|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
||
 NEWS-TRENDS-ANALYSIS
|
RECENT EDITORIAL FEATURES The following is a compilation of major Editorial Features written by leading business experts that have appeared in InsideTrack in recent months: Recession and Our Failure to Learn from the Past 
Michael Maguire is Managing Partner at Quintus Management. He is a regular columnist on business matters in several major newspapers and business magazines. While scanning recent newspapers, I am struck by the paradox of how modest has been the political attention paid to the dynamics of economic reconstruction. True there has been much comment on the cost of the banking bailout, the bonuses and pensions of bank executives and the lack of global confidence that precipitated recession but on the state of our finances immediately prior to the ‘credit crunch’ there was surprisingly little. I will go further and suggest that in the time that the Labour government has been in power, public understanding of key economic measures has eroded. Traditional indicators such as the Balance of Payments, the Balance of Trade, Inflation and Structural Unemployment has scarcely merited a mention for the last decade. In the post war years Britain and Northern Ireland witnessed meteoric growth in consumer expenditure on housing and all manner of consumer goods and the economy that underpinned it all had been pretty sound. We had a significant export oriented manufacturing industry that matched domestic needs as well as that of Johnny Foreigner. Our cars, ships and planes were in demand and all was well with our world, right? Well no, not really. The problem was that while Britain was fast becoming the international ‘it’ centre of creative design that dominated the engineering, fashion and music scene in the 1960s, the industrial base was ailing and failing through under investment. Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, who in 1957 uttered the famous statement that ‘most of our people never had it so good’, appeared unable get to grips with faltering growth, a burgeoning balance of payments deficit and growing inflation. So like many of his predecessors and successors, he opted to increase taxes and public borrowing to balance the nation's books, thus constraining economic growth. While there were wailings from contemporary economists that despite apparent prosperity, the country lives beyond its means, the government of the day appeared stunningly ignorant of the need to stimulate greater industrial and commercial growth. Thus by 1964 when Harold Wilson rolled into Downing Street with his protruding pipe, the need for economic expansion was very evident. Yet despite the Labour premier’s renowned political dexterity, his reform programme centred heavily on government control of business and selective nationalisation rather than the encouragement of commercial competitiveness. Within a few years the country ran into serious debt and soaring unemployment and became an IMF basket case that was only arrested with the Thatcher years. The lady’s tough monetarist strategy and commitment to market economics brought inflation under control and confidence in industry as it won back market share. Now many years on the Blair/Brown administration has peddled an ever rolling state bureaucracy that intercedes in all aspects of social and commercial life that often appears to ignore the reality of the global village in which the prosperity of nations is linked to the prosperity of businesses. We have ignored the warning signs of economic underperformance with reckless abandon as we have returned to age old policies of higher taxation and state intervention rather than pushing better economic performance. To put the matter in perspective, the manufacturing sector is now the weakest it has ever been for over a century and a half with an undue reliance on the financial services, retailing, tourism and property to hold the economy together. The trade deficit in January 2009 exceeded £3.6 billion as imports from EU and non EU countries continues to rise; this despite a thirty per cent reduction in value of Sterling that should promote stronger competitive potential. Further, there is increasing reliance on the import of goods and services (including foodstuffs and energy) to satisfy domestic demand and which, in turn, is fuelled by an unparalleled private sector (as well as public sector) debt burden that ranks among the worst of the G20 nations. In the midst of the recession posturing, I am forced to reflect on the sentiments of those economists some fifty years ago. The American Philosopher George Santayana (1863-1952) put the issue more pointedly when he said, ‘those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’. Thus I appeal to our political leaders; please let us concentrate on addressing the recession through repositioning our businesses to compete on the international stage and educate our citizens on the importance of export driven growth. Revenue generation through effective marketing is the only route to wealth generation. The power to make a difference is in our hands.
You may contact Michael Maguire at:
© Quintus Management (2010)
Marketing Higher Education to Students 
Professor Mark Durkin, Professor of Marketing at the University of Ulster, addresses the challenge of adopting core marketing principles to convey the benefits of the higher education experience to potential and existing students Let's face it. Higher education is having to adapt to change like every other activity sector. In the deferred fee-paying environment undergraduate students and their parents are increasingly looking for value for money. Part of my role as Director of Student Marketing is to help to convey the benefits of higher education; and this is a very worthy challenge. In today's society which is characterised by a yearning for immediate outcomes and a desire for effort minimisation (particularly in the young) it has become fashionable to knock the longer-term challenge of a higher education degree. Indeed there is much talk in the media that degrees are no longer relevant to succeed in life. Nothing could be further from the truth. Irrespective of what choice of degree a student may make there is one common universal outcome - an ability to think and problem-solve with a perspective that was not present before that education experience was undertaken. 
The differentiator for graduates may no longer be having a degree and there is some truth in that given the government's policy in recent years of getting more people into the HE system. But this makes for a more competitive graduate market and underscores all the more the need for graduates to differentiate themselves in demonstrating how they can add real value through their contribution so as to benefit prospective employers. Contrary to popular belief it is still the case in Northern Ireland that young people suffer from a lack of confidence in articulating what they are good at. It is seen as uncool or boastful to sell yourself and there is a deep cultural insecurity that one might be found out. How unlike our American cousins we are!. At University of Ulster we are working hard to give students the confidence and skills to be better positioned to talk with authority about themselves and how they can add value as prospective professional employees. This is a key employability skill. 
What becomes important in achieving all this is the culture of the University that the degree comes from, how relevant the knowledge and skills learned are and the way this knowledge and skill mix can be applied for the betterment of the graduate and the employer. This is where the value of a University of Ulster experience really accrues for the individual, the economy and society more generally. Higher education is not a service that provides immediate effects or instant gratification - it is a slower consumption experience. This is also what makes the higher education experience an investment rather than a cost. The differentiator for today's graduate becomes what that individual can do with their degree in terms of (1) their new ability to think and (2) their ability to evidence that thinking in a way that employers will see as being of distinctive value. At University of Ulster we hold the view that our added value rests in our graduates being enabled to apply their knowledge and skills in more innovative and creative ways; from flexibility in problem-solving through to cretivity in opportunity identification. In essence they are being educated for professional life in today's world - while their subject knowledge will inform their performance of a given role, their creative communication and innovative problem-solving skills will add value and make them a real asset to employers as we become more reliant on a knowledge economy model. 
Obviously as a University, research is a critically important part of what we do and in combination with the knowledge and employer-ready skills we inculcate in our students it is research which adds value to our overall teaching proposition. To thrive in the global economy our graduates must have a global perspective and be addressing issues in the lecture theatre that have impacts beyond these shores. Global knowledge and understanding gained through research but applied locally makes for real regional benefits. In our dominently small business economy it is speed in the identification of opportunity, flexibility in the application of knowledge and an entrepreneurial action-oriented perspective that will allow us to stand out. Populating firms with excellent, innovative and creative graduates is what our University is all about and what our regional economy needs. Traversing all subject/discipline knowledge is the ability to think in an informed and creative way, and with that, a global perspective. 
So to those that question whether a degree and indeed the overall University experience is still important I would argue - without a knowledge-based economy our standard of living and our way of life will founder. As cutting-edge knowledge repositories new graduates are therefore the lifeblood of our future economy. Indeed graduates are our future. Success is all about seeing lifelong learning as an all important investment and not a cost and as society, employers and indeed prospective students we would forget that at our peril!
You may contact Mark Durkin at:
© Quintus Management (2009) The Future of Marketing 
By David Carson, Emeritus Professor of Marketing, at the University of Ulster Is marketing to be entirely technology driven? I have been asked this question in a variety of forms since the onset of the new millennium. Today’s young generation firmly believe that the future is technology driven and that this technology will ‘make the world smaller’, indeed, will become like a global village. But will this new order in marketing be entirely technology driven? The Future of Marketing is Global I do believe that marketing will indeed become more global. I see this development as Global Unification of marketing perspectives. The notion of Global Unification is already clear to see, with international corporate mergers and alliances and political co-operations. I further believe that technology in whatever form it develops will increasingly influence marketing infrastructures and performance to the point of being fully integral to marketing per se. I believe that as technology develops so to in tandem will marketing competency and skill, based on a foundation of knowledge and expertise. However, regardless of the nature and influence of technology there will remain one overriding factor of main influence over any perspective of marketing, that is, the dimension that we are all Human Beings. As Human Beings we will continue to need to interact with each other in a variety of forms but most importantly as individuals and personally. As Human Beings we will maintain all of our senses and use these together in our interactions. We need to see each other, to smell each other, to touch each other, to hear each other. Technology may find ways to provide some semblance of these senses but will always be a poorer substitute for the real thing. As in Woody Allen’s classic movie, ‘Sleeper’(1973), his initial enthusiasm for The Orgasmatron waned towards a longing for “doing it with another person.” (my paraphrase). It is my belief that personal human interaction will prevail. Pragmatically, how will future marketing be manifest? I present in the figure below, conceptualisation of this notion. The focal point of my future marketing will be the strive for Personal Portfolio Relationships, by this I mean that marketing will aim to develop a personal relationship individually with customers by building personal portfolios of these customers and linking their interactions through these portfolio frameworks. How will this be achieved? I believe on some kind of balance between Networking Relationships and Technological Relationships.
Note that I do not advocate a Relationship Marketing perspective, rather than simply adopting a relationship marketing approach, I believe much more is to be gained by developing meaningful Networks and then performing meaningful and effective Networking with existing customers and potential customers. This will be done in integral tandem with the technology dimension. Such will be the sophistication of this technology that I believe it will develop Technological Relationships. Such Systems will mimic human behaviour, Woody’s Orgasmatron again. The effectiveness and indeed foundation of this Personal Portfolio Relationship Model will depend on the competency efficiency of the marketer. Such competence will be based upon Knowledge, Experience, Communication and Judgement used in a fully integrative way, across personal and technological interactions. So, the future of marketing will not just be about technology. Whilst technology, in whichever form it manifests in the future, will still be inexplicably linked to human characteristics and behaviours. There Is No Future Without The Past Whatever the future, one thing we should not forget in any musing is the old aphorism, ‘there is no future without the past’. The notion that the future is in the past should stimulate those of us in the marketing profession to seek out the best of that which has gone before and explore how it might evolve in the future. Future marketing will evolve from this. *This piece is adapted from, Carson, D., (2000), “The Future of Marketing in the 21st Century”, Keynote address at the Australia, New Zealand Marketing Academy Conference, Griffith University, Gold Cost, Queensland, November.
You may contact David Carson at:
© Quintus Management (2009) |
|
|
