The digital revolution has changed the world of marketing. The rapid advanced technology, the digitization of information products and the increasing reach and speed of internet has transformed the marketing arena and the rules that lay within. (Varadarajan &Yadav, 2009)
Read moreThe position social media should have in a company's branding strategies.
Internet has become a big factor of influence. In the early days, the internet was mainly a medium used by nerds and companies. Companies used the internet for creating websites, and through them reach consumers. Internet evolved, and soon the internet users were able to communicate with the companies online. With the further development of web 2.0, interaction and creation of new content was enabled for the users (O'Reilly, T, 2005). The evolution of internet has reached a stage where different users can talk to each other about companies through social media instead of asking the companies when they have questions (Christodoulides, 2009).
Read moreChanges and opportunities for online branding in a post-communist space
While increasingly present in our daily lives, the Internet is a very young medium and
is still in its experimental stage. Technology is continuously improving every day and
companies have to quickly adapt to the new changes. One of the most challenging
aspects is that the consumer is able to adapt to the new media much more quickly than
the companies that should be using it in the first place.
Read more
Major challenges and opportunities marketers face when branding through social media
n the recent past, if companies wanted to publish themself or its products they would launch an advertising campaign in traditional media, such as television, newspapers, PR and/or point-of-sales activities. Now, thanks to social media, some people say that we are witnessing a revolution regarding how marketers are branding their products and their companies. Social media has grown rapidly the last years and is expected to continue to grow in the future both among consumers and companies, and it is often at the expense of traditional media. (Armelli & Villanueva, 2011)
Read moreQuestion: Social networks equals consumer empowerment...
Although advertisement on the Internet is getting increasingly sophisticated, the Internet has made it possible for consumers to view advertisements from a more critical point of view. Through a simple search on Google, it is possible to take advantage of other peoples’ experiences with specific products, services and companies. In a matter of seconds, it is possible to scrutinize an offer with the help of impartial reviews that can be found all over the Internet.
Read moreMarketing online – what is new and what is the same in communication?
Consumers are now allowed to talk to each other, talk directly to companies and also join forums that allow consumers to give their own opinions about a specific company or service. The relevance for a marketer to understand communication through social media is of great interest. It also helps to manage and understand challenges and opportunities marketers face when they are entering the world of social media. However, how do marketers reach traditional consumers through social media?
Read moreConsumer behavior of the new online shopper
This is a paper about: consumer behavior of the new online shopper. Differences between gender and consumer behavior such as hedonic and utilitarian motives are discussed. The research question that follows is: who is the new online customer? Issues that are talked about are: internet use, social interaction, motivations of the different gender.
|
Correlate your offline and online assets for success
Thorugh examine the event Nike blast emphasize that the firms online assets (social media) and offline assets (traditional marketing) are of equally importance in the web 2.0 era and make better results together than separately.Enabling internet and social networking into companies business strategy while not making traditional media obsolete.
Read moreLeverage Beauty Bloggers to Build Cosmetics Brands
This study examines why the collaboration between cosmetics companies and beauty bloggers constructs a brand image that is more authentic, trustworthy, and personable. A case study of The Estée Lauder Companies and the Blog Cupcakes and Cashmere is evaluated.
Read moreNew character of procurement in the on-line era
Written by Alexandra Lykova
New character of procurement in the on-line era
Introduction
Development of the internet affected Business-to-Business relations. Since the beginning of the millennium, scholars had started to discuss electronic marketplaces (or, e-marketplaces). (Feldman, 2000; Miller, 2000; Hamill & Prashantham, 2001) In 2007, based on literature review Wang and Archer tried to define and classify different e-marketplaces. They named electronic marketplaces a place “where buyers and sellers conduct transactions by electronic means”, and gave examples such as e-hubs, exchanges, market-makers, portals, electronic markets, electronic platforms, meeting places, virtual locations, etc.
As a result of these electronic innovations, the phenomenon of e-procurement has appeared. This term is generally defined as utilization of internet systems in purchasing process, partly or in the whole process.
Many researchers made attempts to analyze advantages and disadvantages that adoption of the e-procurement brings to the companies, to name a few: Farzin & Nezhad, 2010; Croom & Brandon-Jones, 2007; Sitar, 2011. However, it is mentioned only indirectly that procurement departments can change their characters as a result of this adoption.
This paper is an attempt to illustrate how the development of the on-line marketing in B-2-B sector changed the role of purchasing departments. The analysis is made based on secondary data surveys of the procurement in different industries and countries, such as the public sector in the UK, the construction industry in Chile, and the coal industry in India.
Theoretical background
The work with suppliers plays significant role in the organizations’ everyday business. This activity includes different aspects from the search for vendors, negations with them as well as following relationship maintenance to placing and conducting the purchase orders (PO). Dobler and Burt give a summary of the purchasing department functions in their book.
Figure 1: Definitions of Dobler & Burt (1996)
Their definition includes operational and strategic aspects of the material management function in the companies. However, for many years sourcing was mostly associated with operational activities carried out by purchasing departments.
(Kaufmann, 1999)
Farzin and Nezhad mention in their article that the usage of internet technologies in procurement aims at reduction and acceleration of operational work that allows to devote more time and efforts on the strategic issues. (Farzin & Nezhad, 2010)
Figure 2: Effects of e-procurement, Farzin and Nezhad (2010)
In this paper, the idea of the growing role of the long-term tactical questions over the operational routine in procurement management will be supported by evidence from practical cases. This will underline the new look of such departments stemming from the e-procurement adoption.
Practical evidence and analysis
Different organizations nowadays start using e-procurement services. Such novelties contribute to the changes in the portrait of the procurement team, i.e. transfer of the emphasis from the operational work towards solving strategic issues.
To illustrate this idea, results from three researches on advantages of the e-procurement as well as a study regarding security issues associated with the electronic form of procurement will be used. The first three cases are the UK public sector organizations , the construction companies in Chile (Alarcón, Maturana, & Schonherr, 2009)(Mahalik, 2012)
Studies done by scholars in order to demonstrate e-procurement attractiveness indirectly mention changes that took places in the organization and which are of the interest for the current paper. Having conducted 18-month study of e-procurement deployment across nine UK public sector organizations, Croom and Brandon-Jones mark out increased access and availability of suppliers, simplification of control of spending and easier and quicker access to management information. Order placement supported by the e-procurement systems gave a possibility to increase compliance of the approved processes and contracts. The second case, the qualitative and quantitative studies of the clients of the e-Marketplace platform for construction companies in Chile reveals reduction of cycle time (i.e. time between entering the PO and sending it to the supplier) and paperwork, increased speed of the commercial transaction and enhanced consolidation of orders. The example of the coal industry in India mentions that managers of the company that had started to conduct procurement via internet services, noted better reporting and management, ease of operations and speeded up process. Going back to the Dobler and Burt framework, given changes demonstrate lessening of the operational work for the procurement, which leaves room for more “future-aiming” matters.
Further, respondents in the studies in Chile and India told about reduced process costs and greater concentration on sourcing due to the e-procurement. Participants of the study in the UK reported that the use of electronic systems did not only mean the introduction of catalogue or ordering systems, but also lead to greater knowledge sharing and communication with their vendors. Another effect was decreased number of suppliers and closer interaction with those who remained. These facts support an assumption about starting to prevail strategic role, since cutting down the supplier base and intensification of the relations with small number of vendors obviously demands some forward-looking analysis. In the new situation, a company should, on the one hand, build up trustful relations with its remaining partners, while on the other hand, it should measure risks of having these certain suppliers and constantly assess if the existing partners’ base is still the most advantageous.
The last study used in this paper as supporting evidence is the survey about the impact of security on e-procurement performance. The mentioned research finds out that more investment into secured e-procurement processes increases e-procurement performance. This study leads to the thought that, since security and risk management start to attract attention, it signals growing strategic planning importance. Simultaneously, the fact that secure e-procurement increases performance illustrates a decreasing role of the operational work.
Conclusion
The online era has brought changes to people’s lives as well as companies’ processes. Many organizations started to use internet platforms for their purchases and supply management. This meant many advantages as well as barriers for them. Moreover, this meant changes in the role procurement departments assumed. Many operational tasks such as supplier search, placement and control of the purchasing orders and reporting were simplified, accelerated and made more efficient. This brought more strategically oriented issues to the scene such as partnering with suppliers, monitoring of the supply environment and risk management.
This work has its
limitation. Conclusions are based on secondary data research and indirect
mentions of the facts that was used as the supporting arguments. The survey of
the procurement management regarding their perception of the functional changes
could give more solid confirmation of the idea.
References
JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT IN ENGINEERING , p. 214.
Croom, S. R., & Brandon-Jones, A. (2005). KEY ISSUES IN E-PROCUREMENT: PROCUREMENT IMPLEMENTATION AND OPERATION IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR. Journal Of Public Procurement, 5, 3 , p. 367. http://ippa.org/jopp/download/vol5/issue-3/SympAr3_CroomJones.pdf
Croom, S., & Brandon-Jones, A. (2007). Impact of e-procurement: Experiences from implementation in the UK public sector. Journal Of Purchasing And Supply Management, 13 , p. 294.
Dobler, & Burt. (1996). Purchasing and Supply Management: Text and Cases, 6th edition. McGraw-Hill.
Farzin, S., & Nezhad, H. (2010). E-Procurement, the Golden Key to Optimizing the Supply Chains System. World Academy Of Science, Engineering & Technology, 66 , p. 518. http://waset.org/journals/waset/v42/v42-87.pdf
Feldman, S. (2000). Electronic marktplaces. IEEE Internet Computing, 4, 4 , p. 93.
Hamill, J., & Prashantham, S. (2001). Business-to-business e-marketplaces: towards consolidation and collaboration. International Marketing Review, 18, 4 , p.450.
Kaufmann, L. (1999). Purchasing and supply management, a conceptual framework. Wiesbaden: Gabler.
Mahalik. (2012). Measuring the Effectiveness of e-Procurement: A Case Discussion on MCL. The IUP Journal of Supply Chain Management, Vol. IX, No. 2 , p. 19.
Miller, B. J. (2000). E-Shift. Training and Development , p. 25. http://horizon.ucsd.edu/miller/download/climateshift/climate_shift.pdf
Sitar, C. (2011). E-PROCUREMENT: A NEW METHOD FOR OPTIMIZING THE PURCHASING PROCESS. Managerial Challenges Of The Contemporary Society, 2 , p. 291.
Vaidyanathan, G., Devaraj, S., & D’Arcy, J. (2012). Does Security Impact E-procurement Performance? Testing a Model of Direct and Moderated Effects. Decision Sciences Journal 43, 3 , p. 437.
Wang, S., & Archer, N. P. (2007). Electronic marketplace definition and classification: literature review and clarifications. Enterprise Information Systems, 1, 1. , p. 89.