Company operating in a B2B market: case study on marketing communication

This version contains the suggestions of the elements of the JuryNo contexto de uma constante mudança e evolução, o marketing sempre foi uma ferramenta fundamental para acompanhar as alterações dos mercados, de forma a promover a adaptação das estratégias às novas condições das empresas. O objetivo deste relatório do estágio é estudar e explorar o tema do mercado Business-to-Business e Business-to-Consumer, comunicações de marketing e a importância da comunicação intercultural nos negócios através da minha experiência adquirida durante o estágio na empresa Snow Factory, SLU. O presente relatório do estágio tem como foco, em primeiro lugar, as especificidades dos mercados empresariais, planeamento de marketing e implementação da estratégia no contexto B2B, visão dos mercados e dos compradores, com base em estudos de diversos autores. Além disso, o estágio demonstra as diferenças entre o marketing B2B e B2C. Em segundo lugar, este relatório revela a função de atendimento ao cliente e as minhas principais responsabilidades durante o estágio. Em terceiro lugar, também será discutido o comportamento de compra da empresa e as potenciais circunstâncias de compra. Por fim, o relatório analisará os fatores interculturais envolvidos numa experiência de estágio, ilustrando conceitos e componentes importantes que contribuem para a definição do conceito. Como vivemos em época de globalização, o público está cada vez mais atento à comunicação intercultural como imprescindível elemento para o sucesso, tanto na vida pessoal como na área profissional. Consequentemente, a comunicação intercultural é mais importante do que nunca para as empresas. Este relatório se concentrará nas atividades desenvolvidas ao longo do estágio de seis meses na Snow Factory Company relativamente ao perfil da organização e a importância do mercado business-to-business e da comunicação intercultural na comunidade global.In the context of constant innovation and evolution, marketing has always been a fundamental tool to follow market changes, in order to help companies to adapt their strategies to the new conditions. The goal for this internship report is to study and explore the theme of Business-to-Business and Business-to-Consumer market, marketing communications and the importance of intercultural communication in business through my internship experience at the company Snow Factory, SLU. This internship report aims, firstly, on the specificities of business markets, marketing planning and strategy implementation in the B2B context, insight of the markets and the buyers, based on studies of several authors. Also, it will highlight differences between B2B and B2C marketing. Secondly, this report will focus on customer service role and my main responsibilities during the internship. Thirdly, it will also be discussed the business buying behaviour and potential buying circumstances. Finally, the report will analyze the intercultural factors involved in an internship experience, and so illustrating important concepts and components that contribute to the concept definition. Living in globalized time, the public is increasingly paying attention to intercultural communication as a crucial element of success, both in life and at work. Consequently, intercultural communication is now more important than it ever was for companies. This report will focus on the activities developed throughout the six-month internship at Snow Factory Company regarding the organization’s profile and the importance of the business-to-business market and intercultural communication in the global community

Factors shaping the evolution of electronic documentation systems

The main goal is to prepare the space station technical and managerial structure for likely changes in the creation, capture, transfer, and utilization of knowledge. By anticipating advances, the design of Space Station Project (SSP) information systems can be tailored to facilitate a progression of increasingly sophisticated strategies as the space station evolves. Future generations of advanced information systems will use increases in power to deliver environmentally meaningful, contextually targeted, interconnected data (knowledge). The concept of a Knowledge Base Management System is emerging when the problem is focused on how information systems can perform such a conversion of raw data. Such a system would include traditional management functions for large space databases. Added artificial intelligence features might encompass co-existing knowledge representation schemes; effective control structures for deductive, plausible, and inductive reasoning; means for knowledge acquisition, refinement, and validation; explanation facilities; and dynamic human intervention. The major areas covered include: alternative knowledge representation approaches; advanced user interface capabilities; computer-supported cooperative work; the evolution of information system hardware; standardization, compatibility, and connectivity; and organizational impacts of information intensive environments

Talking a team into being in online workplace collaborations: the discourse of virtual work

Digital communication technologies led to a revolution in how people interact at work: relying on computer-mediated communication technologies is now a must, rather than an alternative. This empirical study investigates how colleagues in a virtual team use synchronous online communication platform in the workplace. Inspired by the conceptualisation of web-based communication platforms as tool, place or context of social construction, we explore the discursive strategies that contribute to the construction of the team’s shared sense of purpose and identity, a collegial atmosphere and consequently lead to effective collaboration. The close analyses of real-life data from a multinational workplace provide insights into the everyday communication practices of virtual team members. Our findings supplement organisational literature based on etic observations of the effectiveness of virtual work and provide a basis for further theorisations about how communication technologies affect the ecology of and discourse practices in computer-mediated communication at work

Virtual Teams: Work/Life Challenges - Keeping Remote Employees Engaged

Remotely located employees are quickly becoming a norm in the modern workplace in response to evidence that telecommuters save on costs and produce more efficiently. There are many intangible benefits also felt with the increasing prevalence of remote employees. Telecommuters are more satisfied with their work/life balance and report lower rates of job burnout. Though there are also many well-identified setbacks remotely located managers and employees may face. Employers see the most success with telecommuting by first recruiting the people best fit to fill these remote roles. However, the process of developing remote employees is a process that requires constant monitoring. The purpose of this paper is to identify the best practices being used by companies to keep remote employees engaged while simultaneously avoiding burnout

Generating socially appropriate tutorial dialog

Analysis of student-tutor coaching dialogs suggest that good human tutors attend to and attempt to influence the motivational state of learners. Moreover, they are sensitive to the social face of the learner, and seek to mitigate the potential face threat of their comments. This paper describes a dialog generator for pedagogical agents that takes motivation and face threat factors into account. This enables the agent to interact with learners in a socially appropriate fashion, and foster intrinsic motivation on the part of the learner, which in turn may lead to more positive learner affective states

Framing the Psycho-Social and Cultural Aspects of Human-Machine Communication

In this introduction to the fourth volume of the journal Human-Machine Communication, we present and discuss the nine articles selected for inclusion. In this essay, we aim to frame some crucial psychological, sociological, and cultural aspects of this field of research. In particular, we situate the current scholarship from a historical perspective by (a) discussing humanity’s long walk with hybridity and otherness, at both the cultural and individual development levels, (b) considering how the organization of capital, labor, and gender relations serve as fundamental context for understanding HMC in the present day, and (c) contextualizing the development of the HMC field in light of seismic, contemporary shifts in society and the social sciences. We call on the community of researchers, students, and practitioners to ask the big questions, to ground research and theory in the past as well as the real and unfolding lifeworld of human-machine communication (including what HMC may become), and to claim a seat at the table during the earliest phases in design, testing, implementation, law and policy, and ethics to intervene for social good