Marketing in the ICT Era - Promotion

“In the future, computers will shop for us. You will log into a virtual supermarket and order food, they will send it to you the next day. School will change too. You could have school at home and fax your homework in, but you won’t make any
friends that way. We will have to make friends on the Internet. Libraries will still be there, but not many people will visit them anymore and they will be knocked down. ” — Nicholas Phibbs, age 12 Surrey, UK


PROMOTION
One of the major battles which business has had to fight for time immemorial is the war of costs. How do you bring this devil down and kill of your competition? On the other hand, the customer has had to engage in an opposite but challenging war with the central rallying point being how to achieve value for money, maximize, get more for less. Two major events have taken place in Africa if not the world, within the past three decades or so, the first being the emergence of a strong black middle class with so much “cash” to spend and the second being the emergence of a vibrant and forceful new age dubbed the Information Age with Information and Communication Technologies being the driving force. Mix the ideas in this serving and you have business with costs that they are trying to contain on one hand and a middle class which has lots of spending power on the other but is not necessarily gullible as to buy at any price (this excludes luxury cars of course).

When the patriarchs of the National (or Global or Galactic) Information Infrastructure now known as the Internet, were busy discussing the possibilities of such technology, little did they perceive as to how robust and useful the “final” product would be and the uses generations to come would attach to it. For business to flourish in the international domain without harnessing internet tools and fully utilizing them, would be tantamount to milking a bull. Markets are fast evolving and to stay in the past is more perilous than death. What with the advent of mobile telephones, broadband internet and other related technologies. If a twelve year old boy could perceive that one day computers would do the shopping in virtual supermarkets and school would change too, then surely our mature minds have to seriously engage. The possibilities are endless and the benefits too numerous but where do we start? The answer is not too far from us it’s the grass roots. From intranets to extranets to the internet (WWW - world wide web).

One of the major problems we have as a people (Africa) is that we believe that someone other than us should initiate progress, we look further than at ourselves. In turn we tend to play the blame game, if something is wrong blame the government or the authorities or the manager or the supervisor. We are never at fault for the predicaments that we find ourselves in, it is always someone else’s fault. Hence we have watched others develop whilst we continue to grope in the dark. The internet has been a growing force for the past two or so decades with major progress occurring within the past ten years. Don’t forget that ten years is a long time in deed more so when you look at this industry with new inventions on a daily basis. Just study the history of the founding fathers of the game they had little sleep if at all trying to come up with new programs, new inventions and acquiring massive programming hours in various computer laboratories. Those long hours spent have created new ways of doing things look at Amazon.com Inc an American-based multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, which is America's and one of the world’s largest online retailer, with nearly three times the internet sales revenue of runner up Staples, Inc. Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com, Inc. in 1994 and launched it online in 1995. It started as an on-line bookstore but soon diversified to product lines of VHS, DVD, music CDs and MP3s, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, etc. Amazon has established separate websites in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, China, and Japan and also provides international shipping to certain countries for some of its products. A competitor to Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Inc. is referred to as the largest book retailer in the United States, operating mainly through its Barnes & Noble Booksellers chain of bookstores headquartered in lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The company operates the chain of small "B. Dalton Booksellers" stores in malls. The company is known for large, upscale retail outlets, many of which contain a café serving Starbucks Coffee, and for competitive discounting of bestsellers. Most stores also sell magazines, newspapers, DVDs, graphic novels, gifts, games, and music. Video games and related items were sold in the company's GameStop retail outlets until October 2004, when the division was spun-off into an independent company. The summarized story of Staples, Inc. is that it is the world's largest office supply retail store chain, with over 2,000 stores worldwide in 27 countries. The Framingham, MA based company has catalog and delivery businesses and serves customers in Argentina (as Officenet), Austria, Brazil (as StaplesOfficenet), Canada (as Staples, in Quebec as Bureau En Gros), China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, Portugal, United Kingdom and the United States. Staples, Inc. sells supplies, office machines, promotional products, furniture, technology and business services both in stores and online via Staples.com. The company opened its first store in Brighton, Massachusetts in 1986.
That background information on its own does not amount to much so let’s get into the number crunching part of things. Amazon.com Inc which is in the Retail Industry had Revenue of US$ 19,166 billion in 2008 Operating Income was US$842 million, Net Income US$645 million with an employee base of just 20 500 people. Now look at Barnes & Noble which began as a Printing business in 1873 in Wheaton Illinois (USA) and then opened doors in New York in 1917 with one of many bookstores to come. The Revenue of Barnes & Noble in 2007 from an employee base of 40 000 people was US$5,8 billion from 800 stores. Take a further step and go over the figures of Staples Inc which was founded in 1986 as a Retail concern majoring in Office Supplies which generated Revenue of US$27 billion in 2008. What do those figures tell you? A creative mind will tell that among the three concerns two have generally harnessed more of the “new” ways of doing things – less employees and more technology hence more work covered. Though the figures are from two different and distinct years the underlying factors and constants still hold true that the organizations formed in the Information Age have had a greater advantage due to harnessing of more computer power and creative PROMOTION via ICTs. You would have thought that the “older” companies would do better in resource utilization and a better bottom line profit would be attained but not so, the ones which have been creative and ICT savvy, have become lean and hard hitting have won the cake.
PROMOTION and yes the pillars of Marketing are functions that are and should be embedded in work ethics of all departments from Administration to Sales as everyone uses products or services from other departments. Business operates internally as a spider web linking departments and externally linking with suppliers and customers. There is need when I say from grassroots, to create internal systems or Intra sites whereby the various functions are linked together thereby creating internal markets for products from other departments. The Accounts department offers a carefully created system of documenting and analyzing the profitability and cost effectiveness of other departments, the Administration department offers an enabling environment for others to do their work and the like. From each department there are resources and data which other departments can utilize and as such can be stored on and accessed via an Intranet (internal network) and so on. On the Extranet, reporting data from various branches within the network of related branches can be shared and performance compared of which branches are doing better than others on set targets, or which branches still hold stock on various products and the like. From there Websites can then be created but notice that you have a system or culture of sellers and buyers, a consumer today being a manufacturer of another product and the Internet then functions as a complete unit. Now consider the colossal and or ripple effect if every other business is linked up on the Internet. Who has to rent out a large retail space and for what? You eliminate the need for large retail outlets. One can order anything without moving away from his or her computer or mobile phone. All you need is warehouses and lots of them. Now let’s get back on track we are talking of PROMOTION, instead of confining your market to a small village or city, the Internet or website in particular which is a major tool in the ICT era can be viewed by connected people all over the world. Now instead of having a market of just 13million or so Zimbos now you have billions of consumers who can access you and your products. Ain’t that grand? The face of PROMOTION has to change in this era, old tactics will not work we need to reinvent the wheel here. Whatever product you are making, remember that now money has changed hands from the old aged to a vibrant middle class who are mostly in the ages between 25 and 50. Now what products do those people need and more importantly how can you get to them or PROMOTE such products, do you use the conventional methods or creativity is needed here. By the way what happens to the data that we all submit when we buy a new cellphone line, open a new bank account, fill in some form somewhere in a government department? That information is priceless and there is need for us to begin to be a Database centered country if we are to fully harness ICTs for Marketing and PROMOTION. We need to open up more and more on the uses and access of data such that information sharing and data gathering can be promoted to the betterment of our own cause. Imagine if I wanted to market razor blades for shaving and I would just go to a Cellular Network company and asked them to broadcast my advertisement to men of a certain age (the assumption being that men are the only ones who shave using razor blades of the manufactured nature), in Harare say, for a fee of course, how much would that achieve. Such data is available or should be available the simple criteria being used having been obtained from the time of contracting one company when you fill in a form denoting your age, sex and so on.
ICTs are the major reason why some countries and companies continue to flourish while others continue to be basket cases. Our level of backwardness is so much that we are amongst the last in an index of Network Readiness in the world. Well we will talk more on that next week but we need to seriously engage if we are to go further than extinction. Imagine the amount of money floating in space and how you can get a hold of it. That is the new face of PROMOTION. By the way can someone tell me which television station one has to advertise on if you need to capture the Zimbabwean market? I wonder! I know for a fact that most Africans especially Zimbos know more about the UEFA cup and the FA Cup than about our own major leagues (reasons are said to abound). That should be PROMOTION, but how? ICT - Information and Communication Technology. When the idea of the network of networks kicked off, business or the exchanging of wealth was forbidden. That was not the intended purpose but hey, these guys later noticed that there was lots of gravy embedded in the concept. Can you handle nobody owns the Internet! “It’ a free for all.” Now let’s get to it and see how we can PROMOTE our products there and make money from anywhere anytime mari hairari (money does not sleep).



“Wherefore seeing we also are encompassed with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us” Hebrews 12 verse 1.