This book explores how new and small ventures with comparatively fewer financial resources have been able to compete with big banks and financial institutions. It discusses entry, competition, and growth strategies based on new business models enacted by current FinTech ventures. An analysis of strategies for Fintech and of cases from banked as well as non-banked and underbanked customer segments produces a framework based on effectuation, resulting in a final discussion of the broad societal outcomes of FinTech related to financial inclusion, the digital divide, and the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. This book, linking theory with practical application, offers scholars a comprehensive strategic view on FinTech from effectual, causal, and entrepreneurial innovation standpoints.

Since the U.S. economy has been plagued recently by a deep and long recession, this unique book has a particularly important message. It takes the position that a proactive marketing strategy can protect the firm from the adverse impact of market turbulence. The author makes the case that the firm must revise its orientation toward being more marketing oriented, and then must develop a counterturbulence marketing strategy that is coined in this book as value marketing. Since turbulence in the American market is expected to intensify, it is expected that this book's contribution will be specific and significant. In order to implement a successful value marketing plan, the firm must be extremely sensitive to market changes and must be able to counteract these within a very short period of time. If the firm can detect changes early and can swiftly counteract these changes with a value marketing plan, then its chances to survive and prosper are enhanced.

After reviewing briefly the causes and nature of turbulence in U.S. markets, the author establishes the importance of marketing as a counterturbulence weapon. In fact, the book implies that success in the market place is dependent on the firM's ability to manage itself against turbulence. The author posits that unless the firm takes the position that the customer is not only king but is everything, it will be impossible to survive constantly occurring and strengthening market turbulence. This position revision provides the firm with the opportunity to establish a proactive marketing program that is the blueprint for revising its product, price, and promotion strategies quickly and effectively. Furthermore, the value marketing plan thrives on value-added distribution and logistics processes. Adopting a counterturbulence marketing strategy begins with an attitude change on the part of the firM's executives. These executives must run the firm not by a bottom line but for a bottom line. This orientation change is primarily facilitated by opportunity budgeting. Ideal as supplemental reading in advanced marketing classes, this book will make an important impact on the thinking and orientation of business decision makers.

If you feel like you've got the wrong tone of voice, don't understand the ins-and-outs of grammar, or just don't feel confident writing about yourself without sounding like an idiot, read this book. Copywriter Tait Ischia is brief and to the point in an interesting and engaging way. Which is exactly what you want the words on your website/marketing stuff/professional bio to be too, right? Feel confident in what you say and how you say it when you put fingers to the keyboard. Waffling on should really be reserved for weekend breakfast.

Social media is becoming the fastest way to communicate ideas and values. Are you using this ever-changing media to effectively communicate your messages? In "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Social Media, but were afraid to ask...," author and public relations professional Hilary JM Topper, MPA provides an understanding of social media.

Designed for marketing professionals, small business owners, and non-profit organization executives, "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Social Media, but were afraid to ask..." is filled with detailed, how-to information on the sometimes complicated online world. Guiding readers through the importance of implementing social media tactics into their marketing mix to increase awareness and maintain visibility, this guide: Describes how to use social media sites, blogs, and microblogs Reviews more than a dozen social networking sites Provides an understanding of the importance of podcasts and video podcasts Discusses what it means to "Go Viral" Gives suggestions for handling crisis situations via the Web "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Social Media, but were afraid to ask..." highlights the power of consumer-generated media and how it can be used effectively to help grow your business.

A typo in a help wanted ad results in Constantin Stanislavski being cast in the role of Marketing Director for a company in transition. Stanislavski, through the contrived alter-ego of Stan Islavski, is tasked by the company's CEO with using the techniques of his Method to turn around the marketing department and reconnect the company its products and its services with its customers and markets. The one condition of his assignment, however, is that he cannot reveal his true identity until after his team's new marketing plan is presented to the company's senior management and board just three months later. Using the principles of his Method Acting technique, Stan sets out to help the company and its cast of characters to find their corporate self and connect it to the actions of the marketplace. Along the way, the managers he is training learn to cope with his digressions, stories and analogies all the while unwittingly learning to apply concepts such as observation, emotion memory and even a little magic to their daily work. In the end, the lesson taught through this creative, humorous and engaging story is that there is a method which can be used as a guide to teach marketing and business professionals the intangible skill of connecting the corporate self with the Character of the Customer.

While e-marketing has emerged as an aid in allowing businesses to reach a broader audience, evolutions in computer science and technology have made its comprehension a bit more complex. E-Marketing in Developed and Developing Countries: Emerging Practice s aims to create a deeper understanding of the policies and practices that are involved in a successful e-marketing environment. This publication highlights the strategies and applications currently being used in both developed and developing countries; proving to be beneficial for entrepreneurs, policy makers, researchers, and students wishing to expand their comprehensive knowledge in this field.

This proceedings volume presents the latest on the theoretical approach of the contemporary issues evolved in strategic marketing and the integration of theory and practice. It highlights strategic research and innovative activities in marketing. The contributed chapters are concerned with using modern qualitative and quantitative techniques based on information technology used to manage and analyze business data, to discover hidden knowledge and to introduce intelligence into marketing processes. This allows for a focus on innovative applications in all aspects of marketing, of computerized technologies related to data analytics, predictive analytics and modeling, business intelligence and knowledge engineering, in order to demonstrate new ways of uncovering hidden knowledge and supporting marketing decisions with evidence-based intelligent tools. The chapters from the proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Strategic Innovative Marketing 2016 cover areas such as social media marketing innovation, sustainable marketing, customer satisfaction strategies, customer relationship management, marketing research and analytics. The papers have been written by scientists, researchers, practitioners and students that demonstrate a special orientation in strategic marketing, all of whom aspire to be ahead of the curve based on the pillars of innovation. This proceedings volume shares their recent contributions to the field and showcases their exchange of insights on strategic issues in the science of innovation marketing.

This book investigates how strategic marketing is influencing organizations' innovation performance. It presents a structured study conducted on micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to identify the correlation between innovation and strategic marketing in both Indian manufacturing and service organizations. Strategic marketing, which achieves excellence in organizations, is at the heart of improving productivity, profitability and market sustainability, while also supplying organizations a much sought-after competitive advantage. It has been observed that strategic marketing can significantly help any manufacturing firm to attain the required level of growth, and can specifically be used by Indian firms as a means of deriving differential advantages. Indian organizations that pursue more traditional approaches to strategy are now feeling the intense market pressure to modify their policy with respect to quality. The result has been a shift to 'Strategy with Innovation'. As market competition has again increased, providing quality products and services alone is no longer sufficient; companies are additionally expected to provide products with a touch of innovation to attract customers. This calls for innovation in terms of products, processes, technologies, systems and practically every other area of an organization, which can only be achieved by combining strategies and innovation. This book identifies the variables of strategic marketing that can help companies significantly boost their innovation performance, making it a valuable resource for students, researchers, professionals and policymakers alike.

Traditional research methods in marketing can be illuminating when used well, but all too often their data-driven results fail to provide the depth of understanding that organisations need to anticipate market needs. Alternative Market Research Methods: Market sensing is a new approach that enables researchers to get greater depth and meaning from their research and organisations to make smarter strategic decisions. This book, the first text dedicated to the topic, explains market sensing simply and practically and demonstrates how it can benefit researchers. It teaches non-mainstream and alternative research methods which facilitate innovative research design, and achieves deep insights into the mindsets of consumers. The methods explored in this book include: emotional scaling ; discourse analysis; consumer ethnography; social media networks; narrative and story telling; gamification. With a wealth of case studies and pedagogy to aid student learning, as well as online teaching aids including PowerPoint presentations and video content, this ground-breaking textbook is an essential resource for anyone that wants to expand their repertoire of marketing research methods to create a research project that will be original and insightful.

Discover techniques and skills that are applicable in ANY sales career!

If you could change your future in only a short four months, would you take the challenge? Thanks to the summer sales industry, thousands of young men and women have done just that--changed their lives. This industry gives individuals the opportunity to financially support themselves through school and land successful careers. Even with scholarships, the average student pursuing graduate level education exits school with $30,000 in debt. However, the swiftly growing summer sales industry offers students two bullets for their holster: the opportunity to graduate debt free, as well as develop skill-sets and experience that profitable companies look for in the hiring process. In this book, fifteen of America's youngest and brightest summer sales gurus unfold their experiences with sales. This industry changed their lives . . . will it change yours?

Motigraphics is the natural complement to demographics and psychographics - the completion of a triad. For consumers, because motives are the most important dimension of human behavior, motives lead directly to decisions, and decisions lead directly to purchasing behavior. Demographics and psychographics tell us the what, when, where, and how of consumer behavior; but motigraphics tells us why consumers do what they do.

Dr. Maddock maintains that academic psychology has failed to provide a formal approach to motivation; thus, marketers have never been able to get a firm grasp on why consumers prefer what they do, why they cancel and don't renew, and what factors enter into their decision making at the point of sale. With Motigraphics we can now measure and compute motives, and the strength of motivation allows us to determine how much equity a brand Motigraphics allows us to describe customer loyalty in terms of a quantitative motivational profile and scale. Not only does Dr. Maddock show how to measure motives, he also helps us assess the amount of emotion involved in a product or service. Since most consumer decisions are based on emotion, not reason, the importance of Dr. Maddock's book for psychologists, marketers, and advertising and sales professionals is self-evident and inestimable.

This book provides a synthesis of research perspectives on customer engagement through a collection of chapters from thought leaders. It identifies cutting-edge metrics for capturing and measuring customer engagement and highlights best practices in implementing customer engagement marketing strategies. Responding to the rapidly changing business landscape where consumers are more connected, accessible, and informed than ever before, many firms are investing in customer engagement marketing. The book will appeal to academics, practitioners, consultants, and managers looking to improve customer engagement.

Traditional research methods in marketing can be illuminating when used well, but all too often their data-driven results fail to provide the depth of understanding that organisations need to anticipate market needs. Alternative Market Research Methods: Market sensing is a new approach that enables researchers to get greater depth and meaning from their research and organisations to make smarter strategic decisions. This book, the first text dedicated to the topic, explains market sensing simply and practically and demonstrates how it can benefit researchers. It teaches non-mainstream and alternative research methods which facilitate innovative research design, and achieves deep insights into the mindsets of consumers. The methods explored in this book include: emotional scaling ; discourse analysis; consumer ethnography; social media networks; narrative and story telling; gamification. With a wealth of case studies and pedagogy to aid student learning, as well as online teaching aids including PowerPoint presentations and video content, this ground-breaking textbook is an essential resource for anyone that wants to expand their repertoire of marketing research methods to create a research project that will be original and insightful.

Micromanaging the advertising budget for the least amount of total waste will be mandatory in the overly competitive environment of the 1990s. Such an approach can only be successful if the advertiser turns to the electronic media as the major source for advertising and promotion. Here, White examines the historical factors leading to print (newspaper) dominance in our advertising-oriented culture and explains why these assumptions are no longer valid in the electronic media world of the 1990s. Using behavioral psychology as it applies to learning and consumer behavior, White shows how radio and television are able to franchise the minds of potential consumers.

White helps advertising managers and businesspeople come to grips with the paradigm shift in thinking from print to electronic media advertising. This book will help all businesspeople and advertising managers understand why the electronic media must be the major player in all business advertising in order to maximize return on advertising investment and why the newspaper must be deemphasized in the complex matrix of the media mix. Readers will come to understand how all advertising works, how small the number of potential consumers for any product or service actually is, and how these factors impact on media decisions. All advertising is not equal and understanding the differences may mean either success or failure in the competitive retail environment of the 1990s.

Having achieved production quality, aggressive foreign firms are cleverly shifting emphasis to total quality marketing, which is a dynamic market-driven concept that goes beyond the currently popular total quality management approach. It centers on customer satisfaction as a way to achieve solutions to business problems. It is a market-driven idea that stresses customer satisfaction as crucial to the success of a business in a highly competitive modern business world. The concept is an enhanced version of the marketing mix--the familiar 4-P paradigm in marketing. Thus, by incorporating quality into their product, price, promotion, and distribution strategy, firms can regain market shares; and can prevent further erosion of market shares to aggressive foreign competitors from Japan, Germany, and the Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs). By not focusing on markets, firms risk losing their businesses to aggressive foreign firms.

The book is targeted to business executives, scholars, researchers, policy makers of business and government, foreign firms, and the general public. The book has eight chapters. The first chapter presents the problem of loss of market shares. Chapter two evaluates imports to identify major competitors and what they export to U.S. Chapter three focuses on the SWOT Analysis, which evaluates the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of U.S. vs. foreign firms. Chapter four unravels the market share mystique. The following chapters introduce Total Quality Marketing, explain how Total Quality Marketing is currently carried out in some firms and show the integration of quality into marketing through company examples. The last chapter provides a concluding commentary by looking into the future.

Very little of marketing theory and knowledge has made its way into retailing practice, but its value in making profitable and effective retailing decisions is unquestioned. Samli, drawing upon three decades of experience and recognition as an expert in marketing research, offers retailing professionals and those who aspire to retailing careers a foundation for understanding what marketing theory is and how it can be linked successfully and profitably to retailing practice. Not a simplified set of steps to take, his book forces retailing decision makers to think for themselves and to use sound reasoning in their judgments. With an extensive review of retailing research and emphasis on small retail decision-making processes, plus discussions of human resource development, information technology, control mechanisms, and the international aspects of retailing, this book will find a special place in the list of books that must be read, not only by retailing professionals and students, but also their colleagues who teach retailing.

The planning and implementation of the strategic plan is dependent upon the identification of the retailer's target market, and then successfully catering to that market by using four key retailing mixes: goods and service mix, communication mix, pricing mix, and human resource mix. The retailing mixes are the controllables of retail management. Preparation of these mixes depends upon the knowledge, reasoning, availability of resources, and familiarity with the target markets.

Tourism is facing new challenges. The number of tourists in the world is increasing, new segments are emerging and their flows are shifting. 'Tourism's New Markets: Drivers, details and directions' explores these new segments and markets and all their different needs, interests and cultures. Emerging markets are in countries with an increasing economic performance (such as Asia and the Middle East) and with the largest populations (including India, China, Indonesia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico)and it is expected that other emerging source markets will add to those recently observed from the giants (China and Russian Federation) as major tourist newcomers. Changes such as an ageing population, the growth of megalopolises and the decline of the traditional nuclear family lead to the creation of new market segments, all which have new interests and demands. This edited volume looks at the consumer needs of seniors, millennials, pleasure tourists, singleton tourists, Muslim travellers, nationality based cohorts as well as cross-generational segments, luxury travel and unique special interest groups amongst others. With contributions from international experts in the field, 'Tourism's New Markets: Drivers, details and directions' provides a research-led perspective to: * Explore and understand emerging markets and segments * Identify the most effective marketing strategies to build emerging markets and segments * Create a body of knowledge that shapes the boundaries of marketing to reach an orientalised and market perspective * Compare developing markets with emerging ones * Offer a global perspective of marketing and tourists' behaviours and build a comparative framework of developed and emerging markets * Develop a new research framework to excel in emerging markets A must have volume for higher level undergraduates, graduate students and practitioners in the fields of tourism, it is contextualised throughout with international case studies and examples to provide a real world perspective.

Changes within the travel industry, such as globalization, consumerism, and advancements in technology, have transformed travel agencies into highly competitive businesses. To remain successful, new business approaches and models must be created in the global tourism and hospitality industry. Travel companies continue to expand their businesses in different countries and seek to collaborate with international entrepreneurs, developing the need for cross-cultural strategies and policies. As travel agencies flourish, identifying these business practices is necessary for these organizations to obtain a competitive management model at the global level. The Handbook of Research on International Travel Agency and Tour Operation Management gathers the latest methodologies, tools, models, and theories regarding tourism development and sustainability into one comprehensive reference source in order to promote, manage, and maximize the profitability potential of travel agencies and tour operation services. Featuring research on topics such as e-marketing, medical tourism, and online travel, this book provides travel agents, managers, industry professionals, researchers, academics, and students with the necessary resources to effectively develop and implement organizational strategies and models.

Some years ago, a young graduate student contributed to a book for educational public relations specialists. It was a "how-to-do-it book, light on theory and without footnotes" that offered hundreds of tips and "ideas." Its title evolved into School Communication Ideas that Work. Like that successful and widely used book, published in 1972, The Public Relations Practitioner's Playbook for (all) Strategic Communicators is how-to and hands-on. Edition three was considered for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. The theory it contains is woven into thousands of proven techniques, tips, tactics, tools and strategies spread over nearly 600 pages. Explanations, examples and anecdotes are in a language that should appeal to experienced practitioners, college students and organization volunteers who assist with public relations, publicity and other strategic communication disciplines. It won't do the work for the would-be publicity or PR practitioner or counselor, but it will make his or her job much easier. Devotees of the Public Relations Practitioner's Playbook may have noticed, its title now includes for (all) Strategic Communicators. That's because the public relations profession has evolved into the more encompassing strategic communication, which includes not only public relations but public affairs, advertising, marketing, social media, graphic and web design and other areas of digital media convergence, strategic planning and campaigns. "Strategic communication occurs in corporate, non-profit, governmental and agency settings," according to Elon (N.C.) University's website. "Organizations strategically communicate to audiences through publications and videos, crisis management through the news media, special events planning, building brand identity and product value, and communicating with stockholders (and stakeholders), clients or donors.

This book begins with a review of basic results in optimal search for a stationary target. It then develops the theory of optimal search for a moving target, providing algorithms for computing optimal plans and examples of their use. Next it develops methods for computing optimal search plans involving multiple targets and multiple searchers with realistic operational constraints on search movement. These results assume that the target does not react to the search. In the final chapter there is a brief overview of mostly military problems where the target tries to avoid being found as well as rescue or rendezvous problems where the target and the searcher cooperate. Larry Stone wrote his definitive book Theory of Optimal Search in 1975, dealing almost exclusively with the stationary target search problem. Since then the theory has advanced to encompass search for targets that move even as the search proceeds, and computers have developed sufficient capability to employ the improved theory. In this book, Stone joins Royset and Washburn to document and explain this expanded theory of search. The problem of how to search for moving targets arises every day in military, rescue, law enforcement, and border patrol operations.