Alter ego, state of the art on user profiling: an overview of the most relevant organisational and behavioural aspects regarding User Profiling.

This report gives an overview of the most relevant organisational and\ud behavioural aspects regarding user profiling. It discusses not only the\ud most important aims of user profiling from both an organisation’s as\ud well as a user’s perspective, it will also discuss organisational motives\ud and barriers for user profiling and the most important conditions for\ud the success of user profiling. Finally recommendations are made and\ud suggestions for further research are given

Marketing management of a successful e-business

Marketing management occupies an increasingly important position in the business world, as well as in the sphere of electronic commerce. Some participants, however, underestimate the importance of this marketing support, which may be one of the major causes of the failure and inability of some companies operating on the Internet to grow. The aim of this paper is to develop an effective marketing management process model, which can significantly contribute to the increased competitiveness of companies operating on the Internet. The validity of this model is then applied on a Czech e-shop, which has long been one of the leaders of the Czech Internet market. To achieve the objective of this paper the current situation will be analysed, and synthesis of the findings from research literature as well as modelling using the methods of abstraction and specification will be performed. This article is focused on Czech Internet market. Results of the survey (case study) will be used for further research in the field of e-business

The Role of the Mangement Sciences in Research on Personalization

We present a review of research studies that deal with personalization. We synthesize current knowledge about these areas, and identify issues that we envision will be of interest to researchers working in the management sciences. We take an interdisciplinary approach that spans the areas of economics, marketing, information technology, and operations. We present an overarching framework for personalization that allows us to identify key players in the personalization process, as well as, the key stages of personalization. The framework enables us to examine the strategic role of personalization in the interactions between a firm and other key players in the firm's value system. We review extant literature in the strategic behavior of firms, and discuss opportunities for analytical and empirical research in this regard. Next, we examine how a firm can learn a customer's preferences, which is one of the key components of the personalization process. We use a utility-based approach to formalize such preference functions, and to understand how these preference functions could be learnt based on a customer's interactions with a firm. We identify well-established techniques in management sciences that can be gainfully employed in future research on personalization.CRM, Persoanlization, Marketing, e-commerce,

Performance measures of net-enabled hypercompetitive industries: the case of tourism

This paper investigates the theory and practise of e-metrics. It examines the tourism sector as one of the most successful sectors on-line and identifies best practice in the industry. Qualitative research with top e-Marketing executives demonstrates the usage and satisfaction levels from current e-metrics deployment, selection of e-metrics for ROI calculation as well as intention of new e-metrics implementation and future trends and developments. This paper concludes that tourism organizations gradually realise the value of e-measurement and are willing to implement e-metrics to enable them evaluate the effectiveness of their planning processes and assess their results against their short and the long term objectives

To boardrooms and sustainability: the changing nature of segmentation

Market segmentation is the process by which customers in markets with some heterogeneity are grouped into smaller homogeneous segments of more ‘similar’ customers. A market segment is a group of individuals, groups or organisations sharing similar characteristics and buying behaviour that cause them to have relatively similar needs and purchasing behaviour. Segmentation is not a new concept: for six decades marketers have, in various guises, sought to break-down a market into sub-groups of users, each sharing common needs, buying behavior and marketing requirements. However, this approach to target market strategy development has been rejuvenated in the past few years. Various reasons account for this upsurge in the usage of segmentation, examination of which forms the focus of this white paper. Ready access to data enables faster creation of a segmentation and the testing of propositions to take to market. ‘Big data’ has made the re-thinking of target market segments and value propositions inevitable, desirable, faster and more flexible. The resulting information has presented companies with more topical and consumer-generated insights than ever before. However, many marketers, analytics directors and leadership teams feel over-whelmed by the sheer quantity and immediacy of such data. Analytical prowess in consultants and inside client organisations has benefited from a stepchange, using new heuristics and faster computing power, more topical data and stronger market insights. The approach to segmentation today is much smarter and has stretched well away from the days of limited data explored only with cluster analysis. The coverage and wealth of the solutions are unimaginable when compared to the practices of a few years ago. Then, typically between only six to ten segments were forced into segmentation solutions, so that an organisation could cater for these macro segments operationally as well as understand them intellectually. Now there is the advent of what is commonly recognised as micro segmentation, where the complexity of business operations and customer management requires highly granular thinking. In support of this development, traditional agency/consultancy roles have transitioned into in-house business teams led by data, campaign and business change planners. The challenge has shifted from developing a granular segmentation solution that describes all customers and prospects, into one of enabling an organisation to react to the granularity of the solution, deploying its resources to permit controlled and consistent one-to-one interaction within segments. So whilst the cost of delivering and maintaining the solution has reduced with technology advances, a new set of systems, costs and skills in channel and execution management is required to deliver on this promise. These new capabilities range from rich feature creative and content management solutions, tailored copy design and deployment tools, through to instant messaging middleware solutions that initiate multi-streams of activity in a variety of analytical engines and operational systems. Companies have recruited analytics and insight teams, often headed by senior personnel, such as an Insight Manager or Analytics Director. Indeed, the situations-vacant adverts for such personnel out-weigh posts for brand and marketing managers. Far more companies possess the in-house expertise necessary to help with segmentation analysis. Some organisations are also seeking to monetise one of the most regularly under-used latent business assets… data. Developing the capability and culture to bring data together from all corners of a business, the open market, commercial sources and business partners, is a step-change, often requiring a Chief Data Officer. This emerging role has also driven the professionalism of data exploration, using more varied and sophisticated statistical techniques. CEOs, CFOs and COOs increasingly are the sponsor of segmentation projects as well as the users of the resulting outputs, rather than CMOs. CEOs because recession has forced re-engineering of value propositions and the need to look after core customers; CFOs because segmentation leads to better and more prudent allocation of resources – especially NPD and marketing – around the most important sub-sets of a market; COOs because they need to better look after key customers and improve their satisfaction in service delivery. More and more it is recognised that with a new segmentation comes organisational realignment and change, so most business functions now have an interest in a segmentation project, not only the marketers. Largely as a result of the digital era and the growth of analytics, directors and company leadership teams are becoming used to receiving more extensive market intelligence and quickly updated customer insight, so leading to faster responses to market changes, customer issues, competitor moves and their own performance. This refreshing of insight and a leadership team’s reaction to this intelligence often result in there being more frequent modification of a target market strategy and segmentation decisions. So many projects set up to consider multi-channel strategy and offerings; digital marketing; customer relationship management; brand strategies; new product and service development; the re-thinking of value propositions, and so forth, now routinely commence with a segmentation piece in order to frame the ongoing work. Most organisations have deployed CRM systems and harnessed associated customer data. CRM first requires clarity in segment priorities. The insights from a CRM system help inform the segmentation agenda and steer how they engage with their important customers or prospects. The growth of CRM and its ensuing data have assisted the ongoing deployment of segmentation. One of the biggest changes for segmentation is the extent to which it is now deployed by practitioners in the public and not-for-profit sectors, who are harnessing what is termed social marketing, in order to develop and to execute more shrewdly their targeting, campaigns and messaging. For Marketing per se, the interest in the marketing toolkit from non-profit organisations, has been big news in recent years. At the very heart of the concept of social marketing is the market segmentation process. The extreme rise in the threat to security from global unrest, terrorism and crime has focused the minds of governments, security chiefs and their advisors. As a result, significant resources, intellectual capability, computing and data management have been brought to bear on the problem. The core of this work is the importance of identifying and profiling threats and so mitigating risk. In practice, much of this security and surveillance work harnesses the tools developed for market segmentation and the profiling of different consumer behaviours. This white paper presents the findings from interviews with leading exponents of segmentation and also the insights from a recent study of marketing practitioners relating to their current imperatives and foci. More extensive views of some of these ‘leading lights’ have been sought and are included here in order to showcase the latest developments and to help explain both the ongoing surge of segmentation and the issues under-pinning its practice. The principal trends and developments are thereby presented and discussed in this paper

Evaluating whether a change in organisational structure would improve its competitive advantage

The purpose of this research is to study and analyse the internal and external structure of Ultimate Clean ltd, where I do work. We have put concentration on background of the company in the starting. This information is followed by aim and scope of research, which shows that what is the research question and what is scope of our research. After that Literature review is elaborated under five main subheadings. These subheading gives us deep information about the literature of organisation structure, competitive advantage. After that, Organisational context with internal and external analyse of the company is given which highlight the strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities of the company. Some external factors like political, economic, social and legal, are also discussed in this report. Then some information is given for method of research that why we use it, where and when it is used. Some limitations are also discussed in this report of method. After this, result section comes. In this section, we discussed deeply about the answers of customers, employees and employer. We prepare a discussion of the result and conclude it wisely. In the end, some recommendations are also given to improve organisational structure of Ultimate Clean ltd. We suggest a new structure for the organisation to develop within company to have a good competitive advantage in market place. A big list of references is also given in the end of this report

From Guesses to Personas : The Potential of Automatic Persona Generation (APG) in Targeting Digital Advertising Messages

The role of precisely targeted marketing has grown strongly with the rise of new media such as social media. It is possible to control in digital channels to whom one wants to show advertise- ments but creating the initial targeting parameters and marketing message can be difficult if one is not sure about the target audience. APG, standing for automatic persona generation, enables the usage of existing digital data in persona creation process. With this technique it is possible to reveal fast and precisely up- to-date information of a company’s target audience with accompanied attribute information. Creating marketing message for people-like personas has been shown a powerful method for communicating information on company’s offering. Each company has digital data on their customers gathered one way or another. Data used in this research consists of data gathered by a company called Elämyslahjat during the years on its website users. These data were used to develop personas and lists of characteristics with APG effectiveness of which was then again tested by recruiting thirty marketing professionals to write ads based on these personas and lists of characteristics to Facebook. After this the effectiveness of ads written for personas and for lists of characteristics were compared. The results show that there might be potential for APG to act as a basis for more effective marketing due to its speed in persona creation and preciseness. There were differences between mean click-through-rates (CTR) of ads written for personas and for lists of characteristics. APG shows also potential with its speed to mold data into more understandable form as personas quite rapidly for the purposes of advertising and marketing. This enables the usage of precise target audiences which is a desirable in marketing. The research shows that there is potential for persona-based advertisements as a marketing boosting element in digital environments. This has business-wise significance while it saves time and improves the efficiency of work done in ads creation.Tarkkaan kohdennetun markkinoinnin merkitys on kasvanut voimakkaasti uusien medioiden, kuten sosiaalisten medioiden, esiinmarssin myötä. Digitaalisen markkinoinnin kanavissa on mahdollista tietää tarkasti kenelle mainos näkyy, mutta kohdentaminen ja viestin luominen saattaa silti olla hankalaa, jos ei ole varma kohdeyleisöstään. APG, eli automaattinen persoonien luonti, mahdollistaa olemassa olevan digitaalisen tiedon käyttämisen persoonien luontiprosessissa. Tekniikan avulla on mahdollista selvittää nopeasti ja ajantasaisen tiedon avulla kulloinkin mielenkiinnon alla olevan yrityksen kohderyhmä ominaisuustietoineen. Mainosviestin luominen oikeiden ihmisten kaltaisille persoonille on havaittu tehokkaaksi tavaksi viestiä yrityksen valikoimasta. Kaikilla yrityksillä on sähköistä dataa asiakkaistaan kerättynä tavalla tai toisella. Tutkimuksessa käytetty data koostui Elämyslahjat-nimisen yrityksen vuosien aikana keräämästä verkkosivujen käyttäjädatasta. Tämän datan avulla luotiin algoritmipohjaisesti persoonat ja ominaisuuslistaukset, joiden tehokkuutta mitattiin kolmenkymmenen markkinointiammattilaisen kirjoittamilla mainoksilla Facebookissa. Tutkimuksessa vertailtiin mainosten tehokkuutta kohderyhmissä, kun mainokset oli luotu persoonille tai ominaisuuslistauksille. Lopputulokseksi osoittautui, että APG-metodilla saattaa olla potentiaalia mainosviestin tehostamisessa sen nopeuden ja tarkkuuden ansiosta, sillä erot persoonille kirjoitettujen mainosten klikkausprosentin (click-through-rate, CTR) ja ominaisuuslistauksille kirjoitettujen mainosten klikkausprosentin välillä olivat keskiarvoisesti olemassa. APG:n puolesta puhuu myös sen nopeus persoonien luomisessa, ja sitä kautta se voi olla apuna datan muokkaamisessa mainonnassa käytettävään muotoon. Tämä mahdollistaa tarkkaan rajatun kohderyhmän käyttämisen mainonnassa, mikä on yleisesti markkinoinnin alalla arvostettua. Tutkimus antaa tuloksen siitä, että persoonapohjaisesti luoduilla mainoksilla on potentiaalia mainonnan tehostamisessa digitaalisessa ympäristössä. Tällä on liiketoiminnallista merkitystä aikaa säästävästi ja toiminnan tehoa nostavasti