Week 9: Misuse of Social Technology

As technology develops day by day, it has taken a huge part in our lives. Even though there are many advantages of technology, there are same amount of disadvantages out there. Technology helps us to keep in touch with people and it helps to develop business. Also, using technology can leads us to change our views, feeling and behaviours.  

Overview of the Organisation

Samsung is a multinational conglomerate company and headquarters in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. Lee Byung-chul found the Samsung in 1938 as a trading company. In three decades time, they expanded the group into areas such as, textiles, insurance, securities, food processing and retail. After Lee’s death in 1987, Samsung divided into four different business groups include Samsung Group, Shinsegae Group, CJ Group and Hansl Group.  

Misuse of Social Technology

            Samsung has hired bloggers and students to write negative online blogs and to comment about one of the competitors mobile brand of Samsung which is HTC. The reviewers did not reveal their real information due to the fact that they could get caught easily. They thought community will think that the information the reviewers provided were real. They were fined $340,000 by a regulator in Taiwan for paying people to write intentional negative comments. This left a huge black mark towards their brand name; they must have lost some of their customers due to this incident. Furthermore, Korean Smartphone maker fined $10,000 by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for advertising some errors of camera features of the Galaxy Duos handset.

How could the organisation avoid such a "misuse" in the future? 

            This led them to lose their everyday customers since it’s an illegal, unethical and somewhat ruined the reputation of the business. There are many ways to avoid these types of misuse in the future such as, Samsung can make sure that this kind of unethical activities are no longer exist in their business, as a result they can build up a good customer relationship and better profit margin. 

 I have selected 3 Ethical Principles for Business Executives to back up my opinions.  (Josephaon, 2013)

    1. Honesty

Trust worthiness and honesty is the most important factors that a company needs to catch the customer’s attention. Samsung has led to the place where they are losing their customers because they could not manage to keep the trust between the consumers and the brand.     

    2. Respect for others

Respecting other competitors in the business world will not harm the company or the products that they are producing. Keeping up the respect for other competitors will help the company to be more successful in the business world. Since Samsung did not respect the other competitors, that left a black mark on their name.

   3. Fairness

Each company has its own rules, regulations and laws relating to their business activities. It is against the law to be unethical as they did to the HTC Company and this is why Taiwan Regulator ordered them to pay $340,000.      

References

Bates, D. (2013). Samsung ordered to pay $340,000 after it paid people to write negative online reviews about HTC phones. Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2476630/Samsung-ordered-pay-340-000-paid-people-write-negative-online-reviews-HTC-phones.html

Harbison, C. (2013). Samsung fined $340,000 for fake HTC reviews: paid comments slamming competitors revealed by FTC. Retrieved from http://www.idigitaltimes.com/samsung-fined-340000-fake-htc-reviews-paid-comments-slamming-competitors-revealed-ftc-video-334235

Josephson, M. (2010). 12 ethical principles for business executives by Michael Josephson. Retrieved from http://josephsoninstitute.org/business/blog/2010/12/12-ethical-principles-for-business-executives/

Wikipedia. (2014). Samsung. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung

Week 8: ROI Case Study: Cisco

In today’s blog I will be discussing about Cisco case study to discuss about the ROI in an Enterprise 2.0 project. There are different types of consequences of ROI (Return on Investment) and many organizations have been using enterprise 2.0 to build up a strong connection with the customers and to communicate with them as often as possible. Enterprise 2.0 can bring advantages and disadvantages to the company and also without knowing the value that the organization makes out of Enterprise 2.0 technology can make a huge different to the organization.

A bit about Return on Investment (ROI)

ROI helps to measure the company’s performances and evaluate the efficiency of the investment and compare the efficiency of a number of different investments (Investopedia, 2014).

Overview of the Cisco

Cisco System is an American Multinational Corporation based in San Jose, California; this helps to design, manufactures and sells networking equipments. Leonard Bosack, Sandy Lerner and Richard Troiano are the founders of Cisco System in San Francisco California, U.S in 1984.

Cisco Issue and Solution

            Cisco decided to implement a new social media strategies and digital marketing strategies in April 2012. After the analysis they found out that their social technologies were insufficient for their future. Management and the communication of social media monitoring were the concerns that they highlighted throughout the assessment period.  

So their solution was to use an application called Salesforce Radian6, which allows the user to manage their social campaigns at one place and it helps to analyse, engage and connect with customers more efficiency.  

 Tangible and Intangible Benefits of Cisco System

Tangible benefits can be expressed as the value of something that can be measured or assessed, such as, costs, sales and revenue.  

·         Staff productivity

·         Leadership and innovation

·         Sales opportunities

·         Creative agencies

 Intangible benefits can be expressed as it cannot be measured in monetary value. These intangible benefits may include employee satisfaction, commitment, communication with the employee and improved customer services.   

·         Reduced extra contact centre staff

·         Increased customer insights

·         Improved partner management

·         Engage with their partners

·         Cost effective environment

The formula to calculate the Return on Investment;      

                    Gain from Investment = the profit that gain from selling the investment

Have a look at this link to know how to calculate ROI in bit more detail.  

Nucleus Research Figure 

 
 Strength and Weakness

                 The main strength of Cisco system is that it allows to collaborate with the International    Telecommunication Union (ITU) to provide Internet education throughout the world. As well as, the main weakness of Cisco system is that large number of company acquisitions that allowed growing in multiple emerging markets (Nucleus Research, (2013).    

References

Investopedia. (2014). Return on investment - ROI. Retrieved from http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/returnoninvestment.asp

Nucleus Research. (2013). ROI case study. Retrieved from http://www.salesforcemarketingcloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Cisco-ROI.pdf?5c91d9  

Salesforce. (2013). The leading social media marketing suite. Retrieved from http://www.salesforcemarketingcloud.com/

Wikipedia. (2014). Cisco system. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_Systems

Week 7: Myer and Social Technologies

This week I will be choosing a company within the retail sector and discuss how they are using social technology and how they apple the McKinsey value levers in the business. 

Overview of Myer

Myer is Australia’s largest department of retail sector which has been known for over 100 years for fashion and style. Myer is owned by Andrew Robinson and sell various products such as menswear, womenswear, childrenswear, footwear, fragrance, cosmetics, furniture, toys, accessories and electrical goods. The main department of Myer is David Jones. Myer was founded in 1900 in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia and headquarters located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.    

  

Myer functional areas:

1.      Customer Services

2.      Social Commerce

3.      Marketing and Sales 

Using Social Technology

            Myer is using various social networking platforms to keep in touch with the customers such as, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and Twitter. These are good choice of social networking platforms to attract the customers to the business. Most of people use at least one or two platform in their everyday life.   

            Myer has been able to reach up to 322,909 fans on their Facebook page, 74,766 followers on Instagram, 1,484 subscribers on Youtube and 75 followers on Twitter.  

     1.  Customer Services       

This is one of the examples from Exhibit 3; levers 8, “Provide customer care via social technologies”. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are the excellent ways to provide customer services. Customers can give feedback on any product or anything else publicly on these social networking platform. This will give the Myer, a chance to respond the customer in the best way as possible to make the customer happy. In return this helps Myer to be more successful and offer consumers what they want.

     2.   Social Commerce

Second best thing about Myer is that it also provides the facility for customers to do online shopping where they can purchase their products and have those delivered to home. This example is according to the Exhibit 3; levers 7, “Social Commerce”. Myer post all the discount information and other deals on their social networking platforms and offering free shipping if the customers purchase certain amount of products.

     3.  Marketing and Sales

Finally, according to the Exhibit 3; lever 5, “Use social technologies for marketing communication/interaction”. This leads them to advertise their offers, own products and events on the Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. Myer uses Youtube to promote their events, beauty tips, new arrival of clothes.            

Conclusion

Myer has an understanding of their customer needs and how to connect with customers via social platform. This will leads to their success in the business and growth of the customers day by day.

References

Myer. (2013). Company profile. Retrieved from http://investor.myer.com.au/Investor-Centre/

Wikipedia. (2014). Myer. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myer

Week 5: Lamborghini and Wikis

This week's blog is about a business that uses a wiki or another type of social technology to improve their performance in some way. For this activity I chose to look at Lamborghini Company and how they implements wikis in their businesses. 

What is Wiki?

The term “wikiwiki” comes from Hawaiian background which means fast and also it helps users to collaborate with each other faster than any other tools. Here is the Wikipedia’s own definition of wikis. “Wiki is a web application which allows people to add, modify or delete content in collaboration with others” (Wikipedia, 2014). Even though there are many different wikis out there on the Internet, this has been the one of the most popular one out of all. 

Why Lamborghini does needs wikis?

The main reason is that Lamborghini has its business around the world and has a large number of employees. Lamborghini has launched a brand new e-commerce. According to Cartype (2014) this is the only website that has the ability where customers can purchase official Automobili Lamborghini brand merchandise from Collezion Automobili Lamborghini.

Social media as a tool

I think it has helped the Lamborghini Company in many different ways to develop their businesses. Wiki helps the company to record changes to their original website and to interact with the consumers rather than sending each one of them an email is easier for the company to make the businesses and build the relationship with the customers. For example, if someone wants to know more information about any product and have to wait for the headquarters of the company to reply them via email, this might take some time and they can even misplace you by sending an email since there are many others that they have to reply and keep in tough with. So by using a wiki, it has helped every single individual to keep up to date with the information that Wiki has provided and it has been helped the website much more and also all the information and changes are saved in one place which helps others to read and edit.    

References 

Cartype. (2014). Lamborghini launches a new e-commerce site. Retrieved from http://www.cartype.com/pages/5241/lamborghini_launches_a_new_e-commerce_site

Wikipedia. (2014). Wiki. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

Week 4: Fanta Social Technology Value Levers

This week I will be looking at how Fanta uses Enterprise 2.0 technologies to the company’s Marketing and Sales Strategies. Furthermore, I will look at the benefits and social technology value levers that used by Fanta to improve the company’s Marketing and Sales side.    

Fanta

Fanta is the second-oldest brand of fruit-flavoured soft drinks that has been created by The Coca-Cola Company. The drink introduced in 1941 and originated in Germany. There are different types of products such as Sunkist, Crush, Slice and Mirinda. Coca Cola imported Fanta to the Nazi Germany during World War II due to the difficulties they had.   


Sale and Marketing 

In the past few years, Fanta has been very successful in their marketing and sales side of the business however they have not had a successful campaign in social media. In order to be successful in social media side, Fanta needs to raise their campaigns, increase customer needs via social media to control the social technology value lever in marketing and sales. Fanta's main purpose was to get more people buying and talking about the brand and which helps them to be successful and compete with the business world. By using social media as a marketing and sales tool, Fanta had the capability of achieving their goals as quickly as they thought. With the help of the social media campaign, they were able to develop their relationship with the customers, reduce the expenses and increase their fan base.      

Affection of Growth of Fanta by using Social Technology Platform 

According to Hicken (2012), 2/3 of the Fanta's volume comes from teenagers in the United States and which help the brand to know that it is less health conscious than older teenagers. This has helped the company to reach them in a new way. Fanta has made a partnership with the Jenga Mobile application to reach out with new teenager customers spread the "less serious: campaign message.     

Now a day, it is a fashion to user a mobile phone and computer from their young age, Fanta also came up with the idea to make and keep interact with the customers via using Facebook and Twitter. Facebook has managed to gain 14,832,040 likes and the official Twitter account is available for you to interact which is @FantaFun.    

Reference

Hicken, M. (2012). Fanta is killing it while all the other big soda brands are in a slump. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com.au/fanta-is-growing-while-most-of-the-soda-market-slumps-2012-3

Wikipedia. (2014). Fanta. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanta

Week 3: Social Technology Beginner - Option 1

What is Social Media?

Social Media is the collection of different types of communication application that has been using throughout the past few years. This helps people to interact with each other and create their very own blogs and share their thoughts, feelings and ideas through people. 

Here is a video that explain about what Social Media is.   

Experience 1: Twitter

Twitter is an online social networking application and that helps people to keep in touch and interact around the world. It has the option to share short 140 character messages with followers which called “tweets”. People who are already registered can read and comment on posts but for the unregistered users can only see them. Users can access Twitter by using the mobile application.   

It was bit hard and confusing at the beginning to understand how it works but the more you use it, the easier it will get. It’s more like to use to keep in touch with people and share your thoughts and pictures around the world but it shows all your posts and pictures to the public but they can’t comment on them if you are not a follower.  

How could Twitter assist me as a student?

Twitter is a large platform for students to find information for their projects or download eBooks. By typing hash tag (#) and particular topic on the search bar, Twitter will give you the list of data that is related to your topic. Twitter also launched an application called TweetScan to help students to find their information and then they will email the data to you.

Twitter can help us as students to interact with our colleagues while working on a project at university level. There are some people in a group who are shy to interact with other colleagues and sometimes they find it hard to make study buddies at university. Twitter can be one of the tools for them to discuss and share their ideas with other members and also they can share important links related to the projects.        

Experience 2:  Blogs

Using blogs as a leaning tool can help students in many ways to develop their skills while studying. It’s not just students who have the capability of using a Blog to gain skills. Even professors, lecturers and tutors can also develop their skills and they can share assignments through the blog site and it is possible for students to view it from anywhere. Not only use to share information but also it use to engage with the tutors and connect with them straight away rather than waiting and emailing.

How can Blogs assist me as a student?

 Blogging as a leaning tool has helped me a lot in the past few weeks to develop my writing and thinking skills. Not only that, I had the chance to share my own thoughts and feeling with colleagues and engage with them. I have improved myself in thinking creatively and critically and also I think it will be easier for me to do a group assignment and collaborate with other members of the group on a blog when we can’t meet up in person.        

References

Rossow, P. (2013). 5 ways twitter can help in education. Retrieved from http://gettingsmart.com/2013/09/5-ways-twitter-can-help-in-education/

Wallagher, M. (2014). Blogs for education. Retrieved from http://supportblogging.com/educationalblogging/

Week 2: What Makes a BLOG Successful?

Hi everyone! I am Lakeesha from Sri Lanka and welcome to my very first blog. I have never blogged in my life before but it looks pretty interesting so far and it will definitely be a challenge since I have no experience and it will help me to develop my own thoughts and ideas by sharing and getting feedback from others.

Purpose of My Blog

The main purpose of my blog is to share my own thoughts and feelings on different topics and to obtain feedback from the reader. Their feedback, would be very useful for me to develop my writing skills, critical and creative thinking. In addition, you have to have a passion and interest towards a particular thing to do it. You can’t do something if you don’t have a passion to do it and you have to try something at least once in life to be successful.

There are some people who are still updating their personal diaries and journals, but rather than recording your own thoughts on a piece of paper, it can be more purposeful to share their ideas and thoughts with others and to get a response which may help them to develop their writing and imagination skills.

Blogs are very helpful for people to express their own thoughts, ideas and feelings around the world through Internet and for example, it will help an organisation or a business to get feedback from their targeted audiences. 

How Will I Create Useful Posts?

Firstly, I would research about the topic and identify the main points that I want to write about, rather than just jumping on to write about it. Secondly, I would make a draft and read through it to check any mistakes then I will check that with my family or friends to see what they think about it and whether it needs to make more adjustments. Finally, I will write my final copy and read it before sharing with others. It is better to read it more than once before sharing it with the world because it is unfair to share the wrong information with others and make them confuse about something.

Research gives you the opportunity to know more about a particular topic, learn something new, to solve your own problems and allows you to increase you interest towards certain topic. Also it’s fun to research about something that you really keen to know and helps you to collaborate something in professional manner.

 

Favourite Blogger

I like video blogging rather than traditional blogging. There are lots of bloggers that I like but for some reason iisuperwomanii is one of my all time favourite blogger since she is a motivational speaker and a video blogger. The best part of her videos is that she engages with the audiences from the start to finish. She has the ability to make audiences laugh while providing good examples and lessons that we could take from listening.

Strategies For Obtaining Readership

Strategies are important to make your blog more user-friendly and attractive. First strategy to gain readerships is to have a good writing skill, stay active on your blog which means to keep updating it frequently. Secondly, interacting with the readers by responding to their feedback and commenting on their posts which are similar to your topic helps you to gain more readers. Finally, making an appropriate topic that will attract readers straight away to read your blog and this will help readers to find your blog by searching on the web.

Reference

CCCA. (2010). Purpose of blogging. Retrieved from http://www.ccca.org/mzqirt_bba/social_blogging_purpose.asp