Bibliography

Books

FIRAT.A. 1997. From Segmentation to Fragmentation –Markets and Marketing Strategy in the Postmodern Era. 31 (3/4) p.183-207. MCB University Press.

COVA.B & COVA.V. 2002. Tribal Marketing – The Tribalisation of Society and its Impact on the Conduct of Marketing. 36 (5/6). European Journal of Marketing.

Websites
http://www.marketing.ie/index.jsp?p=322&n=328&a=299
http://iphoneapplicationlist.com/category/social-networking/
http://mashable.com/2010/04/30/twitter-ad-model-small-business/
http://www.swiftcover.com/stuck-iphone-app/
http://www.imd.ch/programs/oep/owp/interactive_program_content/#/program-content/afternoon-plenary-sessions/global-trends-2010/
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/031210-gartner-releases-2010-end-user.html
http://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Comparison_between_ITIL_V3_and_ITIL_V2_-_The_Main_Changes
http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/48579.html?wlc=1271582688
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/01/magnolia-suffer/
http://www.csc.com/outsourcing/offerings/33785/33789-csc_virtual_desktop_services
http://www.olivergoehler.co.uk/MakeMoney/?gclid=CKfB_vGzkKECFR2Y2AodanmCNg
http://www.eetasia.com/login.do?fromWhere=/ART_8800601485_499488_NT_847e1761.HTM
http://www.marketing-jive.com/2007/11/jody-nimetz-on-emerging-trends-in-b2b.html
http://mashable.com/2010/04/30/twitter-ad-model-small-business/
http://iphoneapplicationlist.com/apps/social-networking/
http://secondlife.com/?v=1.1
http://mashable.com/2009/10/26/socia-media-entrepreneurs/


On-line Documents
http://www.sfxbrown.com/bakercpt.pdf

http://www.nowandnext.com/PDF/trend_blend_2009_map.pdf

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bQy8VJ0OCNQJ:nbs.newport.ac.uk/displayPage.aspx%3Fobject_id%3D14427%26parent_id%3D6563%26type%3Dmsw+Victoria+Lovett+B.A.+(Hons)+Business+and+Marketing+–+Innovative+Marketing+module,+2009&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=safari

Images
http://www.weirdasianews.com/2009/03/31/japans-indoor-beach-surf/
http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/58/c6/e0/entrance-to-ski-dubai.jpg
http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.westcomm.org/publications/news/october07/secondlife_1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.westcomm.org/publications/news/October07/WSCA%2520News%252034-5.html&usg=__7Va9uzhsOV5CebueOciLqEcJ4QU=&h=341&w=320&sz=12&hl=en&start=4&sig2=5j_euJ54vIO7enfuvl5ysA&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=Wy4KELhMXZO14M:&tbnh=120&tbnw=113&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsecond%2Blife%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Den%26tbs%3Disch:1&ei=kCPgS77iNMrg-Qb57LCVBw
http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://2007.ispace.ci.fsu.edu/~arh04d/anthonyrhopkins/images/linkedin.jpg&imgrefurl=http://2007.ispace.ci.fsu.edu/~arh04d/anthonyrhopkins/&usg=__OqizoWY7aBNSOmag27bin12LmAI=&h=216&w=640&sz=49&hl=en&start=2&sig2=d0GQVoGBGe705rsjEEF_9Q&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=d5Sjr-qb-drGeM:&tbnh=46&tbnw=137&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlinkedin%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Den%26tbs%3Disch:1&ei=cJDeS_6IB5X4-Qaql6mABw
http://www.swiftcover.com/stuck-iphone-app/
http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3608/3440028348_7954264c66_o.gif&imgrefurl=http://ebayinkblog.com/2009/04/14/changes-to-ebay-marketplace-to-include-smart-faqs-and-new-resolution-process/&usg=__SXL2P9Z4yz8nbwJo4XfO1L-MuC4=&h=273&w=503&sz=12&hl=en&start=10&sig2=NSR_V4y0B8DtEU5G4_3MlA&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=3vztU4Mg32lu5M:&tbnh=71&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Debay%2Bmarketplace%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Den%26tbs%3Disch:1&ei=4oDeS8m_PMrt-QaRncD-Bg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVp0ZlA5NNSCj6xt308cauSSZTtoPxS6kbgkt5ev51SBpNtSVA4XwoCIsnr9DB2TmSshkXvARnZ-omlpEn6aLiBU_kRTLdqZ7-ec6sIu7zzlYGUCmFZeuBGCTjXjijzWpd_WAg8-MtyJQ/s400/virtualization_diagram.jpg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI7zfviLtW_RN1ay5w9SMZ2e3nBldAceSYmPMj6sI8u9HP7x6aT4gYdAVXaeX8F3XWPuDjHxyRQyh3FqFjKrriOmrsthqVmPw_mnqIe4rxYIZizNbBTXGL2x7Y6MgPQk7Z48p4ij3V9Ng/s400/site_count_history.png
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAHqXUYLLGQYWQ5mjp2KNViBI5GvheZh533th-NWmvKM9xQowurSh78kLqiNO-_R5IH5-FZVhLThnOtaVlNZcDTjrpd5va0MdgsGVnkOLaSPrOAIb4F8-1Ka46OeueJJZ4w7oV5gcKn2k/s400/meerkat.jpg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiidO4krlZC4WPnfKmn9th2hlEX1g1NI6Km6yFw5-OSph7CGjgzbaB2rqJ9kuApwByFwFcu-NWg-KHZcTLYvd4Vt-LSFviUif-X7d9aFhhnoooXw0L4uHUiEUZC7WrYhsi44KhaGminTXQ/s1600/iphone.jpg


On-Line Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae_DKNwK_ms

Trend Map & what this Means for My Industry

Narrative during this blog has explained how I came to these deductions regarding what my trend map should look like. As such the following map is my attempt to show key trends for my industry sector. What I think this suggests is that technology is no longer the key element within my organisation and that focus on service is. Furthermore, I believe that during these discussions a key theme has been speed and flexibility. For those reasons I firmly believe what this means for my organisation is that we will see greater organisational flexibility being introduced as highlighted in some of the micro trends below as well as the macro trends (Changing Industry Landscape trend). This will probably come from use of partnerships and greater use of cloud computing.

The BIG Question... Revisited Again

the BIG questions....

1. Identify, explain and critically analyse the three key drivers shaping the business’s industry sector and identify those trends that will impact society and therefore the business.
2. Identify with justification an ‘over the horizon opportunity’ based upon a trend that is unique to the business.
3. Present the ‘trend map’ for the business detailing the drivers, trends and the identified opportunity, with narrative that supports and develops your argument, and in so doing provides evidence of your understanding of contextual marketing.

The Fit with Post Modern Marketing Conditions

The 'Social Network Culture' trend fits well within the Post Modern Marketing conditions. Hyperreality is concerned with creating environments that are 'more real than real' (Brown). The networking culture allows individuals around the globe to identify and interact with others with common interests as if those poeple were in the same room. Therefore, speeding up the time and chances of finding like-minded individuals on any given subject.

The social networking culture has allowed individuals to lead more fragmented lifestyles in an environment which is ever present 24x7x365. Working within a major corporation during business hours but being a downhill cyclist in the evenings and weekends, the pick and mix of lifestyle choices that modern consumers can choose has resulted in a huge growth of social 'Groups' and 'Fans' and applications

such as second life to support these multiple roles/identities.

The paradoxical juxtaposition of opposites condition is concerned with the inability to pin down a target audience. In turn this has led to attempts to attract audiences by creating designs with contradictory designs and motifs. A quick scan of the number of social media site designs, and the ability to design ones self as well as the site could be seen as making use of this condition.

Japans Fake Beach

Finally, Tolerance for difference and Multiplicity was defined by Firat as “An acceptance of difference (different styles, ways of being and living) without prejudice or evaluations of superiority and inferiority” (1997, pg. 186). Social networking sites allows individuals to be whom ever they wish to be, whilst it is anonymous, it also allows individuals to be what ever they would prefer to be and how much they are to sharing their 'real' identity with others.

All these conditions support that Social Networking Culture is set to grow and be a new potential opportunity for my organisation.

Over Horizon Opportunity

I have identified three key Macro Trends that I believe will influence my industry in the middle to long term future (5-10 years) and within those key macro trends micro trends have been identified.


Many of the micro trends crossover into some of the other macro trends, such as 'changing business models' and 'enhanced mobile services', which I believe further supports the micro trends that have been identified.

A 'Over the Horizon' opportunity for my industry I believe will be the 'Social Network Culture'. The introduction of Web 2.0 and the growth in tools such as Facebook and Twitter have seen individuals disbursed throughout the globe

united in shared issues, aims, goals or just interests. A quick search on the web here shows just how many different social networking applications currently exist. Companies have been quick to harness these new revenue market streams which have been further reinforced with the huge growth in mobile phone applications. Twitter has now announced that they will be introducing advertising on their site although this may be more of a push than a pull as Twitter were struggling to gain revenue for their business model. I believe that my organisation could create its own social networking site or make use of existing sites in order to take advantage of many of the uses as described below.

According to Marketing Jive there are five uses for social media sites for companies:

1. to create brand awareness e.g. new product release
2. recruitment
3. reputation management tool
4. learn about new technologies and competitors
5. tool to intercept potential prospects

Organisations could take several approaches to integrate into this new found entrance to market. One way to get their product to market may be to utilise existing sites. Within the Facebook application the use of groups to identify target audiences may be on one route. Creating a group for like-minded individuals for say selling eco-products may be one route. Another popular route is for companies to create applications that link in with the popular networking sites. Swiftcover has created "Stuck" . This app lets you tell people about where you are stuck! This allows people to help you out of a 'jam', what it also does is link into Facebook and Twitter and could be seen as complementary to existing social networking apps. Furthermore, Swiftcover are also collecting valuable customer information which could be used to sell more products.

With recent industry analysis showing that this is not a fad but something that will stay with us, its even more important that organisations embrace the social networking community.

And Another Thing

The growth in applications such as FourSquare and other location based social media sites has resulted in a new growth market for the collecting of prizes and gifts relating to visiting locations regularly. FourSquare have recently joined up with Starbucks to give out coffee for regular visitors. This could be a great area to market your brand, its one way in which social media sites can realise their business model, generating cash and having fun at the same time.

And if your in any doubt read this

the BIG Question... Revisited

the BIG questions....

1. Identify, explain and critically analyse the three key drivers shaping the business’s industry sector and identify those trends that will impact society and therefore the business.
2. Identify with justification an ‘over the horizon opportunity’ based upon a trend that is unique to the business.
3. Present the ‘trend map’ for the business detailing the drivers, trends and the identified opportunity, with narrative that supports and develops your argument, and in so doing provides evidence of your understanding of contextual marketing.

Industry Drivers No. 3 - 'Changing Consumer Landscape'

The third of the macro trends

Like the other macro trends, this is a macro trend that has numerous micro trends within it. A key factor of this changing consumer landscape is the growth in mobile technology which has seen huge strides being met with the introduction of the Iphone and other "Smart" phones.

These smart phones have allowed not only the user to use web browser technologies to purchase goods and services on the move, the growth in mobile applications has seen all types of organisations build apps in order to partake in the mobile marketplace, somewhat like the growth of company web sites when the internet was commercially launched.

The growing asian market, a market which is estimated to have 39% of the smart phone market by 2015 will continue to influence the number of "Apps" being developed and the growth in market worth of the smart phone purchase sector. The growth in smart phones is supported by Gartners predictions as already posted, especially the last 2 trends:

• By 2014, more than three billion of the world’s adult population will be able to transact electronically via mobile and Internet technology.

• By 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide.

The introduction and growth of apps for undertaking every day functions is going to mean less reliance on the home PC. This will be further impacted by the growth in multi media entertainment systems. This will have an impact on the way systems are designed and supported and the way in which individuals and organisations work. As Kavounis, of the Futures Company states "Our phones will take us away from our screens and get us out there".

Industry Drivers No. 2 - 'Changing Industry Landscape'

The second of the macro trends

The second of the macro trends is concerned with drive for reduced development time for new applications, driven by competitive forces and changing business models.

Organisations in the 21st Century face a changing consumer landscape

and a highly competitive

market. With the evolution of the internet the set up costs of companies has massively reduced, whilst making use of existing business models such as Ebay Marketplace and Amazons Marketplace companies can challenge existing companies markets within hours not weeks or years. Social media sites will be seen as a new potential growth area within this arena.

Within the IT industry sites such as comparethemarket.com and moneysupermarket.com has resulted in numerous developments. A key change is that it takes less time to search many brokers for such things as car insurance or holidays. This has resulted in consumers becoming more price conscious. The net result is that companies have become more focused on price whilst brand loyalty has become diminished although not completely removed as an influence. A quick search on any of these two compare sites for holiday insurance will demonstrate the mass of basic insurance companies all competing on price, its the default sort order for the results search. A review of the top spending advertisers would show that the compare search sites spend more on advertising than the insurers they host on their sites.




This short term cost concious supplier has led to basic often reused web site designs becoming more popular as it is probably the one and only time the customer will visit the site unless they have competitive pricing for any length of time. This can be further demonstrated in the growth of internet domains, as shown below.

Industry Drivers No. 1 - 'Changing Technology Landscape'

The first of the macro trends

The change from a technology organisations into a service organisations. Historically, hosting organisations would offer a similar range of technology solutions albeit they have changed in size and the technology solution. However, the hosting industry has changed from offering a server so that a client could configure and manage all the software and applications on that server themselves, to one where the hosting provider now offers not only the server but all the services attached to that server e.g. backup, recovery, and hence the term service provider.

This can be further demonstrated by the growth in the cloud computing environment. This takes this theory one step further, as there is no mention of hardware or widgets in the box, this is all now invisible to the customer, and why would the customer want to know as long as they were confident of the supplier. Here's a great clip here to understand more.

This drive to offer a virtual one-stop-shop for customers supports the growing trend of remote and virtual work teams means that now more than ever the focus should be on Service and not technology.

You can see what happens here when companies don't focus on service.

Other Micro trends that support this macro trend include; outsourcing where external providers take non core work practices over and manage them, these are often seamless to external customers, the Indian call centre outsourcing providers such as Dell are embedded within many organisation. The use of partnerships and specialist companies becoming a closely coupled member of the organisation has resulted in greater efforts by all involved to focus more closely on the end customer service satisfaction.

A key trend setter within any industry is professional bodies with the IT sector being no different. The introduction of ITIL V3 (the IT's key professional framework) focused even more on the term 'Service' rather than more traditional focus on technology.

Industry Drivers - Condensed View

Taking my initial key industry drivers or micro trends diagram, I have reviewed each of those to see in which of the 12 Macro Trends they fit within. There appears to be three Macro Trends that these fit best within.

In the diagram below you can see the central macro trends that have been identified as key for my industry and then then associated micro trends.

Future IT Sector Trends

Some really interesting insights in this article here, surrounding future trends for the IT Sector including:

• Businesses moving away from owning IT assets.
• Facebook will become the central location for social networking.
• Increasingly, green factors will be included in future business cases.
• Three billion people will be able to purchase and manage purchases via mobile technology.
• Mobile phones overtaking PCs as the most common Web access device.

All of these issues will obviously impact on the way the IT industry conducts it work and relationship with the consumer.

Key Industry Drivers - IT Service Sector

Adapted from http://www.nowandnext.com/PDF/trend_blend_2009_map.pdf

This is my first attempt at spotting the key industry drivers at work within the IT Service sector. These also appear which should not be surprising to be many of the micro trends within my industry.

This is an excellent design, so used it for my trend map

http://www.nowandnext.com/PDF/trend_blend_2009_map.pdf

PESTLE Analysis

So a first attempt at my PESTLE analysis to see what key industry drivers are affecting the IT Service sector.

My Organisation - Some Key Points

To get an idea of what type of business and the environment that I work in here are some key facts surrounding my organisation and key functions of the company.

In completing this assignment I hope to identify the key industry drivers based upon the 12 IMD macro drivers. These macro drivers this should allow me to identify micro trends that exist within my industry.

Once the micro trends have been identified, and utilising the four 'Post Modern Marketing' conditions I will attempt to identify possible opportunities for my business sector. This should also assist in answering "What Business Should We Be In.

Some key facts of My Organisation:

• A wholly owned subsidiary to provide infrastructure services to internal companies worldwide and established in 2002.
• Key goal to unit price position a proportion below external competitors
• Manages around 1 billion Euros in IT spending.

What Business Are We In?

• Technology Infrastructure Organisation
• Focus on Cost Conscious
• Formal Global Procedures and sign-off
• Focus on a Local rather than Global or Regional Level
• Limited Business Partnerships.

What Business SHOULD we be in?

OK so trying to come up with some starting point for this assignment, working on the theory, just get something down. So the BIG questions....

1. Identify, explain and critically analyse the three key drivers shaping the business’s industry sector and identify those trends that will impact society and therefore the business.
2. Identify with justification an ‘over the horizon opportunity’ based upon a trend that is unique to the business.
3. Present the ‘trend map’ for the business detailing the drivers, trends and the identified opportunity, with narrative that supports and develops your argument, and in so doing provides evidence of your understanding of contextual marketing.

The image on the top of the page is the first one I found when I typed "Key Drivers" into Google Images. I guess having a key will unlock or solve the puzzle, sadly only one of many!