship between core curriculum and college preparedness [infographic]

An interesting infographic from the Best College Review site which argues that a "Common core curriculum is not the solution to closing the achievement gap".

Some politicians here in the UK believe that the educations standards here have gone down and that we should look at systems followed by other countries.

What do you think?


Source: Best College Reviews

Presentation at the Academy of Marketing Conference 2013

Just got back from Cardiff where I had gone to present a paper at the Academy of Marketing Annual Conference 2013. This year it was hosted by the University of South Wales in Cardiff. The venue of the conference was the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. The weather was really nice - warm and sunny. At first I did not notice anybody familiar but gradually over the day, got to meet some old friends and made some new ones as well.



The key note was delivered by Prof. Kozinets from York University in Canada and one of the leading experts on social media marketing. He is well known for Netnography, the research methodology which he developed. I found his key note address on marketing relevance really interesting and he highlighted the need for us, academics to engage with different audiences besides other academics, via social media and other resources. He also mentioned academics love of using jargon in our writings (which not a lot of people understand) and the need to be accessible. It's hard to change your ways but I sincerely hope that academics who are in love with what they think is "proper academic language", think and reflect on this.

I only attended for a day but there were some really interesting papers in the sessions which I attended. I wish I could have stayed for the whole duration of the conference but had prior engagements.

I was the first presenter in my session: 'Brand, Identity and Corporate Reputation 2', on Tuesday 9 July 2013 from 15.45 - 17.15 in the Rowe-Beddoe Studio. I was a bit nervous but the presentation went better than expected. There was some differences of opinion about the methodology, several questions and suggestions for further improvement.

Here is some information about the paper I presented. Click the title to download the whole paper.

0189: Brand Personality Dimensions and Traits in Malaysia

Mozard Mohtar 1, Azni Zarina Taha 1, Dilip Mutum 2, Ezlika Ghazali 1
1University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2 Coventry University, Coventry, West Midlands, UK

Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to investigate the dimensions and traits of brand personality scale in Malaysia. We also tested the generalizability of the new Brand Personality scale of Geuens et al., (2009), which consisted of 12-item scale used for cross-cultural studies. Using etic and emic approaches, items generated were cross-referenced with unique items from 10 published scales in top ranking journals. A total of 96 items were available for Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA).Principal Axis Factoring with Oblimin rotation revealed that there 12 factor structures existed in Malaysia. All factors showed strong Cronbach a values and corresponded more to Aaker’s (1997) western Brand Personality scale rather than those of Geuens’ et al. (2009).

NOTE: Noticed that there was a typo on the last line of the 3rd para. It should be "20 minutes" instead of 220 minutes.

If you are working on brand personality, I would love to hear your thoughts on our paper.

Online behaviour and small business [Infographic]

Some really interesting information from Vistaprint.
Thanks to Richard Brennan for sharing the infographic.

Working with Bloggers - The Cambridge Satchel Company

The Cambridge Satchel Company - an amazing British company success story. Now a World famous fashion brand, it started out from necessity - a mother's desire to send her daughter to a better school which she could not afford. The company was founded in 2008, in Cambridge by Julie Deane with just £600. Initially targeted at school children, the brand suddenly developed a cult following, thanks to young fashion bloggers. They now have their own factory in  Wigston near Leicester.

The company opened their first permanent store in Seven Dials, Covent Garden. The store has a 'Bloggers Lounge' a space for the blogging community who are credited for the brand's initial success.



Working with FedEx:



Their Google Chrome ad:



Check out their blog as well.

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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.