Privacy and legislation!

Privacy is the expectation a person has about his information being disclosed in public or to third party. Due e-commerce, most of the business happens over the phone or internet. Therefore consumers are worried about their privacy. Since lot of their information is getting stored on servers all around the world. Critics say privacy laws have not evolved as fast as the technology has. While others say that putting more restrictions can harm the information sharing. IT firms have outsourced to India, Philippines. Now an Indian call center will have information about the customers form United States like credit card, social security, which can be misused. Not only that this information is being used to market other products as well.

Europeans are more concerned over the privacy issue because is people do not have trust in corporate world. On the other hand Americans are more concerned about government invading their privacy. Due to this US government has less power over privacy issues compared to Europe. And private corporations sneak through with small fines. Where in India there is more trust amongst the people compared to western world that is one of the reason people are not concerned about the privacy.

Due to differences in laws companies in order to comply with laws of one country are breaking laws in other countries. Case, where United States wanted information from travel companies about the passengers. Giving the information will break the privacy laws of Europe and not giving it will break the laws of United States. Breaking any law costs huge business. Considering the potential of United States in world business companies will break EU laws to comply with United States laws. There is huge trade between United States and European Countries; to stop the confusion and make it easy for business still protecting the privacy of the citizens is a next big task for both the governments.

Already lot of issues has come up due to privacy laws. Countries around the world need to come together to find a solution for this, there is no point in stretching these kinds of issues. One country decisions about their policies affects the whole world in certain ways. United States is a better example, how regulatory like FTC has controlled the data privacy issues without affecting the business. Few positive things are happening regarding the privacy as a global issue such as EU is reviewing its data protection directive. Also International Organization of standardization is working towards security aspects such as identity management, biometrics and protection of personal information. This issue can only be cracked down by adopting the common laws for private sector as a whole which looks slippery and a huge task.

Sources:

http://www.export.gov/safeharbor/eu/eg_main_018365.asp

http://lawbrain.com/wiki/U.S._Privacy_Law

http://rbs2.com

Groupon for 1.15billion people

Groupon is a group purchasing to get daily deals. Check out everyday deals on the website then sign up for it if enough people sign up then that deal will be activated. Once you signed up for particular deal spread the world so that enough people join it and deal gets activated interesting! I regularly visit deals2buy website to see if there is good deal for any product. Even if I do not need the product at that moment I do buy it for future use if I get it in a good deal. There is huge mass that does this way buying on discount not on need. According to this model sites buy inventory with businesses upfront and then sell it but they pay the businesses only after the fulfillment. Therefore they will always have the cash for the long run. Genius!

I did not know about Groupon till I read Dr. Anthony Miyazaki's blog. Me and my roommate got together on the weekends to find the deals for the weekly grocery it was fun. One thought came to my mind will this work in India. Groupon has not gone to India. But the model has, considering the success of Groupon there are few sites which have copied the model. I surfed through few group discount websites but the scope was too less. It was focusing more on restaurants and weekend sports events only. Online buying is not popular in India as of now. But in bigger cities like Mumbai, Banaglore, Delhi middle age people and young generation is addicted to internet. The average age in India will be 29 in 2020. Therefore I believe Groupon has a good future in India. Indian culture is collectivist, people go out in groups. For example, in restaurants you will see minimum 5 to 6 people on one table. Thats a winner right there for Groupon. Considering the population, growing economy, growing middleclass and most importantly huge number of small businesses, by proper marketing strategy Groupon can make it big in India.

I could not find Groupon in India, Instead few local companies who have copied the model. I believe Groupon is not spreading faster as much as it should be. If they don’t do it they will face competition and that will affect their business in future. Google has shown interest to buy them which Groupon has rejected. I hope they have better ideas and foresight.

Sources:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/212500/groupon_to_google_no_thanks.html

Marketing Brain!

In 1980s Pepsi started a campaign called Pepsi challenge where people were given a sip of Pepsi and coke. Pepsi won the challenge but the results from the challenge do not show the market reality where Coke has captured most of the market share in United States. A neuroscientist Read Montague did the study on the Pepsi campaign. He found out that if people were not told which drink they are having, half of them preferred Pepsi. But the interesting thing was when consumers were told which drink, three fourth of them preferred coke. This is due to the image of coke customers have in their mind about coke.  Taste of the product became secondary thing. According to Montague coke had affect on medial prefrontal cortex, which controls the higher thinking in the brain.

Neuromarketing has been used in political ad campaigns. Famous in Political advertising world, Fred Davis is a firm believer in neuromarketing. He uses neuromarketign as basis for ads. His list of clients includes George Bush, John McCain and the latest is Cristin O’donnalld, who ran Delaware senate elections and her ad campaign caught the attention of everyone.  Brian Boquist, an Oregon Republican Senate also admitted using neuromareting techniques in his campaign. Republicans Oregon Republican State Senator, Brian Boquist also admits to having employed political neuromarketing in his campaigns. In recent midterm elections republican ads were appealing to the emotions of the voters. Was it a reason that republicans won the election? May be not but it may have made some difference. May be it is difficult to know if the politicians are using these techniques. No politician will accept the fact he is using influencing techniques to get votes. Using these techniques is not wrong in my view because the results will give better picture for the parties about their campaigns. It will be easy for the companies to know if particular ad grasps the attention of the customers.

Does it seduce them enough to buy particular product or watch the movie?  Is it novelty to them? Are they aware of the product? Are some of the few questions marketing firms always have been taking into account, But Neuromarketing provides enough data by which big companies have better understanding of market and customers. Companies do need numbers to rely on since amount of money they put into marketing and advertising campaigns is huge. I sometimes get confused when I go to any big store for shopping; neuromarketing techniques used by companies may make it easy for me, because companies will know better what I want than myself.

Sources

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/etc/neuro.html

http://www.fastcompany.com/1699985/politicians-using-neuromarketing-in-ads-to-win-votes

Boosting your business!

Just a few weeks back founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg announced a new mobile platform which will let local merchants offer promotional deals to customers who use the new places feature on Facebook. Will it help me? Yeah! Suppose if I am walking down the street and decide to eat pizza this application will show me not only the places but also the offers and deals nearby pizza places have. This will help me save a few bucks. I won’t mind that for sure. GAP, a apparel retail store gave away pair of jeans to customers who checked in with the facebook application. The sales of the company have gone up since then. Social media is about C’s of marketing, connections and convenience of the customers. As internet usage has changed from desktops to pocket PCs and mobile phones, social media strategies have become must in today’s business world. Social media makes it easy for businesses to get the message out to the customers and get feedback from the consumers and build customer relations t low cost.  Whenever I have to buy something, I do read reviews and discussion forums about the product and the company.

Social media can make it easy to spread the world for small businesses but it takes a lot of resources to keep the consumers engaged all the time. I have come across the facebook pages or blogs which have not been updated or there have been no activity since long time. My perception towards those companies has changed dramatically due to this. It is kind of mandatory to reply to queries and comments of all the users. Therefore it is really important to keep up the pace. An interesting comment by Anthony Miyazaki, professor of marketing at Florida International University about the time commitment businesses have to make, to take care of thousands of contacts. As the networking makes it easy to share and spread the word faster, it can backfire when negative news spreads faster it is impossible to control social media in these cases. Since it is about customer behavior I do believe there is certain amount of risk involved.

There are few concerns, but businesses can not afford not to be part of these advances in marketing. After what happened to Barns and Nobles ignoring Amazon and many more such examples. Also competitors engaging into these activities makes it even more necessary for businesses to be a part of it. I believe that these techniques are important for small businesses to compete with big giants and engage and form a core group of customers (target) who will make purchase and spread the word.

Peace.

Abhijeet

Source: 

Wall Street Journal