Digital Marketing

A new experience: My first online examination today

2020-04-01T20:52:00.002+01:00

It is amazing how a disastrous crisis like the Coronavirus can move things: After talking for more than 10 years about online education we at the University of Twente and many other of our colleagues worldwide switched to online education in one week. And not only the teaching but also examinations planned this week had to go on. After a busy time of testing platforms and changing the tests to make them suitable for students at home (with access to books, notes, summaries and Internet and even help from others) we had today the first such test with a class of 75 participants. Things went better than we had hoped and the students helped also with a serious and professional attitude. We will keep working on improvements but this was a good start

Working at home

2020-03-26T09:48:00.001+01:00

Our education at the University of Twente is by now fully switched to online, even our guest speakers find this no problem

First day back to the Coronavirus enabled (ab-)normality in the University

2020-03-24T21:02:00.000+01:00

From today, after a week of preparations, the University of Twente is officially back to the normal operational mode, with the difference that no physical activities are possible since all university buildings are closed and people are not even supposed to be on the street.

How was my first working day after a week of pause that was supposed to give us the time to adjust to our new online university reality? The day started with an online department meeting where almost every one of the department colleagues took enthusiastically part; we were all very glad to see each other again and share some of our experiences and stories.

The rest of the day was less pleasant, considering that the Coronavirus crisis, next to limiting our life and disrupting our daily routines, also forced the BMS Lab to close and hit badly the hospitality sector. What two events have to do with me? A lot I am afraid since both my classes in the 3^rd quartile is directly related to the BMS Lab and the tourist sector! My Master students following the course, Advanced Topic in Digital Marketing is making use of the BMS Lab equipment for their practical project (testing the usability of Websites) and my students of the undergraduate course Digital Marketing is partnering with real companies (and this year it happens to be mainly companies from the hospitality sector in Twente) for their group project: developing and executing a 3-week AdWords marketing campaign.

You can imagine that my colleagues and I are hastily looking for alternatives since the master students can’t use the lab equipment for their experiments and the hospitality business is closed so not really interested in online advertising since no customer or potential customer can make use of their service. Finding and implementing alternatives for student projects in the middle of the quartile, when only 4 weeks are left, is not an easy business, I can tell you. Today I spent most of the day answering emails of hospitality businesses who have questions about the value of the project for them, trying to persuade them to stay on board. Also, student groups email me the whole day with worries about their projects. With two classes totaling 27 project groups and 17 external partners, you can imagine the volume of communication involved. Next to this, the “normal” business must go on, only online which means a lot of planning for doing things like lectures, meetings, project proposals, etc. in untested waters. Anyway, having survived the first day I am afraid that tomorrow will not be better. I know that I am not the only one facing such a situation, so I wish to all in this position all the best and strength

Google Scholar: The top cited reseacher on the topic of Digital Marketing Publishes research about Physics

2020-02-18T12:20:00.000+01:00

I have published about this before but no one seems to listen 😠😠😠😠😠

Incredible that Google has not noticed anything. Looking to the rest of the list of top citations in Digital Marketing you see more mostly publications from the area of medicine and physics.
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8756923452479392502#editor/target=post;postID=7270393938855230832;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=5;src=postname

https://scholar.google.nl/citations?view_op=search_authors&hl=en&mauthors=label:digital_marketing

AI as Education topic in the BMS Faculty

2020-01-07T19:13:00.000+01:00

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already part of the education and research in our department at the University of Twente. Not a common thing in a Business Administration study! Three examples of our work #utwente #ai #education #DigitalMarketing
https://www.utoday.nl/science/67758/using-ai-to-improve-education-at-the-ut

The 2020 BMS Faculty New Year's gathering

2020-01-07T11:31:00.001+01:00

This morning the Faculty BMS had its annual New Year gathering in the atrium of the Ravelijn building. After a speech by the Dean, four special prizes were awarded. Proud that the cooperation award was given to my colleagues of the BMS Lab: congratulations for the great work and cooperation with us in Digital Marketing research#utwente #BMS #BMSlab #academia #education #technology #university #digitalmarketing

The UT study Int. Business Administration is a Top study in 2020

2020-01-07T11:04:00.000+01:00

The University of Twente study International Business Administration / IBA (together with 5 more studies) is one of the Top Studies in The Netherlands in 2020. Considering that the University of Twente is a technical university this is a great achievement. The secret is the focus and excellence on topics utilizing the unique UT ecosystem to its maximum. Next to this, the UT is chosen as the best technical university of the Netherlands in 2020 (Source Keuzegids, 2020) #utwente #highereducation #businessadministration

https://www.utwente.nl/en/education/bachelor/top-rated-programmes/ 

The University of Twente was pronounced the best Technical University in the Netherlands for 2020

2019-11-27T09:45:00.004+01:00

The hard work pays off: in 2020 the University of Twente is the best technical university in the Netherlands (although not the best known) and the International Business Administration is a Top-rated program for the first time

Proud to be part of the International Business Administration and the Communication Science programs
https://www.utwente.nl/en/news/2019/11/67537/keuzegids-university-of-twente-best-technical-university-in-the-netherlands-six-top-rated-bachelor-programmes

Digital Marketing topics according to Google Scholar: Nanotechnology in dentistry, cancer stem cells and Photocatalytic Degradation of Pollutants

2019-11-24T17:24:00.000+01:00

Like most researchers, I look sometimes how my research work performs versus the work of fellow researchers in the field. Google Scholar offers an easy to use tool for this purpose: it allows you to see the number of citations of your scientific articles per year and in total, the number citations per article and your H-index. Metrics like citations and H-index are important indicators of scientific quality and research impact; they are also widely used, among other criteria, for promotions and recruiting of academic personnel.

While Google Scholar offers in principle a good service to academics, I watch with frustration for some time already the rankings in my domain, namely Digital Marketing. The problem: next to well-known names in this field (like Prof. John Deighton from HBS and Prof Utpal Dholakia from Rice University) there are five persons on the 1^st page of the listing that are totally unknown to me (and to the rest of the researchers on Digital Marketing I suppose). A closer look at the publications of these high-cited individuals reveals that their publications are coming from totally unrelated fields like medicine and physics for example. Even a blogger appears to occupy a high position in the list with publications dating to 1993 when most probably this person was a toddler!

Maybe a coincidence but all names in question seem to be common Indian names; this brings me to the conclusion that Google Scholar is adding-up all publications having as (co-)author someone with the same name no matter what the scientific field is, and places these persons in the list without their knowledge or intention but crediting them with publications that are not even theirs. In the Digital Marketing category, 4 of the top 5 in the list are such incorrect cases (at the time this blog was published)!!!

I think that the people who appear in these listings have done nothing wrong, Google is responsible for this error. Next to the very bad service to the academic community, the unreliable information in Google Scholar can create also problems in academic appraisals and recruitment.

I am not aware of the scale of the problem in other disciplines, but I think it is a shame that Google allows something like this to happen. With all the publicity around the unlimited possibilities of their algorithms, their AI technologies and the latest about the mastering of Quantum Computing I find it incredible that something so simple has escaped the attention of their algorithms or the curators of such results. I tried to inform them by contacting the Google Scholar help desk but no response after more than a month. Also, alerting an international newspaper (who found this extraordinary and promised to act) and a technology magazine did not bring any action on their part so far.

In my view, it would be easy for Google Scholar to avoid such errors by putting some of their smart algorithms to work, namely to identify such cases by simply scanning the content of the articles and decide whether articles about Nanotechnology in dentistry, cancer stem cells or Photocatalytic Degradation of Pollutants belong to the Digital Marketing domain. Also, in the case of common names, an extra control layer could place the various authors to the correct domains. check this using some of their technology but obviously, they do not do that, making their results reliable.

As I mentioned, I don’t know the extent of the problem so if other colleagues are aware of this situation in their domains can contact me. I also hope that Google maybe will read this post and take action

Call for the High Technology Small Firms Conference (HTSF) 2019 in the University of Twente

2019-02-09T15:17:00.000+01:00

I’m pleased to share with you the call for papers of the High Technology Small Firms (HTSF) Conference that will be held at the University of Twente on 27-28 May 2019.

This year the HTSF Conference dedicates a special session on Consumer Behavior in Digitally Enabled Environments, organized by our UT research team working on the Digital Transformation and in particular the changing consumer behavior, and the identification of new approaches in comprehending and responding to the customer behavior change.

The special session focuses on unique, innovative and practically applicable research, practices and insights into the behavioral change of customers as consumers of products and services under the influence of the digital transformation. The impact of the digital transformation on customer behavior is visible in new forms of customer journeys, new types and sources of influence, new forms of marketing communication and new customer decision-making patterns.

The special session is in line with a number of issues shaping the research agenda of the Marketing, as these are specified in the Marketing Science Institute’s (MSI) research priorities for 2018-2020[1] under the umbrella topic Cultivating the Customer Asset. In that respect, we welcome abstracts of papers related to topics like the following (indicative topics):

1. Characterizing and analyzing the Customer Journey along the purchase funnel

2. Investigating new roles of customers as networked customers and co-creators

3. Strategies to influence the customer journey

4. The Customer -Technology interface, bridging the gap of online and off-line

5. Macro-trends influencing Customer Decision Making

The methodology can be theoretical, empirical or drawing from the practice, especially drawing from entrepreneurship, marketing, strategy, sustainability, business, management, economics, and other social sciences, but transdisciplinary approaches are also encouraged.

Contributions from scholars, practitioners, and young researchers are welcome!

The deadline for abstract submissions is 15 March 2019 in the following link

https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/nikos/events/HTSF2019/call-for-papers/special-session-5/

You can find the general and detailed information on the 2019 HTSF Conference and the Call for Papers, at the UT HTSF Conference website.

Please, do not hesitate to contact me for any further information on the SBM special session, and apologies for any cross-posting.

I look forward to seeing you at the University of Twente next May.

Dr. Efthymios Constantinides

Assistant Professor Digital Marketing

Email: e.constantinides@utwente.nl

My Web Page: https://people.utwente.nl/e.constantinides

Phone (work): 0031 – 534893799

Mobile: 0031 6 48779153

[1] http://www.msi.org/research/2018-2020-research-priorities/

The Customer Empowerment Fallacy: How Technology is Eroding the Customer Power

2018-11-28T22:25:00.000+01:00

Do you remember who was the TIME magazine the 2006 Person of the Year? In case you don’t, it was you, me and all the people of the world who had access to the Net: armed with the Internet and the social media the customer seemed to have been able to change the market power game and be for the first in modern history on the market steering wheel (See link). Marketers baffled by the decreasing effectiveness of the traditional marketing communication and the time-honored persuasion tactics had no other choice but accept the fact that their full and undisputed control on the media and message was a thing of the past.

Praised as one of the major upshots of technology democratization, social networking, citizen journalism, and customer engagement, the customer empowerment became a major nightmare of the marketers forced to open their business to customer scrutiny and expose them to social media publicity disasters. The Customer Empowerment as a game changer was something I consistently would mention to my students at the very start of my Digital Marketing courses the last years: the smart, tech-savvy and networked customer was not anymore the weak link in the Marketing Equation.

Is the Customer Empowerment still the case? I am not sure at all and certainly, I have to think twice before I say this to my students again. The very technology that empowered the consumer during the last decade seems to work some time now again to the marketer's advantage. In fact, I have some bad news for the empowered consumer: Marketers armed with AI, immense computer power and zillions of bytes of customer data are quickly gaining the market upper hand. Customer profiling based on data trails consumers create online gives marketers new tools to create detailed customer profiles and predict as well as influence their behavior in ways we need to look at and discuss in more detail.

In the Market Power / Technology grid I attempt to describe how I look to this issue. The years in the timeline represent some in my view milestones of the marketing power journey.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/16242528/ns/us_news-life/t/time-magazines-person-year-you/#.W_rn5WhKiM8

The Cambridge Analytica case: Old News

2018-03-21T13:30:00.003+01:00

I am really surprised with the recent outburst of anger and frustration following revelations about the tactics of Cambridge Analytica in influencing the results of the American elections and the Brexit referendum with the possible tolerance of Facebook.
This is in my view old news: In the winter of 2017 the case was already presented to my Bachelor students by SocialInc in a guest lecture and on June 2017 I discussed the Cambridge Analytica's case in a talk in June in the UT titled "Algorithmic Marketing".
I was surprised till 2 days ago that no one seemed to worry about this story that was also extensively discussed in various platforms, for example in the article in the Observer from May 2017, with a very graphic title (this article was also posted in our Smart Marketing Group Facebook group on 23 October 2017).
Maybe when the mainstream media pick up a story and decide that the public is ripe to hear about it, the story reaches the increasingly passive, hypnotized public.
The question is what will happen from now on: Is this the beginning of the end of Facebook or even of the social media hype? Are there legal steps to be

taken against various over-jealous marketers and nerdy professors who sacrifice their intellectual capacities to profit? Will the wider public finally understand what is at stake here? And, last but not least, will the new EU GDPR put an end to these practices? Stay tuned!

What is the best time to buy an online airline ticket? The "6-week rule" (of thumb).

2018-03-12T10:06:00.000+01:00

This is a question that keeps passengers and analysts/experts busy (https://fd.nl/werk-en-ge…/…/vliegen-het-kan-altijd-goedkoper), as much as the question how airlines price their seats considering the prices differences online customers encounter even on daily basis. The sometimes serious price differences even within the same day or between different people booking a rip at the same time have given food to urban legends and are often the source of customer frustration.
In 2011 the consumer advocacy program Tros Radar of the Dutch TV https://radar.avrotros.nl/uitzendingen/gemist/10-05-2011/vliegtickets/ asked me to help them find out if customer profiling by airlines using cookies was the reason for these differences. In the specific setting that we conducted the experiment at that time, we did not find any evidence of profiling. The conclusion was that the prices differences in online prices for the flights and the period we controlled were the result of capacity management algorithms. The findings were reported in my blog post of 11 March 2011 http://bit.ly/2HsAuOe
The question remains of course and is always timely: what is the cheapest time to book an online ticket? There are several studies in this, mostly by travel organizations or commercial parties. An older study (2012) http://business.time.com/…/study-the-best-time-to-buy-chea…/ and a more recent one (2017) https://nitravelnews.com/…/book-six-weeks-before-you-fly-f…/ agree that six weeks before departure is the best time to book an online ticket. Interestingly I did a small scale study covering a period of 2 months before departure for a return flight Amsterdam - Athens. I followed with Google Flights the prices of 3 airlines flying directly this route and the results were quite similar to the studies I mentioned: In this case, the lowest average price of the 3 companies (KLM, Aegean Airlines, and Transavia) was offered exactly 6 weeks before departure (42 days before departure). On the other hand, the cheapest price for Transavia over the whole period (119 Euro) and for Aegean Air (152 Euro) were noticed 60 days before departure while the cheapest price for KLM (170 Euro) was noticed for 4 times in a period between 40 and 45 days before departure. There are more interesting things to see in the ticket price development (see graphs) until the departure date.
It looks that the six-week rule holds some truth, Interestingly though, next to our 2011 study (that as a scientific article was accepted only by a conference) there is still no academic research on this issue. Maybe one of our next research projects for more scientific evidence on what is the best day to book a fight and how the algorithms of the airline capacity management work.

Introduction to Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

2018-02-14T15:29:00.003+01:00

Today our Bachelor students following our Module Digital Marketing in our International Business Administration studies were introduced to the Search Engine Marketing by the Team Nijhuis, one of the top Google partners in Europe.
The guest lecture was in the context of the UT AdWords Challenge project, a group assignment introducing the students to the world of online marketing

CALL FOR BUSINESSES AND ORGANIZATIONS BASED IN THE NETHERLANDS AND GERMANY

2017-12-08T15:13:00.000+01:00

Interested in an AdWords campaign in partnership with one of our student groups? We look for partner companies in the UT / Saxion AdWords online Challenge.

During the last 3 years, our Bachelor students of the course @Digital Marketing for Networked Businesses in the University of Twente have participated in the Google Online Marketing Challenge, a worldwide college competition introducing students to the topic of Search Engine Advertising (SEA).

After ten years of organizing this annual challenge, Google stopped this project this year. Given the importance of SEA for the modern Digital Marketing education, we developed a new assignment in the @UT in cooperation with the EIT Digital and the Saxion University of Applied Sciences. The new challenge is quite similar to the Google Challenge but since a free-of-charge AdWords campaign and the organization are not available anymore by Google, we ask the participating partner companies a contribution covering the campaign and some of the organizational costs.
Partner companies can count on a motivated group of students who under the supervision of our staff and external experts will develop and execute a 3-week AdWords campaign, will conduct an audit of the company website and will report the results of the project to the partner company. More details and registration form are available at the link: Registration UT AdWords Challenge

AMAZON: a Leader and Disrupter of Retail

2017-11-28T11:23:00.000+01:00

No doubt that Amazon has seriously impacted on and transformed retail and online shopping in general for more than 20 years. I follow this company since the 90s and I was one of those wondering if Amazon would survive the dot.com disaster of the beginning of the 20th century. They indeed survived it based on a strategy of (mainly) diversification as I described in my 2004 article "Strategies for surviving the Internet meltdown: The case of two Internet incumbents". They still go strong and keep disrupting, if not always without controversy: see the Black Friday strikes of Amazon personnel in Europe.

Digital pains: Is (mis)use of algorithms a threat to democracy?

2017-10-24T10:27:00.000+01:00

A must-read article of the Guardian. Everyone can draw his / her own conclusions

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy

Master Class Behavioral Targeting in the University of Twente II

2017-10-13T10:38:00.003+01:00

The presentations of the speakers in the Master Class Behavioral Targeting are available in the following link
https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/nikos/education/masterclass-behavioral-targeting/#introduction

Master Class Behavioral Targeting in the University of Twente

2017-10-04T13:54:00.002+01:00

Our Master Class Behavioral Targeting of October 2, 2017 in the Gallery Building in the Campus of the the University of Twente was very successful according to the comments we received from the participants. A lot of interest by students, educators and practitioners, very interesting presentations and a very lively panel discussion. Our thanks to all participants and contributors.

The presentations will be soon available online. Requests to e.constantinides@utweente.nl
Videos of the session are posted in our smart Marketing Facebook group Smart Marketing Facebook group

A popular article on Web Experience

2017-10-04T13:47:00.002+01:00

Glad to see that my 2004 article Influencing the Online Consumer's behavior: The Web Experience published in the Internet Research Journal is still among the top-5 most read papers
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/10662240410530835

Master Class Behavioral Targeting on Oct. 2

2017-09-22T10:28:00.001+01:00

The Master Class Behavioral Targeting (see previous post) seems to be very popular since more than 90 participants are registered already. https://www.facebook.com/events/1433086260061874 Considering our target of 75 participants we are quite happy that we were wrong!
The registration is now closed and we keep a waiting list https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/nikos/education/masterclass-behavioral-targeting/#introduction in case of cancellations.
Given the overwhelming interest also form colleagues and contacts abroad we will livestream the event.
The morning session (09:30 - 12:30) will be live in our Smart Marketing Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/1674296056130955/ , the afternoon session and the panel discussion (13:30 - 16:45) will be livestreamed in the UT USTREAM channel http://www.ustream.tv/channel/universityoftwente

For those interested the program of the day below

Master Class Behavioral Targeting as Marketing Approach: Theory, Practice and Challenges

2017-09-04T12:04:00.000+01:00

Organized by the UT / Faculty BMS (Digital Marketing Lab / Departments ESIM and CS), the UT Department Marketing and Communications (M&C) and the
European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT Digital)

Date: October 2, 2017

Location: Erlenmeyer room in Gallery building. UT Campus

Registration www.utwente.nl/behavioral-targeting

Master Class Behavioral Targeting

The extensive use of the Internet as interaction, transaction and information platforms in combination with the explosive use of Social Media offers marketers many new possibilities to monitor customers and their behavior and create very specific and accurate customer profiles. Big Data and a number of new analytics technologies provide also marketers the means to locate customers and approach them one-to-one.

Behavioral Targeting (also known as Online Profiling and Behavioral Advertising) is a term used for online one-to-one communication with customers, leading to effective recruitment and high conversion rates. Behavioral targeting is based on online customer profiling and one-to-one approach with advertisement. Artificial Intelligence and advanced algorithms make such approaches very effective and cost efficient and according to field experiences Behavioral Targeting is becoming increasingly effective as communication and persuasion tool in comparison to traditional online approaches and SEM techniques.

The practice is widely applied yet controversial: There are several ethical and legal aspects related to customer profiling. Wide publicity has been given recently to the role of behavioral targeting in the success of the Brexit campaign and the victory of Donald Trump in the latest US elections. Such developments are raising questions about the “weaponizing” of behavioral targeting in particular for political purposes and exercising effective influence on individuals.

The Master Class Behavioral Targeting is a contribution of the Faculty BMS of the University of Twente in cooperation with the UT department of Marketing & Communications and the EIT Digital in the context of the research, teaching programs and projects carried out in the faculty in the area of Digital Marketing. The Master Class will bring academics and practitioners in touch with this new online marketing technique and will present proven methodologies for profiling and applying behavioral targeting in real life situations with accent to the educational markets. The master class will also look critically to ethical and other issues that emerge when such techniques are applied.

The guest speakers include Willem Berings and Felix Geeraths from Social Inc, an Amsterdam-based agency that specializes in developing customer profiling strategies and online campaigns. Marc Zinck, CEO of the highly successful Spanish start-up Subastia de Ocio will present his experiences with behavioral targeting as the main marketing approach for recruiting new customers. Dr. Sophie Boerman, Assistant Professor of Persuasive Communication from the UVA, co-author of a research paper on Online Behavioral Advertising will present the findings of this study and the research agenda on this topic. Floris Metzner from the department Marketing and Communication of the UT will present the UT M&C approach on measuring Advertising Effects in creative ways.

The day will close with a panel discussion evaluating the takeaways of the day and focusing on the various technical and ethical issues of personalization and behavioral targeting.

Registration: www.utwente.nl/behavioral-targeting

To developers of self-driving cars: Ever heard about Marketing Myopia?

2017-06-26T11:54:00.000+01:00

Self-driving cars are hot and most technology companies and many Silicon Valley start-ups are leading the autonomous vehicle hype. Engineering firms are working on developing autonomous car technologies and new testing projects of prototypes are an almost daily phenomenon. Fearing to miss the market opportunity many traditional automakers are launching research projects and prototypes. The autonomous vehicle makes experts excited and local as well as national governments are eagerly providing all sorts of facilities and help to attract and test robot cars.

I will not talk about a number of serious ethical or legal issues that have still to be addressed if such a technology becomes mainstream. I will limit this advice to the marketing dimension only.

The marketing practice is full of anecdotes of failed new products and new ventures; some of them were based on state-of-the-art technologies that created substantial publicity and interest; A rather recent and well known example are the multiple failures of dot.com ventures at the beginning of this century.

While the reasons for new product failures are many in many and diverse, the "Product Orientation" (also known as Marketing Myopia, a concept every marketing college student knows about) has been a main reason of new product failures and responsible for billions of dollars burned in the market test. Marketing myopia is particularly present in the technology sector where often new and very promising technologies lead to very interesting concepts that without much scrutiny were launched to markets that were neither ready nor interested. This because more often than not the developers of such ideas fail to ask the target consumer / customer if a need for such a product exists.

I am afraid the autonomous car is also such a case. Despite the going volume of press posts and all types of media / social media debates I did not see yet a serious industry study measuring such a market need for self-driving cars. Maybe such a study lays in the drawers of some of the businesses in question but if I look to the - seldom - scientific literature studies about the possible adoption of self-driving cars these are sketching a rather negative picture; legal liability, comfort and safety concerns seem to be important issues for future possible users.

Next to customer perceptions or even attitudes that can be potentially be very hard to change I think the most important issue around this technology is a radical change it will bring to the concept of "driving"! We know very well that people buy a car for various reasons, a very important one is because they see it as an expression of freedom, fun and of course because they like driving.

The self-driving car is not anymore a vehicle under the driver's control and comes close to a -small size - city bus or train. A typical potential buyer will make, even unconsciously, this association when in the consideration / alternative comparison stage. And while a robot car can be exciting to a computer scientists like the ones sitting inside the test cars today it can be repulsive to the mainstream user. I am afraid that potential buyers of a self-driving car will see this as an alternative to public transportation, an expensive alternative indeed.

I countries with highly developed public transportation the chances of mainstream drivers to choose for a robot car will be limited. In countries with bad public transport the chances are better, I would argue though that countries with bad public transport maybe could use the R&D costs for the self-driving car for improving their public transportation instead.

I am afraid that if the industry does not conduct a serious study on the customer's needs and usage perceptions, the self-driving car will follow the fate of the hyped introduction of the e-readers of some years ago that not only did not wipe out the printed book but did not even manage to become a mainstream product.

I would not argue however that the self-driving vehicle is useless, there are several cases that I think it can be useful, mainly in the b2b and public domain, but I am afraid that in this cases the typical car driver will not be the main target.

Before the self-driving car becomes another marketing failure anecdotes I would highly recommend to developers to ask some people with marketing knowledge to help them understanding their potential market better avoiding the product orientation trap

Amazon and the limits of growth: The Red Queen effect confirmed

2017-06-22T16:42:00.000+01:00

Headlines like this dominated the online and offline media last week: The recent takeover of Whole Foods for almost $ 14 billion by Amazon sent shock waves to observers and high street retailers.
Should we be surprised by the news? Personally I am not surprised at all; Diversification and continuous expansion is a strategy that Amazon consistently pursuits since the beginning of its times.

Is that right? In 2004 I published a research paper in the Management Decision titled: "Strategies for surviving the Internet meltdown: The case of two Internet incumbents" * Although this article won the title of the best paper award of the journal for that year it never became so popular with only 24 citations so far.
In this study I reviewed the strategic decisions made by Amazon and one more of the survivors of the dot.com disaster (E-Trade) at the beginning of the 21st Century, looking for clues why these Internet pioneers did not follow the fate of the thousands of dot.coms that went bankrupt after the 90's dot.com hype.
My study was focused on the major and minor strategic decisions made in the period 1997 - 2001. I classified these decisions according to the well- known Growth Matrix of Ansoff; this matrix identifies as most of us know, four types of growth strategies: Market Penetration, Market Development, Product Development and Diversification.
During the period in question Diversification was the main strategic approach for growth pursued by Amazon: Although Diversification is the most risky of the four options this strategy worked and not only helped Amazon survive the Internet debacle but also transformed Amazon from an online bookstore to an online (and increasingly traditional) retail giant that it is today. We must not forget that Whole Foods is not the first traditional retail venture of Amazon, they operate already a number of physical bookstores; interestingly books is the first product category that help Amazon to be launched as e-shop back in 1995.

As I mentioned, to me the expansion of Amazon to traditional retailing did not come as a surprise. In my 2004 article I came to the following conclusion when discussing the findings:

"An alternative strategic option for both Ž firms (i.e. Amazon and E-Trade) could be to concentrate on the present business domains and pursue further grow by expanding their physical activities rather than the virtual ones, at the cost of traditional players; such a strategy is likely to trigger reactions of traditional, physical Ž firms."

This conclusion was based on the findings that in the case of Amazon (and to a lesser degree of E-Trade) their strategy was looking to be inspired by the Red Queen Effect. My impression was that when Amazon will sell online whatever is possible to sell it might turn to the traditional retailing in order to maintain its survival and growth.

The interesting thing about the emerging high-street presence of Amazon (and for sure more e-businesses will follow it) is that it can have many negative effects for established retailers but it could have also some positive ones: Is the expansion of e-tailers to the High Street a way to revitalize city centers suffering from shop closures and increasing difficulty to attract buyers in shopping centers?

Interesting issue to follow-up. One thing is sure, the distance between online and off-line becomes once more a bit smaller.

*Efthymios Constantinides, (2004) "Strategies for surviving the Internet meltdown: The case of two Internet incumbents", Management Decision, Vol. 42 Issue: 1, pp.89-107, https://doi.org/10.1108/00251740410510190

The View of future marketer on MSI research priorities 2016-2018

2017-02-14T16:32:00.003+01:00

The Marketing Science Institute (MSI) is an important organization in the Marketing field, committed to close the gap between academia and business in this domain. One of the ways to do that is to identify emerging marketing-related topics and include them in their research agendas. In this line they regularly publish the MSI research priorities for the coming years.

The latest report identifying the MSI the main five research priorities for 2018 -2018 has been the source of inspiration for our students taking part in the elective Master course Advanced Topics in Digital Marketing. The students had to choose a topic within the five research priorities and write an essay based on a critical literature review on the topic in question.
Forty six essays covering a wide range of topics within the MSI research themes were the result of this assignment presenting the state-of-the-art in literature around these topics.
The assignment is in line with our efforts in this course to offer to students the opportunity to get in touch with the most challenging issues of the marketing research and practice as well to present them with possible areas of research in the context of their Master Thesis or even of PhD.
This is also part of our efforts to develop the education around the theme of Digital marketing in The Netherlands to a high stage on national and European level. The vast majority of the topics chosen by the students are related to Digital Marketing indeed.

The work of the students has been bundled in a volume titled “Marketing of the 21st Century: Marketing Science Institute Research Priorities 2016-2018 through the lens of the future marketer”.

Although the essays included in the book were not meant to be of full scientific research paper quality, three of them were submitted for journal review and one has been submitted to a conference. At this moment the results of the reviews are not known.

The volume is available in PDF form to everyone interested. Our ambition is to produce a similar volume every year contributing in this way to the debate about the ongoing transformation of the marketing theory and practice in an increasingly digitized marketplace.
The volume is accessible in the Faculty News Page
https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/news/!/2017/2/168688/marketing-of-the-21st-century