Job Design - Four Elements to be Considered

Scott A Snell and George W. Bohlander suggested a good model for job design to be implemented by HR people.

The model has four elements.

Organization objectives for the job.

Industrial engineering considerations - Efficiency and productivity

Ergonomic considerations - comfort, safety and health

Behavioral considerations that influence job satisfaction

Reference

Managing Human Resources by  Scott A Snell and George W. Bohlander,  16th edition, 2012, Pp.157-58
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=7n0cyNP-MHIC

A to Z Blogging Challenge Schedule

This year, 2013 also I am participating

2012 Schedule

What Blogging A to Z
http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/p/what-is-blogging-from-to-z.html

Register in the signup Sheet

http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/p/2012-to-z-challenge-sign-up-list.html

Entries

1019 -13.3.2012

My Entries

April
1 A Advertising Research
2 B Behavioral Decision Making Theory  Luthans 368-374
3 C Creativity in Decision Making Luthan 377-381
4. D  Decision-Making Styles - Luthans 374-376
5. E  Ethical and Socially Responsible Marketing - Kotler 782-784
6. F Functional and Consumer Testing of Prototypes - Kotler 326-27
7. G. Guerrilla Attack in Marketing - Kotler 390-91

9. H  Horizontal Marketing or Marketing Channel System Kotler, 551
10. I Image Analysis - Kotler, 607-610
11. Job Design - Snell - HR book 16th edition already posted
12.
13. Leadership - Self Development and Training
14.

16. Nokia Comes Up From Behind in India in Multi-Sim Card Mobile Phone Category
17. Optimization Research
18. People Behavior Characteristics
19. Quality Positioning - Communicating and Sustaining It
20. Relationship Marketing Using Social Media and Web


Completed the challenge successfully within the schedule. But do not find time to update the list.
Social media tag  #atozchallenge

Interesting Blogs in the Challenge related to education and management

http://circleoffriendsbooks.blogspot.in/2012/04/to-z-challenge-justify.html

A to Z Challenge participating blogs
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Zero Time Concepts in Management Initiatives

Read an interesting paper Zero Time(Tm): A Conceptual Architecture for 21st Century Enterprises
http://cyberlibris.typepad.com/news/files/zerotime-white_paper.pdf

Zero Based Budgeting

Zero Based Cost Management

Zero Defects


Interesting Articles on Zero Based Concepts in Management

http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=5928 on ZBB

Presentation by Booz and Company on ZBCM
http://www.booz.com/media/uploads/Zero-Based-Cost-Management.pdf

Article to be developed further.
Currently busy with redirecting as many Knols as possible as today is the last date for closure of access to Knol.

Yankelovich Monitor

Yankelovich Monitor is a research service that tracks more than fifty social trends and provides information as to shifts in size and direction, and resulting marketing implications.

See a specialized report by Yankelovich for US News subscribers.

Direct Response Marketing survey 2005

Marketing Productivity plummets 2004 survey

Toward Wiser Public Judgment

Daniel Yankelovich, Will Friedman

Daniel Yankelovich, chairman and co-founder of Public Agenda, is the initiator of the New York Times/Yankelovich Poll and the author of twelve books. A founding president of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, he is also chairman emeritus of the Educational Testing Service.

X-Power Forums - Run by MG-Rover Enthusiasts for MG-Rover Enthusiasts

A brand, product or an organization needs enthusiasts.

See this forum being run by enthusiasts. Marketers have to plan for the involvement of the loyal customers in this fashion. Of course, it is not new, film industry has utilized fan associations for promoting their stars and films.

http://www.xpowerforums.com/

MG XPower SV Development Story

Warehousing - A Literature Review

Bibliography

Performance Indicators in Logistics Service Provision and Warehouse Management - A Literature Review and Framework
Elfriede Krauth, Hans Moonen, Viara Popova, Martijn Schut
http://www.cs.vu.nl/~schut/pubs/Krauth/2005a.pdf
It has two separate sections for effectiveness and efficiency

10 steps for Efficient Master Planning and Warehouse Layout
http://www.scisce.eu/images/KOUMPOURELOU.pdf

Warehouse and Distribution Science - November 2001
http://www2.isye.gatech.edu/~jjb/wh/book/editions/wh-sci-0.89.pdf

Virtual Teams - Management Issues

Team effectiveness has been viewed as having three dimensions: Productivity, viability and member development. Productivity is related to the satisfaction of the customer. Viability is related to the interest among team members to continue the relationship. Member development is the development of the individual member and his satisfaction with his personal needs and well being as a member of the group.

Team design, team work process and team states are interesting items to study as a part of examining management of virtual teams.

Related articles

Virtual Teams Dymystified: An Integrative Framework for Understanding Virtual Teams and a Synthesis of Research, MIT Working Paper
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1282095

EXPLORING THE LINKS BETWEEN CULTURAL DIVERSITY, THE COLLABORATIVE CONFLICT MANAGEMENT STYLE, AND PERFORMANCE OF GLOBAL VIRTUAL TEAMS
http://sigs.aisnet.org/SIGHCI/amcis02_minitrack/RIP/Samarah.pdf

Virtual Teams versus Face-to-Face Teams:  An Exploratory Study of a Web-based Conference System
http://personal.stevens.edu/~ysakamot/730/paper/doe1.pdf

2009
David Tuffley (2009), Leadership of Integrated Teams in Virtual Environments, in Handbook of Research on Socio-Technical Design and Social Networking Systems, Edited By: Brian Whitworth, Massey University (Albany), Auckland, New Zealand; Aldo de Moor, CommunitySense, The Netherlands. IGI Publishing.

Tactile Marketing - Using The Feelings of People When They Handle Products and Packaging in Marketing Decisions

In her book, Global Marketing and Advertising, Marieke de Mooij of the Netherlands gave the suggestion that,  given the ability of the proximity senses—touch, taste, and scent—to interpret the products some of them or could one of them—say, touch, can potentially serve as the lingua franca of global branding.

The idea is based on some logic.  The social anthropologist Ashley Montagu viewed touch as a language of its own—one that is learned well before writing and speech.It has a large vocabulary,. Touch is capable of conveying what cannot be transmitted through more formal language and it is completely  completely natural.

The Coca-Cola bottle was designed approximately 90 years ago to satisfy the request of an American bottler for a soft-drink container that could be identified by touch even in the dark. It is an interesting example of tactile marketing decision.  The Coke bottle was not encumbered with a lot of text, and the color scheme was made universal. Now people explain that the tactile encounter with the bottle conveyed a sense of pleasure across multiple cultures—though the associations the bottle evoked (e.g., hoop skirt, cocoa bean). Has the designer considered them in his design?

 
The Coke bottle’s experience notwithstanding, this tactile sensations have not been used further as a component of marketing strategies.

Even in 2005,  Richard Gerstman, chairman emeritus of Interbrand US and co-author of The Visionary Package (Palgrave, 2005), does not many examples of packages that provide tactile sensations that address consumers at a conscious level. Gerstman recommends that tactile marketing idea is good and should be recommended by designers, but few producers, with the exception of cosmetics, are willing to spend the money for creating unique structures for their products and packages to create favorable tactile sensations.
(Source: http://www.brandchannel.com/features_effect.asp?pf_id=302)

Tactile marketing is being promoted as a component sensory marketing that includes visual marketing, auditory marketing, olfactory marketing, gustative marketing and tactile marketing .

More references

Dollars and Sense: The Impact of Multi-sensory Marketing, 2009
http://info.4imprint.com/wp-content/uploads/blue-paper-sensory-marketing.pdf

The Senses and Sensibilities in Marketing
Q & A with Prof Aradhna Krishna
http://www.bus.umich.edu/NewsRoom/BusinessSchoolPubs/DividendAlumniMagazine/SPR10_TIA_Krishna.pdf

Sales Promotion - Creative Ways

Sales Promotion - Definition

Sales promotion consists of a diverse collection of incentive tools, mostly short term, designed to stimulate quicker and/or greater purchase of particular products/services by consumers or the trade.

Advertising offers a reason to buy. Sales promotion offers an incentive to buy. Sales promotion includes tools for consumer promotion (samples, coupons, cash refund offers, prices off, premiums, prizes, patronage rewards, free trials, warranties, tie-in promotions, cross-promotions, point-of-purchase displays and demonstrations);  trade promotion (prices off, advertising and display allowances and free goods); and business and sales force promotion (trade shows and conventions, contests for sales reps, and specialty advertising). 

Source

Philip Kotler, Marketing Management, 9th Ed., Prentice Hall, 19997, pp.661-662.

____________________________________________________________________________

27.12.2009

Garnier Fructis introduced Shampoo + Oil 2 in 1 product into the Indian market, Indian women believe in oil their hair. Hence this product innovation offers them the message "now you can oil your hair everytime you shampoo." 

Their sales promotion idea to give sample to some potential customer is to attach a 7.4 ml of satchet having the sample to their advertisement in the papers. I noticed the advertisement in the Times of India because of the satchet only. I am sure many persons will give a ring to their friends to tell them to pick the packet from the paper. Otherwise sometimes people won't even see the paper and throw the fresh paper directly into the dustbin. So some persons contact their friends to make them notice. It is a creative way of promoting the product as well as the advertisment. It will certainly make the early adopters try the product and appreciate. I do not know whether it was tried in more papers.

Film star selling tickets at the theatre

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Reference Post on Knol by Narayana Rao - http://knol.google.com/k/narayana-rao/sales-promotion-creative-ways/2utb2lsm2k7a/ 2091

Theory of Sales Promotion

Relationship Marketing Using Social Media and Web

People buy from people and companies they know, like and trust.
(Message of Social Media Personalities Mari Smith, Scott l Stratten and Chris Brogan0
Source: http://niklasmyhr.com/2011/09/16/mari-smith-and-the-new-relationship-marketing/

So sales people who sell various products and services try to develop relationships with the customers. Customers have to know them, like them and trust them. They have to present information about them as well as present them in person so that customers know them better. They have to do things so that customer like them. Based on the information about them and the exchanges conducted, customers have to trust them to take care of their needs for the customers' advantage. Social media is facilitating this relationship marketing process by providing cost effective real time vehicle for interacting with potential customers.


Social media is truly about relationships. If you self promote your products all the time, you are converting it into an advertising platform and then people will desert you. Remember 80 - 20. 80% of the time give information that is required by your followers. Only 20% of the time you should give your product messages. But the 20% messages must result in the fulfillment of your social media marketing objectives. Yes, you need to think and develop strategy, tactics and messages to satisfy the needs and constraints of the social media.
Source: http://rrrconsulting-publishing.com/relationship-marketing-using-social-media-your-advantage/

Salespeople are rapidly embracing social networking technologies such as “social CRM” as a means of researching the interests of prospects and staying connected socially with existing customers between (or sometimes instead of) regular face-to-face meetings.
Source: http://niklasmyhr.com/2012/01/09/rebirth-of-the-social-salesperson/



The Value  Concept and Relationship Marketing
Annika Ravald, Christian Grönroos, (1996) "The value concept and relationship marketing", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 30 Iss: 2, pp.19 - 30
http://sight.cjb.net/journals.htm?issn=0309-0566&volume=30&issue=2&articleid=853424&show=html

Quality Positioning - Communicating and Sustaining It

Best quality positioning is one of the most commonly promoted number-one positioning of the product, brand or the company.

What is positioning?

Positioning is the act of designing the company's offering and image so that they occupy a meaningful and distinct competitive position in the target customers' minds. (Kotler)

The positioning decision guides the marketing mix. Kotler stated that the firm promoting the high-quality position, has to produce high-quality goods and services, has to charge high price in relation to others, distribute the product through high-quality outlets and advertise through high-quality magazines.

Quality is to be communicated through all elements of marketing. Kotler gave the example of a frozen food brand losing its prestige image by being on sale (say at a discount) too often.

Related articles

Sustaining the Quality Positioning of the New Zealand Wine
http://academyofwinebusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/14-AWBR2011-Brodie-Glynn-Schultz.pdf 2011 conference paper

Assessment of Iranian Business Schools on Quality Positioning Scale based EFQM Model
http://www.waset.org/journals/waset/v37/v37-58.pdf  2008 conference paper

Total Quality Positioning - An Interesting Idea
http://www.bdn-intl.com/TotalQualityPositioning.php
Total Quality Positioning Part 2
http://www.bdn-intl.com/TotalQualityPositioning-Part2.php

People - Behavioral Characteristics

Every entrepreneur and every manager have to understand people. It means, they have to know the behavioral characteristics of people. On any topic, well researched concepts and principles exist and also myths exists. We need to periodically separate them. In this article, an attempt is being made to collection various online articles on this theme.

10 characteristics of Human behavior
http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/10_characteristics_of_human_bahavior.html

21 characteristics of Human behavior
http://www.nmoa.org/articles/dmnews/2CharacteristicsofHumanBehaviorRAYj.htm

Invariants of Human Behavior by HA Simon, 1990, Annual Review of Psychology

Optimization Research

Organizations have to optimize their processes. Mathematical Optimization selects the best combination out of the known alternatives. Research needs to be conducted to understand the results expected from more alternatives and this research needs to be termed as optimization research.



Related Websites

http://www.markettools.com/market-research/optimization-research
The Web page is titled as Research for Optimization.

Assembly Line Optimization Research
Web site is a  general platform for research on assembly line design, line balancing, mixed-model sequencing and other problems in the context of planning, optimizing and controlling assembly production systems. Researchers and practioners in the field shall be able to find topic related material (publications, methods, data sets, software).

Message Optimization Research

we recommend qualitative research or internal  brainstorming sessions around marketing objectives and priorities to significantly narrow down the number of messages for quantitative testing/optimization research. This first step plays a significant role in cutting through the clutter and paves the way for effective message optimization research.

Nokia Comes Up From Behind in India in Multi-Sim Card Mobile Phone Category

Nokia had a market share of 70%+ in India in 2005. It has slipped to 31% in 2011. So naturally, there is gloom in Nokia's ranks. But there is a success achieved by Nokia recently that is giving fresh hope and confidence to Nokia management that they can improve things now.

The success story was scripted in the case of dual sim card phones. It became a successful category in India and Nokia had no product in this category for more than two and half years. Nokia introduced it in June 2011 only and emerged as the category leader by October 2011 with a share of 21.9%. This success is helping Nokia in other categories also in India. Also, even global mood is improving due to this marketing and new product introduction success. As we all know, presently, Nokia is going through a troublesome period globally.




How Nokia Emerges as a Market Leader in Crowded Dual SIM Market?
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/features/brand-equity/how-nokia-emerges-as-leader-in-crowded-dual-sim-market/articleshow/12614070.cms
Economic Times Brand Equity Article - 11 April 2012

Leadership - Self Development and Training

Do you want to be leader?

If you are pursuing an MBA, it is implicit that you want to be leader.

What is leadership and what is the role of leader?

Leadership is the ability or potential to influence the behavior of some persons termed as followers. When a leader says some thing, instructs something, there is a very high probability of large number of followers implementing it. This quick implementation is the result of the experience of followers over a period of time in implementing the decisions of the leader. If the decisions or instructions of the leader are beneficial to the followers in a cumulative way, followers as a policy listen to the leader without subjecting the instruction to a large amount of scrutiny.

So what is required to become a leader?

Ability to create benefit for other people. Ability to spot opportunities and take decisions that create benefit for other people. What about benefit for the leader? It is implied. A leader has to be resourceful. In the first instance he can create a benefit for a single followers only through his resources. His own resources have to keep increasing for creating benefit for more followers. But a leader's resource gathering effort has to go along with creating benefits for the followers.


Remember Leadership Can Create Stress.

Be prepared to withstand the stress that followers create for you.

Read an interesting poem about people from this blog post

http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/2012/04/i-is-for-inspiration.html

More leadership poems
http://www.leadership-tools.com/leadership-poem.html



Leadership requires resources. So you need resource gathering ability.

Leadership requires willingness to give benefits to followers.

Leadership requires you to find and understand what followers want.

Leadership requires you to undertake activities that provide the desired benefits to followers.

Leadership requires you to bear the stresses created by behavior of followers.

Leadership requires you to grow as a capable person.

Leadership requires you to develop your followers as capable persons.

Textbook coverage of Leadership Theories

Knol - An Abandoned Google Project - Reasons for Failure - Top Knol Author's Opinion

Knol executives have not interacted with authors appropriately and adequately. There is no author relationship manager dealing with individual authors as well as interactions among authors. There was lot of conflict among authors, may be there were trolls, but there was no attempt from the Knol executives to come out and comment and guide on these arguments of conflict.

There was no stock taking of the performance of the platform taking into confidence the authors, the suppliers of content. If there was shortfall of content, it could have been communicated to the authors. At least some limited number of authors showing enthusiasm to promote the platform could have been identified and they should have been guided to act as responsible and discreet promoters of the platform. There was no visible effort.

No success was celebrated on Knol. Even the statement that 100,000 knols were posted was not shared with knol author community. Actually I feel, even on Blogger, there is no culture of celebrating successes of bloggers. Google believes more in announcing its improvement of technical features. But it does not give importance to the successes of participating authors.



Related article
Google Knol - The Story for Case Discussion

Usability of Gadgets - Many are not Buying and Using Gadgets Due to Usability Problems

Many electronic gadgets are coming with touch screens and various buttons. Even the mobiles have many buttons. Many find it difficult to remember the functions of various buttons and use the gadgets. Hence they do not use the gadgets. Can a more universal system be designed so that people will not have difficulty.

Passwords are another problem. There are so many websites that want one to register, create a user name and password. How one is going to remember all those user names and passwords. One thing good is that now many are using facebook, twitter and gmail ids and passwords as access facilitators for their websites. This is to an extent solved the problem.

Usability of websites is an issue under examination, Jacob Nielsen is a guru in this field. The site maintained by Nielsen (http://www.useit.com/) has a wealth of information on the topic.

Reference
Online Marketing: A Customer Led Approach, Richard Gay et al. Pp.282-83.

Innovations and Businesses Using Blogs and Blogging

Today, a blog can be explained as an easy to set up website. A blog is a website. It can be set up very easily because on any free blogging publishing platform, you register for the blog with your mail id and then type some content. Your blog post is ready and your blog is ready for public viewing. You have to select a name for your blog and a url. From then onward you don't have to create further urls for your pages. They will get generated automatically and an index of the articles is generated month-wise and keyword-wise.

Blog is also a development in Web 2.0 platform. Web 2.0 platforms allow the participation of the crowd in website content development. Blogs have commenting feature. Also blogs allow limited collaborative writing.

Blogs have led to the development of blogging platforms, which permitted large number of people to open blogs on a platform. Presently Blogger of Google, Wordpress.org, and Tumblr are the three top blogging platforms for free creating free blogs.

 Large number of people are writing popular blogs having good traffic and revenue. Alexa gives ranks to websites and blogs and we can confidently say the top one million Alexa websites and blogs are making money giving rise to part-time and full time bloggers. There are websites and blogs catering to the needs of other bloggers by giving them technical, promotional, monetizing and content related information. There are coaching programs for bloggers. Even universities are now offering courses on blogging as a part of media studies. There are number of books on blogging.

Some  blogs became very popular and are equivalent to print media in popularity. Huffington post, Mashable and Techcrunch are the popular ones. Newspapers are not offering blogging facilities to their journalists and als readers. Universities are offering blogging facilities to their faculty and staff. Corporates are offering blogging facilities to their employees and customers.

Through blogs people are offering information and knowledge on variety of things in a variety of forms( A to Z using Blogs and Blogging).

Functional and Consumer Testing of Prototypes

Prototype is the physical model that captures the invention or development idea. It demonstrates the technical feasibility of the engineering idea. It may be based on a new scientific theory or an innovation based on existing scientific theories. Creation and innovation are based on combining two dissimilar ideas into a new product that creates value. Hence engineering creation can occur at any time based on existing scientific theories.

The prototype has to be subjected to functional testing and consumer testing. Functional tests are conducted in the laboratory setting and also in the field to make sure that the product performs effectively and safely. Kotler says, aircraft has to fly and a razor needs to cut hair. Once functional tests are successful, the prototype can be put in the hands of some potential consumers for their reactions to the product. By using the product, consumers understand the benefits that accrue to them because of the product and they may be able to indicate the price that they will be interested to pay for that product. This price can be used as the target price for the target costing exercise.


Source:
Philip Kotler, Marketing Management, 9 Edition, Pp.326-28

Related Web Pages

Function Testing Products and Services

http://www.percept.com/services/functional-testing.html

http://www.1tmg.com/product-testing.html

Ethical and Socially Responsible Marketing

Marketing and Ethics

American Marketing Association arrived at a code of ethics and published it. The code claims that members of the American Marketing Association are committed to ethical, professional conduct.

The members have to make efforts to ensure that their decisions and actions function to satisfy all relevant publics: customers, organizations and society. As guiding principles it asks all its members to not harm any person knowingly through their decisions and actions, to adhere to all applicable laws and regulations, to represent accurately their education, training and experience and to actively support the practice and promotion of code of ethics.


Social responsibility of business was examined in modern days by Howard Bowen in a book published in 1953 with the title, "Social Responsibilities of the Business Man."

Kotler advocated that companies adopt and disseminate a written code of ethics. They will reflect the American Market Association code of ethics. There has to be company tradition of ethical behavior, and people in the company have to be held responsible for observing the ethical and legal guidelines. The individual marketing representatives must practice a "social conscience" in their specific dealings with customers and various stakeholders and to support this, the education of marketing representatives and their training have to include components that provide knowledge in this are develop positive attitude toward the social responsibility of marketers.

Source
Philip Kotler, Marketing Management, 9th Edition, Pp.782-84.1997.