Brands have personalities ?!

According to O’Connell (2015) consumers view brands as living entities, where brands are been perceived by customers as either a masculine or a feminine brand. The author mentioned a study that was done on 130,000 German consumers found that branded products that are seen adventurous, aggressive, brave, where categorized by customers as masculine brands, where on the other hand, brands that reflected traits as fragile, graceful, sensitive were categorized as feminine brands. Companies intensively work to understand the minds of customers.
          Indeed the brand personality concept is very true, for instance few days back I was out with my mother and her hand bag captured my attention, I started checking out her hand bag and I really did not like the design of the bag, mom felt the dislike on my face and said: it is a Gucci bag. The moment I heard the name Gucci (a brand that I consider as sophisticated and lavish) my whole perception and look to the bag changed and I started loving the hand bag. This incident clearly reflects how customers associate traits to the various brand names in the market, where these attributes are usually stored in the minds of customers and triggered once they get exposed to a stimulus. Stimuli are those elements that evoke a set of feelings when customers get exposed to firms billboard adverts, TV commercial and brand logo (Solomon, 2012). Moreover in consumer behavior studies, it is claimed that customers learn and shape attitudes by responding to a stimulus which is created by companies. Many customers select to buy from brands that match and express their personalities, this proves that customers nowadays are victims of the various branding schemes done by large marketing corporations where the majority of the brand characters are been actually created by these entities (Aaker, 1997). Consumers should be very conscious towards the marketing efforts of firms to trigger their emotions at the time of making purchase decisions, alternatively customers should follow their intellectual power in making buying decisions.

References

Aaker, J. L. (1997). Dimensions of brand personality. Journal of Marketing Research, 34(3), 347-356. Retrieved April 23, 2015, from http://ezproxy.squ.edu.om:2145/docview/235235096?accountid=27575

O’Connell, A. (2015) Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from                  https://hbr.org/2015/04/why-do-we-get-so-emotional-about-brands

Solomon, M. R. (2012). Consumer behavior: Buying, Having and being. United States of America: Pearson education.

Internet, a curse or a blessing for job opportunities?

The newly born infants of the 21st century, get their first exposure to the public through the Internet. Thanks to the social media networks and the abundance of cellular data connection in most parts of the world. Davidow (2015) argues that Internet has caused a loss in the number of jobs available in the market; as most firms are emerging to a more automated business conduct, where humans are displaced by robots. He claims that big companies such as Google are successful and profitable due to the drop of expenses caused by running firms with few workers. Davidow (2015) also added, online retailing has lead to a drop in the number of jobs offered in retail shops, as retailers are using machines instead of labor in their warehouses.
               In criticism to Davidow's explanation to the success reason of Google like companies, it is not due to the small number of employees' such firms are prospering, but it is about the productivity and efficiency of the employees' in such firms that leads to the success and revenue growth of these companies. Of course the employees' productivity is not the only factor of success, however the quality of employees' plays a very crucial role in the performance of a corporation (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart and Wright 2011).
        According to Thau (2013) 94% of retail sales are achieved from physical retail stores in the USA. This indicates that many customers in the states still prefer not to shop online and rather target brick-and-mortar merchants. As a result of the physical retailer shops demand, famous retail chains would expand further by opening more branches of their stores, and thus many job opportunities are retained in the retailing industry. Given the aforementioned justification, it is evident that Davidow's claim about jobs drop caused by online retailers is incomprehensive. In general the article would have been more valid if it contained more data about the claims made by the author. Moreover the author's over generalization of Internet impact to job opportunities is questionable.

References

Davidow, W. H. (2015) Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from                  https://hbr.org/2015/03/the-internet-has-been-a-colossal-economic-disappointment

Noe, R. A. , Hollenbeck, J. R. , Gerhart, B. , & Wright, P. M. , (2011). Fundamentals of human resource management. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin.

Thau, B. (2013). Getting physical online retailer move offline. Chain Store Age, 89(3), 12-14,16. Retrieved April 13, 2015, from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1400452493?accountid=27575

Self service kiosks and consumer behavior

Robotics and self service kiosks are repeatedly heard terms in today’s world. In her article Gavett (2015) points that many companies nowadays are emerging to offer their products on a self service machine due to the high returns of these electronic facilities. The reason behind the revenue growth is, self service kiosks or applications help to remove the physiological and social embarrassment that many customers try to avoid in their buying process. For instance, it is witnessed that consumers would order less food at a fast food restaurant as to avoid the people judgment on their eating behavior. In contrast when they ordered through a website, the quantity of the food is more and customer satisfaction is higher (Gavett, 2015). But the question is, why are customers caring so much about other people impressions and judgments towards their purchase behavior ?
           In answer to the above question, human beings define them self's by imagining how others would look at them, what impressions their appearances create to the people around them. Sociologist term the above as the "Looking glass self" concept (Sinigaglia & Rizzolatti, 2011). People absorb their personality traits from the culture they live in, the latest trends in the world and new fashion created by marketers. Where each person gets attracted to those traits that match their perceptions and norms. Then consumers illustrate the absorbed attributes by their purchasing behavior, taking into consideration the impressions that their purchases and belongings would create to the public (Solomon, 2012). For example when I went through the process of buying a new car, my main consideration was what will the car speak about my personality, what will the people comment at me when they will witness me riding that car. Thus the above explains why consumers are feeling more comfortable to buy through self service kiosks than to go through face-to-face interactions with shop sellers and appear to the public while buying.

References

Gavett, G. (2015). Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from
https://hbr.org/2015/03/how-self-service-kiosks-are-changing-customer-behavior

Solomon, M. R. (2012). Consumer behavior: Buying, Having and being. United States of America: Pearson education.

Sinigaglia, C., & Rizzolatti, G. (2011). Through the looking glass: Self and others. Consciousness and Cognition, 20(1), 64-74.  doi:10.1016/j.concog.2010.11.01

Employee Motivation is Important to Companies

Being a manager , a team leader or a soccer team coach, it's always important to keep the people you work with cheered up. One of the major factors of the wheel of successful human resources in a service firm is motivation and energizing of the people in the company (Lovelock & Wirtz, 2007) Yet it's always a baffling question on how to develop a motivated team. According to Gallo (2014)  if a manager is striving to keep his employees motivated he should first check how much his staff are affiliated to the organization. This could be discovered by either testing the employees level of satisfaction through surveys, or review explanatory data about the employees to check what energizes his staff. Gallo (2014) has pointed out that a well designed work environment and giving people the freedom to choose their working time and place yields motivation in employees.
           Excited employees highly contribute in the profitability of a business , customer satisfaction and longer employee life within a organization ( Gallo, 2014). This is a very true concept, for instance during my internship in Al Saleh Enterprises the administration had decided to take the staff for a bowling competition, moments after the official announcement of the event, I witnessed the excitement on the face of the sales executive I worked with in the department and coincidentally that sales executive had a meeting with a customer just after hearing the news, this employee was excited enough that he won the deal with customer and signed a contract worth ten thousand Omani Rials. The story clearly proves the concept that a workers encouraged state of mind positively  influences his performance towards his job, for sure the customer in the story was satisfied and consequently got persuaded to sign the deal. Rooks (1991) illustrated in his article that there is a direct link between a agents high morale and his productivity, thus the motivation of these people is closely related with the success of the business.

References

Gallo, A. (2014). Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from
https://hbr.org/2014/12/how-to-keep-your-team-motivated

Lovelock, C. & Wirtz, J. (2007). Managing People for service advantage, Service Marketing (pp.323-324 ) . United States of America.

Rooks, D. G. (1991). The motivated agent: E = mc2. Best's Review, 92(2), 44. Retrieved March 11,  2015,  from http://search.proquest.com/docview/201060301?accountid=27575

Forums ?!!

Forums An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived. Also, depending on the access level of a user or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before it becomes visible.

Forums have a specific set of jargon associated with them; e.g. a single conversation is called a "thread". A discussion forum is hierarchical or tree-like in structure: a forum can contain a number of subforums, each of which may have several topics. Within a forum's topic, each new discussion started is called a thread, and can be replied to by as many people as so wish. Depending on the forum's settings, users can be anonymous or have to register with the forum and then subsequently log in in order to post messages. On most forums, users do not have to log in to read existing messages. An Internet forum administrator or monitor may also participate in the forum. A forum administrator can usually modify threads as well as move or delete threads if necessary. Administrators can also usually change software items in an Internet forum. Moderators often help the administrator and moderate Internet forum members to make sure the forum rules are being followed. Software used to make forums Internet forum software packages are written in many different program languages. Perl, PHP, ASP and Java are common programming languages used in Internet forums. Either text files or a data base can be used for the configuration and storage of posts in the forum.

Blogs ?!!

Blogs

A blog is a personal journal published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first. Blogs are usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often are themed on a single subject. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. Today blog’s are being used for all sorts of purposes. You have companies that use blogs to communicate and interact with customers and other stake holders. Newspapers incorporate blogs to their main website to offer a new channel for their writers. Individuals also created blogs to share with the world their expertise on specific topics. And so on. Where Did Blogs Come From? The roots of blogging can be traced back to the mid 1990’s. Who the very first blogger was is actually unclear, as the art of blogging did not really take hold until 1999. The original "weblogs" were link-driven sites with personal commentaries. The very first blogs were human guided Internet web tours. While initially thought of as diaries or online journals, blogs have evolved into the latest fresh web content.

Network devices

Network Bridge A network bridge, also known as a layer 2 switch, is a hardware device used to create a connection between two separate computer networks or to divide one network into two. Both networks usually use the same protocol; Ethernet is an example of a protocol. Network devices include, but are not limited to, Personal Computers (PCs), printers, routers, switches and hubs. Devices connected to a network via an Ethernet adapter card have what is known as a Media Access Control (MAC) address, also called a physical or hardware address. It is this address that uniquely identifies a device to a bridge that can then determine to which network the device is connected. The principal function of a network bridge is to forward data based on the MAC address of the sending and receiving devices. This operation helps to eliminate what are known as collision domains. One way of defining a collision domain is a network in which one device, also called a node, forces every other device to listen when it is transmitting data packets. Another definition states that a collision domain exists when two or more devices attempt to transmit information at the exact same time. Networks running Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) should, in theory, be protected from collisions occurring, but CSMA/CD can fail.