Impact of Digital Marketing in Retail Sector

Digital Marketing is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. It includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising. Like other advertising media, online advertising frequently involves both a publisher, who integrates advertisements into its online content, and an advertiser, who provides the advertisements to be displayed on the publisher's content. Other potential participants include advertising agencies that help generate and place the ad copy, an ad server which technologically delivers the ad and tracks statistics, and advertising affiliates who do independent promotional work for the advertiser. 

The various research objectives of the study are:

To define the concept of digital marketing and innovative sales promotion techniques.
To review as to how much sales promotion through digital marketing has penetrated in the market place
To demonstrate about functioning of digital marketing and benefits of digital marketing for the businesses as well as the customers.
To assess the feedback of companies and customers towards different sales promotion strategies using digital marketing techniques.
To suggest the potential marketers on use of digital marketing for improving their business.

Problem Definition

Today, for any organization or firm to survive in this competitive world, it depends on its ability to be dynamic and be different from the competition to be unique in the industry. For this, it is very important in knowing competitive/marketing strategies of a company. We need to understand and analyze marketing strategies to create an interaction that will reach to the ultimate desired goal of a company. Implementation of marketing strategies helps every organization to keep the existing customer and to build new customer.

Whilst once the domain of the information seeker and the passive web surfer, the Internet has evolved to become a truly social media environment; an interactive environment that now sees a free-flow of information and conversation. In line with this evolution, we have seen the balance of power shift from the marketer to the consumer, from the communicator to the receiver through social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Currently it is estimated that during an average adult’s day, a total of nine hours is spent surfing the net. It is anticipated that this time commitment will increase significantly as social networking becomes mainstream. Since consumers are now able to control the ebb and flow of information, marketers and advertisers are coming to recognize that, in order to succeed in the new digital world, they need to re-think their strategies. 

Digital media is seen as an emerging communication environment for many. Indeed it appears that many media practitioners, marketing agencies and advertising agencies are continuing to apply traditional planning strategies in this new environment. In this report, my objective is to highlight the growing importance of online advertising in the digital media environment. Digital Marketing is widely used across virtually all industry sectors. 

Many common online advertising practices are controversial and increasingly subject to regulation. Online ad revenues may not adequately replace other publishers' revenue streams. Declining ad revenue has led some publishers to hide their content behind pay walls. The purpose of this study is to study the latest digital marketing strategies adopted by companies to cater to the needs of desired mission and vision. The reach of Internet may not yet be as wide as that of other mass media, but given its unique advantages, it is undoubtedly the communication medium of the future. Marketers around the world have from time to time tried to reach their target audiences through various media. Scientific and technological advances have and will continue to create newer media to improve communication, and marketers will try to use the same to effectively address their audiences. Internet is one of the latest to join the list of such media inventions.

Methodology to be used

Research data can be characterized by two different aspects, which are quantitative and qualitative strategy. Quantitative is a collection of data analysis that leads to numerical data and qualitative data collection leads to analysis, which leads to non-numerical data such as words and images Qualitative data can be used to ‘develop theory from your data’ and in addition it can include both ‘deductive and inductive approaches’. The objective of the study is to explore how digital marketing is used to influence consumers. Using a quantitative strategy will not be relevant to the research question. The study aims to find out qualitative data concerning the marketing tools used, the technologies used by brands to engage consumers and how this influences them. The researcher will use qualitative data to justify the link connecting customers and the Internet. 

In this framework, the questionnaire method is the appropriate method. A well-structured questionnaire is formed and distributed to the internet users. All the questionnaires have the same questions in an identical sequence. The questions are concise, easy to understand, and aimed to secure applicable and reliable information. In addition the questionnaire method is suitable for collecting data related to the influence of digital marketing on companies and consumers. The data collected from this method will be helpful for the acknowledgement of digital marketing strategies that could be implemented by brands for their digital marketing approach. 

The Questionnaire method will assist the research to get up to date information and in addition information which is relevant as it will be data collected from individuals who use internet more frequently. Furthermore this method ensures accuracy as respondents give answers in their own time and own words. The questionnaire can be issued in a large sample, which makes this method more consistent. 

Before commencement of the questionnaire the participants are sufficiently prepared for the questions. Therefore, at the beginning of the questionnaire there is a short summary about the subject and the purpose of the questionnaire, in addition some key phrases are defined. The questions are concise, easy to understand, and aimed to ensure valid and dependable information. The logical design of the questionnaire followed the deductive method, which begins with respondents answering general questions moving on to specific questions. Furthermore, emailing the questionnaire allows for a faster rate of communication with participants and response to the questionnaire and additionally can be seen as ‘environmentally friendly’ as there is no paper involved.

The main focus is not to produce official theories regarding digital media as a marketing tool but to provide descriptive explanation of its influence on consumers. Therefore grounded theory research can assist in summarizing data as its central idea is that there is a strong link between theory and practical studies therefore its data is derived from the research stage. The research will then proceed to analyse data from the results produced; the research will then decide what information to provide. Results are then concluded and conclusions are drawn which relate to the research aim and lead to knowledge, which is integrated, into the existing field of knowledge.

Business Process Improvement

Business Process Improvement

Business process improvement, or sometimes called re-engineering, is an approach used by every organization to achieve significant profits by re-structuring its underlying processes. H. James Harrington’s 1991 book was the first one that documented about business process improvement i.e. on both process redesign and business process reengineering. Most of the organizations focus primarily on improvement aspects of the existing processes for various reasons, including, but not limited to, to maximize business opportunities, to be way ahead of its competitors, to increase profits and performance, to reduce capital costs, to accelerate schedules, and to reduce inefficiencies and errors.

Process improvement is an aspect that can yield significant results for the corporates, where in a series of actions are taken by the management or project managers (so called process owners) of a company to better serve its customers and timely respond to the changing marketplace. Process improvement is a method of introducing process changes to improve the quality of a product or service, to better match customer and consumer needs. Process improvement is not a practice of finding problems or failures, but it is a way how the existing work will be done in a better manner.

A typical process owner job is to identify and improve existing business processes by participating directly in the actions of a process improvement team or delegate to other person who has significant knowledge on the process. They are responsible to build bridges and remove barriers that will allow the business performance objectives to be met.

Major steps to be followed for business process improvement:

1. To exactly identify where the loopholes are there within the existing process and should focus on putting their efforts to find better ways for improvement. 
2. Establish target performance for the process so that it will be useful for background framework. 
3. Create a business process diagram of the existing process and complete with exception paths and any anomalies so that it will be helpful to plan a route for final destination 
4. Explain the necessary improvement areas to the concerned team and collect data about the performance of the existing process from the process owner and those involved in its operation. 
5. Collate and analyze the collected data which is needed for the process improvement. Data collation involves displaying the data in a format suitable for analysis.
6. Select options for change in the process improvement and should get validated to ensure stakeholder acceptance and risk mitigation.
7. Illustrate the revised process (plan) in a new business process diagram
8. Gain approval for the plan by explaining why the changes are necessary and the process followed in reaching to a conclusion.
9. Implement the revised process by automating parts of the process, reallocating responsibilities, and introducing new technology.

Analysis of Holden's business in Australia

Australia is a standout amongst the most, if not the most, accessible automotive markets in the world. Vehicle tariffs in Australia are finer beneath 3.5%, down from added than 30% in the 1990s. Australia's long haul strategy to open this business sector, expand rivalry and force local car producers to be considerably more focused has totally attained its goals. In genuine terms, today customers in Australia pay far less for a car than they did over 10 years prior.

Engine vehicle producers / motor vehicle manufacturers have battled powerfully in the course of recent years as low production volumes and increasing import entrance have lessened both income and overall revenues. New vehicle sales rose in the course of recent years after a trough at the onset of the worldwide money related emergency, yet consumers were buying foreign made autos instead of vehicles manufactured by local companies. The movement towards imports has been the aftereffect of a movement sought after towards more fuel-productive vehicles, a high Australian dollar, duty diminishments and the powerlessness of nearby producers to contend on cost because of their absence of economies of scale.

The main purpose of this study is to understand and explore for opportunities to survive, with regard to GM’s decision in closing the engine and vehicle manufacturing operations in Australia. GM operates its business in Australia through its subsidiary GM Holden Limited. 
Data is gathered, analyzed and interpreted based on EIC (Economic, Industry, and Company) analysis, SWOT analysis, besides data gathered from company reports and publicly available sources.

GM Holden's business in Australia is not upgrading and the association had no prospect of becoming beneficial as a maker in the current budgetary air. Since the new-car business division is so partitioned, Holden could no more rely on upon family unit arrangements to give sufficient plant throughput. The robust Australian dollar made passages unviable. GM can collect the same cars in neighboring Asian countries more reasonably, and import them into Australia and make a profit. Despite an enormous imbuement of resident dollars, Holden has lost $432 million sometime during late years because of its close-by creation.

The company furthermore did not get an augmentation in taxpayer assistance - said to be $150 million every year in Australia. The assembling plant could have stayed open past 2017, if Holden got an increase in taxpayer assistance. In any case, it simply would have delayed the shutdown as automotive sales continued to come down. Also, the price of the dollar is out of wallop with economic basic principle, particularly the degree of productiveness in the Australian economic system when compared with other countries. 

This study takes a gander at the impact of government financing and also corporate social qualities on business execution in the organization, GM Holden, which is experiencing substantial misfortunes. The point is to distinguish attributes that may improve business execution and lead further a competitive advantage over others. Consistency portrays the company’s center qualities; systems used to attain understanding; and the coordination and combination frameworks that hold the organization together. Social consistency enhances business execution by making coordination from top level administration to first line employees. 

The car business is confronting new and pressing difficulties. Globalization, individualizations, digitalization and expanding rivalry are pressing the substance of the business. Also, expanding well being necessities and intentional ecological responsibilities by the automotive business have likewise helped the progressions ahead. Size is no more an insurance of achievement. Just those organizations that find better approaches to make worth will flourish later on. 

The car business has formed into a complex system of interrelations over the whole esteem framework, where choices at any level frequently affect different levels. Consolidation with customers, for instance, influences sales as well as item improvement or venture into new markets. Thusly, expanded business and expense proficiency can come about because of concentrating on one's own center capabilities and qualities. Vehicle producers must characterize and concentrate on those gimmicks and qualities that separate them from contenders and outsource those non-center configuration, assembling, supply, promoting and organization errands that could be better taken care of by suppliers. The joining of key accomplices with more responsibility into the quality chain ought to be escalated. Thusly, the supplier connection, association, procedure and IT are tended to. SRM must be underpinned by community oriented engineering, pay-on-supply, hazard imparting models and arrangement of the suppliers' QM. 

On interest CRM requires a consistent, single perspective of the customer with reliable cross-channel communication models. Hence, it is recommended that that organizations package all inward CRM techniques into one far reaching multi-channel methodology. On this premise, customer information might be deliberately assembled and assessed for later use at multi-channel customer touch-indicates from dealership beneficial quality include exercises, for example, economic administrations. The specific utilization of complete customer information will drive more customized correspondence and along these lines help increment both customer loyalty and customer sales. 

To expand loyalty much further, organizations ought to make customer mindfulness and construct or protect a solid brand picture that rightly adjusts the brand's cognitive and passionate perspectives. On the off chance that they incorporate CRM with SCM, then item outline and production arranging could be adjusted to the customer data accessible. Merchants will remain the most imperative customer touch-point. To improve merchants' effectiveness and administration, OEMs can streamline channel requests' courses of action and guarantees asserts through intelligible merchant administration frameworks and rearrange merchant access to substance, applications, individuals and methods. Accordingly, opportunities must be distinguished on interest with enhanced information dissection and experiences. 

What's more, once in the business, supplier and merchant systems must be produced with dependable nearby accomplices. For their mix, vehicle producers need to introduce virtualized learning results and expand correspondence results. This requires innovatively merged, virtual and local applications and base administration reliable with the inward measures.

Where advancement cycles and the last item don't fit in with progressively perplexing business prerequisites, item improvement parameters for expense, quality, time-to-market and methodologies must be advanced. A set of facilitated activities will help enhance productivity, quality and expense. Organizations plan offices ought to be exceptionally responsive by utilizing communitarian instruments that characterize and control institutionalized techniques and circulate learning. These instruments ought to additionally nourish lessons gained from assembling and administration into unwavering quality, plan disappointment and symptomatic models. Online outline, reenactment, tooling, virtualized testing and item lifecycle administration capacities all need to be based on a typical foundation. Where configuration focuses are all inclusive dispersed and synergistic designing works crosswise over organization outskirts, those will require a continuous framework for following, overseeing and imparting engineering changes and imperfections.

Since automotive gadgets and programming are affecting item improvement, quality, center competency and brand administration much the same, the individual activities suggested above additionally relate to car E/E and programming. Fruitful programming administration is the entrance door to development, one of the principle market differentiators. Open models help more solid capacities, permitting organization and suppliers to create their applications focused around a standard engineering design and stage. In this manner organizations ought to procure and set up structural planning and joining skills in installed frameworks lifecycle administration. This assistance empowers definition, association and usage of an institutionalized programming advancement and following procedure. This amplification of inner limits will permit the determination of necessities, compelling outsourcing and reconnaissance of accomplices' outline courses of action, and effort of consolidation competency. Also, makers ought to partitioned programming from equipment to create a product discharge arrangement that helps them control both item quality and development stream. 

With all these exercises, association can utilize the broad chances of automotive digitalization for advancement and quality upgrade. Vehicle producers have understood that the interconnectedness of business configuration and engineering capacities is making organizations more centered, responsive, variable and strong. It is foreseen that dealing with the seven zones of key activity portrayed here, they will effectively push ahead to key magnificence. By concentrating on these seven vital levers, automotive makers will expand their capability to effectively adapt to the difficulties of globalization, individualization, digitalization and expanding rivalry.

The Australian automotive industry is contending in a worldwide business with a small amount of the immediate budgetary backing, on for every individual premise, contrasted with other major car countries like the US, Sweden, France, Canada, Germany and the UK. Developing and developed countries alike are establishing complete national methodologies for assembling and putting remarkable assets into extending their ability to make and manufacture things. Australia is one of the 19 countries in the G20 which have an automotive industry. Automotive manufacturing is an indication of a completely created, progressed economy.

Despite the noteworthy increase in brands and stiff competitive pricing, local car producers enhanced, got to be adaptable and more focused - unfathomably focused. Australia now has over 60 automotive brands in a business sector of 1 million sales. As hindrances have descended, alongside a strengthened currency of more than 100% in the most recent decade, foreign vehicles have characteristically expanded altogether. Today, companies in Australia import nearly 85% of new cars from various countries.

Additionally, if the Aussie dollar was at the long haul normal of around US$75c, cars that are manufactured locally would associate with 20 for every penny more aggressive against export and in imports markets.

Major strategies in-order to be successful as an independent automotive manufacturer includes, but not limited to:

1. Focus on future
In the past development period, the principle necessity range for speculation was the improvement of production limit. All automobile manufacturers were striving for economy of scale that alludes to the proficiency picked up in the production or dissemination transform through expanded size of the working unit. It was the basic achievement component of the recent years, and this created an overcapacity that brought about price war. 

Presently the first necessity to escape from the present basic circumstance is to secure benefits and cash flow, and this required an advancement of the swollen frameworks. Car maker need to audit their creation, sales, improvement and back-office areas, and downsize them. They need to consider what would they be able to produce in-house and what extraordinary procedures ought to be outsourced. In the meantime, it is critical to secure adaptability for the future development opportunity.

2. Effective Customization 
Consumer assorted qualities is expanding quickly and firms need to separate their items with respect to contenders. A genuine business section meets the greater part of the accompanying criteria: it is unique from different portions; it is table about whether; it is measureable and identifiable; it might be arrived at by business sector mediation; it reacts comparably to market impetuses; it is vast enough to be gainful. 
There are various routes in which the car business could be fragmented, yet it is common to partition it into some unique item gatherings as per a fusion of size and prices.

3. Ability and willingness to co-operation
There is a solid desire towards the carmakers to give fuel-proficient autos with much lower co2 discharge in a brief time. Globally, the most conspicuous early venture toward a low carbon economy was the marking of Kyoto convention, which most industrialized countries resolved to decrease their aggregate missions of greenhouse gasses. 
The capacity of overseeing worldwide organizations together will be the most essential vital achievement variables. The further precondition for achievement is the choice of right accomplice who is equivalent and socially perfect. Moreover, the participation accomplices need to characterize clear and reasonable starting desires.

Literature review – Automobile Industry

A rich assortment of writing exists on diverse sorts of firm learning and its part in company's execution. The conventional composition of firm centered on industry-particular variables to catch the degree of advancements and substitutes them through variables like R&D consumption and number of licenses. Contrasts in between firm exhibitions were not caught as firm was demonstrated as far as production capacity with any between firm contrasts emerging simply out of gainfulness progressions. In actuality, contrasts in between firm exhibitions exist as a result of the vicinity of data asymmetries, circulated learning and differential abilities which thus offer ascent to diverse learning techniques inside firms.

Different sorts of learning procedures have been recognized in the writing adapting by doing, adapting through procurement of inside assets, adapting through overflows, adapting through advancements, adapting by trading and last yet not the slightest, learning and overlooking.

Paul Geroski and Mariana Mazzucato (2002) analyze the impact of the policy regime on learning in the American automobile industry by classifying learning into various categories. According to the authors, while learning is not directly observable, the process of learning is observable and can be modeled as an unsystematic stochastic process in the lines of Gibrat’s law which models firm growth as a stochastic process, independent of size. This process can be revealed by the time path of output, which tells whether growth rate differences are explained by a systematic learning process. They find that learning was mostly unsystematic (stochastic) in the period of liberalization (post-war period) as opposed to pre-world war period. According to them, unsystematic learning is an indicative of learning and forgetting in periods of rapid changes.

Michael Cusumano, Steve Kahl and Fernaando Suarez (2008) in their research paper “A theory of services in product industries”, has concluded that in many product oriented industries, services have become increasingly important. In case of automobiles, many automakers generate the vast majority of their profits from a service activity closely tied to their product activity. The automobile industry overall generates a large portion of its profits from other product-related service activities such as insurance and repairs. The authors argued that despite the seeming importance of services, there is not much theory to help researchers or practitioners explain the conditions under which services matter in product industries. The general view that emerges from the services literature is that services tend to become important for manufacturing firms once their industries reach a mature stage. 

Gordon Fullerton (2006), “Putting relationship in CRM”, that JEEP, a division of Daimler Chrysler Automobile Company, has served a classic example of CRM program that provides a considerable price to both the customers and the firm by developing a program exclusively for jeep owners and fostered a community that is highly effectively committed to the product, the brand and the customers.

Kevin Keller(2012) Caterpillar has become a leading firm by maximizing the total customer price with the help of effective CRM , best after sales service in the industry and better trained dealer. This allows the firm to command a premium price of 10% to 20% higher than competitors such as Volvo, Komatsu etc.

Steve Kahl and Fernaando Suarez (2008) in their research paper “Product, Process, and Service: A New Industry Lifecycle Model”, has concluded that Existing models of industry lifecycle evolution tend to focus on changes in the products and processes and largely overlook the dynamics of services, but increasingly, the revenues of many firms are becoming dominated by sales of services rather than products, or products sold with services to gain competitive differentiation in markets marked by increasing product commoditization.

Susan Suffes (2006) Audi (UK), a leading manufacturer in the prestige automobile market implemented CRM successfully and this helped Audi to develop a model to drive growth and engineer a dramatic turnaround by creating a superior customer experience.

Mona J Fitzsimmons (2010) has concluded that the profitability of automobile manufacturers depends on exploiting price added services for instance automobile manufacturers have discovered that financing and after sales service can achieve significant profits. 

Adaptability measures the company’s ability to read and scan the business environment and to respond to change (Denison et al., 2003). Organizations that have an adaptable culture tend to both actively and openly receive and interpret opportunities and threats from the external environment, responding to these external signals appropriately (Pennington, 2003). An adaptive culture encourages and supports employees to improve their ability by learning from day-to-day tasks (Denison et al., 2003).