//Talis Reading lists has upgraded to a ‘New List View’ today (ahem, Wednesday 16th January 2019). This is designed to improve usability for all users, which includes images of the front cover widely considered as the most obvious change. Here is an example of the ‘New List View’, if you would like to take a look:
//Autumn is fast catching up with us and teaching is well underway. New business books have recently been shelved for the first time in the library. These may be of some interest to you, covering a good range of subjects. October promises to be a busy month for new books arriving in the GCW, so watch this space! Or posts…
New books for @UoLBusiness from @GCWLibrary including James Gustave Speth’s The bridge at the edge of the world: capitalism, the environment, and crossing from crisis to sustainabilityhttps://t.co/A5woG8wBei pic.twitter.com/YJTZ1TmePd
— Daren (@LINCLibrarian) October 8, 2018
//Warc.com is, of course, the one-stop shop for advertising and marketing research which covers a vast range of data and information useful for all assignments. The database is found via library.lincoln.ac.uk > Find > Databases > W > Warc.com. Case studies are the most practical way of linking theory to practice. Theory, when treated in isolation, does not serve its true purpose without being tested in the real world. Warc.com is able to show you whether it does work or not.
WARC database factsheet by Daren Mansfield on Scribd
//////My favourite book from the latest arrivals for the Lincoln International Business has got to be , 016) Marketing national parks for sustainable tourism – what yours? This gem is located at Main 363.68068 WEA on the 1st floor of the Library.
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Worthwhile books are always a feature on the cumulative list of Book of the Month entries. Mark W. Schaeffer’s (2014: 22-23) landmark new edition of the Tao of Twitter (located at 658. 872 sch) contains the illuminating mantra: “Human interaction leads to connections. Connections lead to awareness. Awareness leads to trust. Trust is the ultimate catalyst to business benefits, as it always has been.” It’s a simple step to knowing how that relates to building a cost effective, sustainable business. What exactly are the benefits to business? According to Schaeffer (2014: 27) they are:
Such points can be supported by studies too. Twitter’s dynamic arena can lead to job advice, job offers, invitations, international blogging connections, global brand awareness, and supportive relationships. Twitter is a more effective promotional tool than Facebook. Every study shows that the Twitter community is the most loyal and engaged, according to the “Social Research” study by Edison Research (2014). One study (not referenced in the book) shows that 67% of Twitter followers (versus 51% of Facebook fans) are more likely to buy the brands they follow (Schaeffer, 2014: 31). The Marketing firm SocialTwist analysed a million Facebook and Twitter followers, and Twitter’s tweets amassed over three times as many clicks on average than Facebook (Schaeffer, 2014). One last statistic. Daily Twitter users are “six times more likely to publish articles, five times more likely to post blogs, seven times more likely to post to wikis, and three times as more likely to post product reviews at least monthly compared with non-Twitter users” (Schaeffer, 2014: 36). One last thing: targeted connections. Writing a review on what must be considered as an indispensable guide for anyone using Twitter (from a business angle) it is tempting to reproduce the entire book in one blog post. So, I simply recommend that you read it instead.
//Now the summer has arrived (or almost) it’s time for a refresh of the Business & Law Librarian blog. I hope you like it. I’ve gone with the blend of a metropolitan skyline at night (Brisbane, if you’re wondering) and of course, a library-themed background. Studying for the future leitmotif. I like it as it looks fresh and colourful (well, I would say that as I designed it!)
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In this blog post I want to outline the process of conducting a literature review on a chosen topic, such as ‘buyer behaviour and ethical purchase intentions’. My main advice whilst carrying out this type of research is to be open-minded and explore ideas as though it’s the first time you have come across this topic.
Literature searching and the art of reviewing literature
(indebted to Stella Cottrell’s ever popular Study Skills Handbook, 2008). Making study easier. Incidentally, Stella’s now PVC for Learning, Teaching and Student Engagement at the University of East London.
For a more detailed overview of a literature review I found it a pleasure to read the University of Leicester’s Student Learning Development webpage on Doing a Literature Review. http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/ld/resources/writing/writing-resources/literature-review which contains invaluable advice on structure, editing, remaining focused, amongst other gems. Reviewing literature can be overwhelming and it is a skill in knowing where the boundaries lay (i.e. what to leave in, what to leave out) and is a cause of many a student headache so it’s worth to remember the valuable advice from Rudestam and Newton (1992:49) when they said to ‘build an argument, not a library’.
References
Cottell, S. (2008). Study Skills Handbook. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Rudestam K. & Newton R. (1992). Surviving your dissertation. London:Sage.
////Courtesy of the on-screen recording software Camtasia, I’ve recorded a presentation with an embedded video which includes my overdubbed narration. This presentation will be rolled out during the Freshers’ Week in a few days’ time to various subjects I support.
//The Euromonitor International blog is a veritable feast of contributions, videos and presentations that I find is worthwhile to examine on a regular basis for anyone interested in marketing, investment and strategic management. Today I was interested in luxury goods and was interested to find that an expert analyst, Rob Walker, had written a blog post on luxury spirits. You can find other categories on the right hand side of the blog and identify related posts. Correct me if I’m wrong, but no other database offers this kind of informative blog that is updated so regularly. It also gives me loads of information to blog about!
//The time has finally come to create a work-related Twitter account to relentlessly publicise the Business Librarian blog and its content. 180+ posts and counting since its inception in 2011. As you know, I blog regularly throughout the working week and would like to (shamelessly some might say) generate more hits. Join me in my quest to promote the University Library to Business School students @LINCLibrarian.
In addition the great joy about setting up a work account is that I am able to link to subject-related journals, magazines, newspapers and organisations that I’ve been familiar with for several years in my role as subject librarian for Accountancy and Finance, Advertising and Marketing, Economics, Events Management, International Business, Modern Languages and Tourism.
//Often students struggle on how to start an assignment which asks them about entering a new market with a product of their choice. Which product and what country to invest in? How can they see what the market volume is and whether it is worth entering a country where the market has a healthy forecast? Help is at hand. Fortunately, Euromonitor has the answer to these questions and much more, particularly as I have been exploring the wizardry Dashboard feature (below) on the database which provides the researcher with useful market size and insightful forecast, meaning they can learn if a market has potential or has reached saturation point. The following six-step instructions is a method to easily answer an international business assignment within a few well-spent minutes.
Purely hypothetically if I am interested in selling smartphones in Vietnam via shopping outlets does this idea have any business potential. Simply, is it worth investing in?
1. Firstly, go to library.lincoln.ac.uk > resources > E > Euromonitor.
2. On the homepage go to Choose Industry > Consumer Electronics > Dashboard > GO.
3. Table 1 below shows the market size of consumer electronics (dark blue showing the greatest)
Table 1: Consumer Electronics Dashboard (Market Size)
4. This map can be changed to forecast (on the top left-hand side) to show forecast, to find out whether a growth area like India or far-eastern Asia is worth investing in, and immediately we can see the darker blue areas are worth investigating further.
Table 2: Consumer Electronics (Forecast Growth)
5. If we select Channel View from the tabs we can appreciate that some of far-eastern Asia sells a double-figure growth in consumer electronics using store-based retailing.
Table 3: Store-Based Retailing (Historic Growth)
6. Choose category > Portable Consumer Appliances > Mobile Phones. We can see that from Table 4 the paler blue areas might be worth investigating, like Vietnam. We can hover our mouse over an area and break the data into smaller chunks.
Table 4: Mobile Phones (market size)
Table 5: Mobile Phones (forecast growth)
From Table 5 we can see that consumer electronics are a boom area in Vietnam and selling mobile phones via store-based retailing is worth investing in. Indeed, by hovering the mouse over the country we can see that mobile phones sales are predicted to grow an amazing 13.7%. From these simple steps we can see that it is possible not only to find an idea for an assignment using Euromonitor but we are able to plan the structure too. We can also drill down further into whether we are selling Smartphones, or another mobile phone product. Market wizardry in a snapshot!
//Philip Kotler gives the lowdown on Marketing, via the YouTube channel. Simply unmissable for anyone interested in business. Kotler’s book, Marketing Management, is the world’s most widely used graduate level textbook in marketing. The sixteenth edition of Phlip Kotler and Gary Armstrong’s extraordinarily popular Principle of Marketing is held at the University Library, like so many libraries all over world. In this lecture the man himself effortlessly talks about marketing at the Chicago Humanities Festival in 2012, a prestigious gathering which attracts today’s brilliant minds. The word ‘marketing’ was not even invented in the year 1900. The first department store was opened in Japan. The first newspaper ad appeared during the English interregnum period in 1652 advertising coffee, and the first ad agency NW Ayres appeared advertising Pears Soap in the Victorian era. The ancient Greeks had markets. The first marketing books appeared as economist books, but were written by ‘disillusioned economists’, so marketing is a branch of economics by association. Kotler’s famous mantra is place, price and promotion, potential, but what is marketing? ‘Marketing is everything’ and starts with the customer. Without the customer there is no business. Marketers rarely talk about ‘sane marketing’ like a brewery advising about not drinking too much, or the ethical use of pesticides. The public doesn’t tend to buy something that is a new idea. Even activist Noami Klein’s seminal No Logo is considered a marketing book even though it attacks brand consumption, because she informs the public that they are ‘paying too much’ for a product because of its received brand kudos. Kotler lists the best marketers like Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA, who wanted to reduce the price of furniture. The late Anita Roddick of Body Shop said, somewhat elliptically, ‘not selling hope – I’m selling motion’. Richard Branson’s a great self-publicist using stunts to promote a new product. Kotler discusses the products of aspiration, selling compassion, improving the lives of people. He asks the audience if there is a company they like, and Apple is unsurprisingly the favourite, like so many of our students choosing to write marketing assignments on product placement of the Apple i-phone in an emerging economy . It emerges that the customer is the bona fide marketer of Coca-Cola, because the company created a love-affair with the consumer so it pays relatively little for marketing. It’s all about exposure, particularly around social media, but the firm needs to know its audience otherwise investment is a waste of money. But has the U.S. reached saturation point? Growth is the issue. Growth means jobs. Kotler discusses the death of demand, how does a firm grow and defend that business and hold onto their customers? His advice is astonishing: ignore the books! Go against the grain to succeed. I would recommend this video for anyone wishing to learn more about marketing from a certified expert.
YouTube, as you know as you’re reading this blog entry, is a treasure trove of lectures by notable figures from business schools across the globe. It is worth exploring and finding out about your subject in an age of democratising information.