Category: Case study

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Market Segmentation and Positioning with the Case Study of Ryanair

Introduction

According to Wirtz and Lovelock (2018), the right market segmentation, targeting and positioning make organisation identify which segment of the market is competing which can allow them to develop the right product for target customer in the particular market and position the company to develop the suitable strategies in order to gain competitive advantages. Thus, the benefits of the right market segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP) can bring variety of advantages to the organisation. However, there are some disadvantages when the organisation extremely focuses on its STP. Therefore, in this report, the definition of STP background and the history of Ryanair will be shown to relate with the Ryanair case in order to analysis the STP of the organisation. Then, the benefits and disadvantages of STP approach to Ryanair will be mentioned with examples and in the last, some recommendations will be given with theories and examples.

Background History of Ryanair

Ryanair started in 1985 in Dublin, Ireland with a total of 25 staff members and its first routes were from Dublin to London and had served 85,000 passengers in its first year. In 1990, due to the intense competition of Ryanair ended the year with the losses of £ 20 million (Tran, et al., 2015). Ryanair changed its strategies as low-cost by following the structure of Southwest Airlines and rebranded themselves as the first lowest fare airline in the Europe by cutting unnecessary expenses such as free inflight drink and expensive meals (Tran, et al., 2015). Start from this moment, Ryanair’s success was contunied and become the first and largest low-cost airline in Europe (Ryanair, 2019). However, the organisation now is facing the condition of recognising them as the worst customer service brand which impact the organisation image that can cause disadvantages to the organisation. In the following paragraph, the success and problems of Ryanair will be discussed by analysing with STP.

STP approach to Ryanair

1. Segmentation

Market segmentation is the process of dividing up a mass-market into similar needs and wants. In doing so the company establishes the target their marketing effort and customise their products and services to meet the target preferences (Kotler, Roberto & Lee 2002). Kotler Philip, Adam Stewart, Brown Linden and Armstrong Gary (2003) stated that the companies normally segment their market based on the four basic major categories of segmentation such as geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioural (Table 1). Demographic Segmentation is a traditional method for market segmentation, it has some limitation, for instance, two people in the same demographic can have different buying behaviours, thus, the organisation cannot get the exact information of the market which they need (Wirtz and Lovelock, 2018). In the case of Ryanair, Ryanair divides from mass airline markets into the market where customers have similar needs and wants in order to able to make effective business strategies and to offer the matching product or service of customers’ wants and needs. To create the clear segmentation, Ryanair uses demographic and psychographic. To stand as a low-cost airline, demographically, Ryanair focuses on the customers who are both male and female between 16-65 ages and the customers who have low and middle income. Since it has some limitation, the company use Psychographic segmentation to get more exact information for the market (Tran, et al., 2015). Thus, psychographically, they focus on Lifestyle (Leisure, Family and Business) and Personality (Price Sensitive). Thus, by applying these segmentation theories, the organisation can offer the right product or service to the right market which help the business growth. According to the data based figure1.8, price was the highest priority overall as demonstrated by two-thirds of decision-makers (67%) saying that it was a ‘very important’ consideration in their choice of flight (Civil Aviation Authority, 2015, pp. 36). Thus, focusing on the market segment of low-income and price-sensitive customers is right segment for Ryanair thus it can contribute benefits to Ryanair since the right market segmentation can bring variety of advantages to the organisation such as better matching of customer needs in their segment market, improved customer retention, enhanced opportunities for growth, enhanced profitability, more effective in targeting of communication and opportunities of segment dominance (Jones, 2019).

Figure 1.8 data of the survey to 1,330 decision-makers who have flown in past 12 months

Demographic

Psychographic

Geographic

Behavioural

• Age
• Gender
• Family Size
• Occupation
• Religion
• Income
• Social Class
• Lifestyle
• Personality
• World Region
• Country
• City
• Climate
• Benefits
• Status

Table 1. Four Major Categories of Market Segmentation

2. Targeting

Due to the clear segmentation for the market, Ryanair able to target the right market to develop their product for the customer which can increase the profit and successes in the market. Targeting is breaking down the key things from the segmentation and focus on a few major things. For Ryanair, they target two types of customers such as the customer who want the lowest price and the customers who still want the cheap price but with more option to be comfortable for their trip (Ryanair, 2019). For two types of customers, Ryanair offers various options based on their travel behaviours to match their needs such as seat only product (basic ticket) for the customers who have price-sensitive. In which the customers will not get a chance to check in their bag and choose their seats (Ryanair, 2019). They only get the allowance of a 7kg cabin bag. For those who want to make comfortable their journey, Ryanair offers priority plus ticket or priority Flexi ticket in which the customers will get extra 20 kg check-in bag plus 2 cabin bag, priority boarding, able to choose their seat, however, some are limited in priority plus ticket. But in the priority Flexi ticket, the customers will get to choose more legroom seats for free, free airport check-in and free security fast track (Ryanair, 2019).

3. Positioning

Positioning is a vital tool that is used in a market environment to confront competitive pressures. There are many authors and scholars who mention that positioning is essential for an organisation for example, according to Ries and Trout (1986), it is used as a foundation to develop marketing communication strategy and according to Lovelock and Weinber (1984) positioning helps organisation to develop a distinctive image in order to identify its image by customers and organisation can provide a suitable products or service that is needed by the target market. Dibb and Skimm (1997) said that the organisation needs to position its products or service in the mind of customers and design a suitable marketing mix to communicate positioning. According to Table 1.1, it is clear that Ryanair targets the price-sensitive customer in the market and offers the cheapest products to the customers. Also, in order to achieve the lowest price, the company reduces its service for customers and reduce all the unnecessary operating costs. Moreover, the owner tries to find ways in order to increase their profits and reduce the expenses such as selling food & drink onboard, partnership with car rental and other business to get commission fees, ask pilots and cabin crews to pay their training fees and uniform fees and buy the discount aircraft (Zakher, 2016).

Marketing Mix of Ryanair

Product

• Low Cost, No extra luxury air travel to European Destinations
• No free food or drink onboard, Food and Drink are income streams
• Has deals with Hertz car rental, some hotel businesses, phone cards & bus tickets

Price

• Lowest fares in market
• 70% seats at lowest price and 30 % seats at higher prices

Place

• Create own website to reduce 15% of agency fees
• Based in Stansted which make customers cheaper to fly than Heathrow or Gatwick

Promotion

• Spend as little as possible on advertising
• Do not employ an advertising agency & simply advertise to tell that Ryanair has low fares

People

• Young pilots are recruited as they work hard
• Cabin Crew pay for their training and uniforms to be cleaned. Their main responsible is for passenger safety and revenues onboards

Physical Evidence

• Pay as little as possible for aircraft since they buy aircraft which other companies do not want to buy that give them a big discount

Process

• No check in for lowest fares
• Cannot select a preferred seat for free
• No air bridges to walk to the aircraft
• Do expect low levels of customer service when customers have problems

Table 1.1 Marketing Mix 7Ps of Ryanair

As the result of analysis based on its Marketing Mix, Ryanair position itself as low-cost and low-quality airline. Moreover, based on the customers’ experience, customers mark Ryanair in the position where low cost and low-quality service are offered.

Figure 1 Positioning Map of Ryanair

Benefits of STP approach to Ryanair

[image: ]Morgan (2004) stated that to develop the brand in the market successfully, the organisation has to have a clear vision of their STP (Segmentation, Targeting and Position) for their product in order to reach the products to the right market and customers to gain competitive advantages over its rivals (Hunt, and Arnett, 2004). Therefore, due to the impact of clear segmentation, targeting and market positioning the organisation, Ryanair was able to create their business strategy as the cost leadership strategy and gain a variety of advantages in the market. For example, as the result of its marketing mix, to compete in low-cost airline market and to be able to offer the lowest fare to the customer, the organisation tries in the different ways to achieve the lowest fare for customers. Due to the result of it, according to figure 1.1 which is the search result of standard ticket fares, Ryanair has lower fare than its biggest rival in the market ‘Easyjet’ even on the same route from London to Copenhagen (Ryanair, 2019) (Easyjet, 2019) which make the Ryan air gains competitive advantages over its competitors and become cost-leader in the market. Moreover, according to the figure 1.2 and figure 1.3, the organisation takes the second place in airline group and first place in individual branks in carrying passenger numbers in 2018 and the third place in seat share with 8.7% in 2019 in Europe market (Centre For Aviation, 2018) (Centre For Aviation, 2019). Furthermore, according to the statics from figure 1.4, from the years of 2013 to 2019, Ryanair boosted their revenue by roughly 37 percent (Sonnichsen, N, 2019). Therefore, as the result of clear market segment, target market and right positioning, the organisation can compete its rival such as Easyjet, Wizz Air and etc and now become the first and largest low-cost airline which has 17,000 staffs, 430 Boeing 737 aircraft and carried over 1 billion customers in Europe to 216 destinations in 37 countries (Ryanair, 2019).

Figure1.2 Europe’s top 20 airline group and individual airline brands by passenger numbers: calendar 2018

Figure1.2 Europe’s top 20 airline group and individual airline brands by passenger numbers: calendar 2018

Figure 1.3 Europe Top 12 airline group by seats

Figure 1.4 Annual revenue of Ryanair from 2013 to 2019 (in million euros) [image: ]

Figure 1.1 Search results of ticket fares from the official website

Problem with STP Approach to Ryanair

Although there are lots of advantages that brought to Ryanair by STP approach, on the other hand, there are some disadvantages for Ryanair. As mentioned before, to maintain the lowest fares for customers and competitive advantages over its rivals, Ryanair reduces the operation cost included training fees for staff. However, the result of focusing on being the lowest cost airline in the market, Ryanair lacks to provide a pleasant working environment for the employees. Thus, in recent years, Ryanair received bad feedback from their customers and recognised as ‘The worst brand for customer service’ figure 1.5 (Armtrong, 2019). The reason is that the reducing of operation cost, asking uniform and training fees, low wages for the pilots and cabin crew create an unhappy working environment for their employees. According to Branham (2005), unhappy employees cannot perform their work well which can result in lower productivity to fulfill the customers’ needs and higher turnover rate. Thus, in order to improve the working conditions, in 2018, pilots and crew members went on strike during the holiday season which caused to cancel hundreds of flights that impact 100,000 customers (Statista, 2018). Due to the strike, staff shortage was caused and to operate business as normal again Ryanair paid more wages to its staff to come back and work for the organisation, therefore, according to char 1.6, Ryanair lost its revenue from 1450.2 million euro to 885 million euro (Sconnichsen, 2019). If this happens in the future, the image of the organisation will impact more with negativities and Ryanair will lose its customers and profit since customers will not stick to the organisation that it does not offer the satisfactory service for them.

Figure 1.5 UK Brands with the best and worst customer service in 2019

Figure 1.6 Net profit of Ryanair from 2012/13 to 2018/19 (in million euros)

Conclusion & Recommendation

Taking all into account, Ryanair performs extremely well in their marketing segmentation, market targeting, and market positioning as they stand as the successful and largest low-cost airline in Europe by taking advantage of its competitors. On the other hand, due to extremely focus on being a lowest-fare airline in the market Ryanair lacks in providing a good working environment for its employees which decreased in their productivity and performance in return Ryanair recognised as the worst customer service airline brand.

Thus, in the recommendation, Ryanair should spend part of its profit to create and provide the working environment that the employees’ needs. Mullins (2013) states that fulfilling needs is one of the motivations for employees which can help to increase their productivity. Moreover, according to Frederick Taylor motivation theory, economic awards are the major reason for motivation (Boddy, D. 2014, p 472), thus, Ryanair also should raise their wages or apply financial award scheme for its employees’ hard-working in ordering them to perform with the excellent level of service. In this way, the staff’s performance will increase and their skill in customer relationships will also increase which can erase the effect of the company’s bad image as the worst customer service brand. Therefore, Ryanair should not only focus on their low-cost business strategy but also need to focus on the employees in order to achieve their goals in the competitive market.

Reference

1. Armstrong, M. (2019) UK brands with the best and worst customer service. Available at: https://www.statista.com/chart/19106/uk-brands-customer-service-which/ (Accessed 12th November 2019)
2. Boddy, D. (2014). Motivation. In: Boddy, D.: Management An Introduction. 6th ed. Edinburgh: Pearson Education Limited. p472
3. Branham L. (2005) ‘The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave’, Business Book Review, 22(3) pp. 105-110.
4. CAPA Centre For Aviation (2019) Europe airline groups 2018 ranking: Lufthansa group still at the top. Available at: https://centreforaviation.com/analysis/reports/europe-airline-groups-2018-ranking-lufthansa-group-still-at-the-top-456098 (Accessed: 8th November 2019)
5. CAPA Centre For Aviation (2019) Europe airline outlook 2019: the haves vs the have-nots. Available at: https://centreforaviation.com/analysis/airline-leader/europe-airline-outlook-2019-the-haves-vs-the-have-nots-457915 (Accessed: 8th November 2019)
6. Civil Aviation Authority (2015) Consumer Research for the UK Aviation sector. Available at: https://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAP1303ConsumerresearchfortheUKaviationsectorfinalreport.pdf (Accessed: 8th November 2019)
7. Dibb, S. and Kimkin, L. (1997) ‘A program for implementing market segmentation’, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing 12(1) pp. 51-66.
8. Hunt, S. D. and Arnett, D. B., (2004) ‘Market Segmentation Strategy, Competitive Advantag, and Public Policy: Grounding Segmentation Strategy in Resource-Advantage Theory’, Australasian Marketing Journal 12(1) pp. 7-73
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11. Mullins, L. and Christy, G. (2013) Management and Organisational Behaviour. 10th ed. Edinburgh Gate: Pearson Education Limited
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14. Ryanair (2019) Fare Types. Available at: https://www.ryanair.com/tr/en/useful-info/help-centre/faq-overview/Making-a-reservation/fare-types (Accessed 13th November 2019)
15. Sonnichsen, N. (2019) Annual revenue of Ryanair from 2013 to 2019 (in million euros). Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/756060/ryanair-annual-revenue/ (Accessed: 9th November 2019)
16. Sinnuchsen, N. (2019) Net profit of Ryanair from 2012/13 to 2018/19 (in million euros). Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/756093/ryanair-net-profit/ (Accessed: 9th November 2019)
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Case Study of Honda: Corporate Strategy Analysis

Introduction

Honda Motor Company Limited is a multinational conglomerate Japanese company. This report will mainly emphasize on Honda’s strategies in the global automotive industry.

The purpose of this report is to have an in-depth strategic analysis of the company. Frameworks including Porter’s Five Forces and VRIN framework will be carried out throughout the report to analyse Honda’s business environment, and business and corporate-level strategies, followed by identifying the strategic challenges that Honda currently facing. Finally, the report will be concluded with recommendations that manage the challenges.

Business environment

Overview of the automotive industry

Illustrating from Figure 1, the value of global automotive industry would continue to grow with a positive figure of 3.6% from 2017 to 2022. However, it shows that the growth will slow down starting from 2019. Several trends and factors will be examined below.

Figure 1: Global automotive manufacturing industry value forecast: $ billion, 2017-22. Source: Marketline, 2017a

Characteristics of the industry

1) Raising awareness to environmental issues

Increasing public awareness towards environmental issues and more emissions standards from different countries, are in turn stimulating strong expectations for the automotive industry to handle this highly prioritised problem.

2) Growth in emerging markets

The focus of the automotive industry shifts from mature markets including North America and Europe to emerging markets such as China and India (McKinsey, 2018). Because of the rise of middle class and stronger economy in these emerging markets.

Figure 2: The Changing Automotive World

3) Changing in consumer behaviour

The increasing trend of share mobility, such as ridehailing and carsharing services, it lowers consumers’ preferences on car ownership. From figure 2, it shows that almost 60% of customers believe that agree that car owners would not want to own a car in 2025.

Figure 3: Consumer opinion on car ownership in 2025. Source: KPMG, 2017

The attractiveness of the industry: Porter’s Five Forces

The automotive industry is a low-profit industry. Due to various factors, the return on capital for automotive manufacturers is low, which was only slightly above the estimated cost of capital of 10% and enjoyed a small positive return (PWC, 2017). Below is Porter’s Five Forces that further analyses the attractiveness of the industry.

The automotive industry’s Five Forces

• Buyers’ Power
• Threat of Substitutes
• Competitive Rivalry
• Suppliers’ Power
• Threat of Entry

Bargaining power of suppliers (Rating: 6/10)

The bargaining power of suppliers is moderate. Through globalization, it increases the number of suppliers in the automotive market for automakers to choose from, showing that suppliers might in the weaker power. However, more auto manufacturers develop long-term partnerships with suppliers. Because their competitive positions rely heavily on the suppliers’ performance in terms of quality and costs (Brandes, et al., 2013) and it can help developing mutual benefits of higher efficiency information exchange (Kotabe, et al., 2003). Therefore, it can strengthen suppliers’ power.

Competitive Rivalry (Rating: 8/10)

The competition in the automotive industry is strong with the evidence shown in Figure 4, which indicates a tight market share among the existing brands. Companies have diverse product portfolios, with different vehicles models offers to customers. Exit barriers are high as they have invested heavily into the business, these keep companies in the industry even they may have low profitability. Besides, the diversities of product portfolios are moderately low, most auto companies still focus on the automobile industry especially the trend of electric and self-driving vehicles development.

Figure 4: Global automotive market share in 2017, by brand

[image: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/zRFIIdaTDBun33-MCp5BaPqN-CfjXfYgHP56WQ-Kda7pwwsi1hnIfextmv_vsoqRPi2M0KeTuRspY4YCGN9yRh9whhZG2hjPf_zJZPY95__36bFm9YnAA1KiWuo0gvbR0yyoz8jU9jmibKAnXg]. Source: Statista, 2018

The threat of Entry (Rating: 3/10)

It is difficult to enter the automobile industry. One reason is the high entry barrier, it requires high capital requirement and investment. Apart from those, strong distribution network and high skilled labour are also fundamental factors to operate business in the automotive industry. Existing brands already benefit from economies of scales, it increases the difficulty for new entrants to obtain a competitive strategy. Besides, brand image is another important element for car manufacturers. It takes a long time for new entrants to build up its reputation and develop relationship with its customers. As a result, these factors hinder new entrants getting into the industry.

The threat of substitutes (Rating: 7/10)

The threat of substitutes is moderate. Due to the development of technology, the alternatives are no longer just the means of public transport including buses, trains, taxis and bicycles. The growth rate of the automotive industry forecasts to be drop from 6.2% in 2017 to around 2% by 2022 (Marketline, 2018b), this is partly driven by the rise of shared mobility services. In 2017, it is estimated that 338 million worldwide users are using these services and it is expected to continue to grow in popularity (PWC, 2018). Thus, sharing mobility services might result in a decline in vehicle sales.

Bargaining power of buyers (Rating: 5/10)

Buyers have more power because they have a wide range of brands and models to choose from, automobile companies need to invest in product differentiation with various features in order to attract and retain customers. Besides, due to the development of the internet, company transparency is higher, customers can quickly access more information and compare with other companies before making a purchasing decision.

Business-level Analysis

A firm’s profitability is dependent on the fit between its competitive strategy and resources and capabilities (Cool & Schendel, 1988). A resource appraisal framework is used to identify the relevant resources and capabilities to Honda (Appendix A). Below will examine some key resources and capabilities from the framework that enable Honda to provide competitive advantages.

1. Brand image

Honda has a strong reputation of high quality and reliability which provides them a competitive advantage over their competitors. They ranked 20th in the Best Global Brands list, with a growing brand value of close to $24m (Interbrand, 2018). A strong brand name can enhance customers’ confidence in their purchasing decision (Aaker, 1993), resulting in enhancing customers’ willingness to buy Honda’s products. Thus, the growing brand value acts as a driver to increase profitability. Source: Interbrand, 2018

2. Design and Engineering

Honda has strong focus on design and engineering and is granted as one of the preeminent engine makers in the world. Two engines from Honda were chosen to be the 10 best engines for 2018 (Murphy, 2017), and they were the first automaker that met the 1970 U.S. Clean Air Act emissions standards (Honda, 2018a). These achievements enable Honda to possess the first-mover advantage and gain a reputation of quality and performance.

3. Global subsidiaries

Honda sets up subsidiary operations across the globe, including North America, Europe and China. Each subsidiary is independent with low control from headquarters and operates based on the local market (Rothfeder, 2015). Thus, this approach enables them to respond quickly to market changes and gain deeper understanding of its local market. Consequently, Honda can introduce products that address local’s needs to generate competitive advantage.

4. Research and Development (R&D)

Honda invests heavily on R&D to develop advanced technology as to achieve competitive advantage. They plan to spend JPY750 billion in 2018 with a 9.4% increase from 2017 (Honda, 2017). They also develop partnerships and collaborations with various companies to exchange information and share ideas (Honda, 2019). As a result, through developing more innovative products, it can maintain Honda’s competitiveness and increase its profit growth.

In order to provide sustainable competitive advantages, the above distinctive resources and capabilities need to fulfill VRIN framework. (Details can be found in Appendix B)

Resource/ capability

Valuable

Rare

Inimitable

Non-substitute

Competitive implications

(competitive advantage)

Brand image

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Sustainable

Design and Engineer

Yes

Yes

Yes/No

Yes

Temporary

Global subsidiaries

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Sustainable

R&D

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Temporary

Business-level Strategy

Customer perception of the best value is to balance between cost and quality (Taylor & Brunt, 2001). In order to satisfy customers, Honda adopts hybrid strategy, the combination of differentiation and low costs, to achieve competitive advantage.

Hinda achieves low costs through manufacturing and developing long-term partnerships. They operate with lean production system and develop an Assembly Revolution Cell line which increases efficiency and reduces costs (Narsalay, 2017). They also develop close relationships with suppliers and distribution channels to assist in controlling costs. Regarding to differentiation, Honda is one of the first few automakers that emphasises on eco-friendly and fuel-efficient vehicles. The move gives them first mover advantages and unique selling point. They even awarded several milestones and recognition due to its promotion of being environmentally friendly, such as introducing the world’s first electric moto for hybrid vehicles that use no heavy rare-earth metals (Forbes, 2016). These can enhance its brand image and remain competitive in the market.

However, it is difficult to maintain hybrid strategy due to the unattractiveness of the industry. Because of the frequently change in external factors and it also requires combination of many distinctive resources and capabilities to keep Honda’s market position. Therefore, Honda would also expand its business into other markets.

Corporate-Level Analysis

Honda’s main business

• Automobiles
• Aircrafts
• Power Equipment
• Robots
• Motorcycles

Diversification

Honda diversifies its products portfolio to create value under Porter’s better-off test, which is the new business unit gain a competitive advantage from its link with the corporation (Porter, 1987). The businesses that Honda operates are all related through the core competences of reliable engines. Besides, Honda also maintains strategies that focus on innovation and sustainability across all business in order to create value (Honda, 2018b). Thus, Honda leverages its capabilities to exploit the synergies that exist among different business.

Motives for diversification

There are three major reasons for operating in these businesses. Firstly, Honda would like to expand in its business operations to create growth opportunities for the company (White, 2014). Besides, since its businesses are related, they can gain from maximizing the utilization of the existing resources and capabilities, which enable them to increase effectiveness and fully capture the returns on those innovations (Rong & Xiao, 2017). Lastly, Honda can enlarge its business apart from the unattractive industry such as automobile industry and generate more profit through operating in other businesses.

Synergies

As we know from above, Honda operates in similar industries to generate synergy. The resource sharing among different operations in turn facilitates the exploitation of common core competencies to create synergy (Grant, et al., 1988), for example gathering ideas and research information from different R&D centres to enhance new product development. Moreover, they can create cost synergy which enable them to improve the efficiency in production since they access broader supply chain network. However, there are also some risks and limitations to diversifying its Honda. Operating in many businesses means that it becomes more complex and difficult to manage, and lead to overwhelming positive benefits (Geringer, et al., 1989). They also cannot allocate all resources just for those more profitable businesses, otherwise, conflicts can arise easily among businesses and affect the whole performance.

Corporate Governance

Honda develops a decentralized organizational structure. They have subsidiaries based on regions, business and functions respectively, and they would delegate responsibilities to their subsidiaries and allow them to make decisions according to their own markets (Honda, 2018c). Thus, this allows Honda to facilitate quicker and more appropriate decisions at regional levels, whereas the headquarter has more time to make strategic-level decisions. As a result, it can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of Honda as a whole.

Strategic Challenges

There are two major challenges that Honda is currently facing,

1. Increasing in competition

With the rise of advanced technology, Honda faces challenges from the shift to mobility services would continue to grow steadily and impact vehicles sales till 2030 (Hausler, et al., 2017), since the public see vehicles as a service instead of a must-have possession (PWC, 2016). Besides, Allied Market research (2018) identified that the compound annual growth rate of autonomous vehicles would raise sharply almost 40% from 2019 to 2026, showing the development of autonomous vehicles would take up the market in the future. Consequently, the expansion of these two would reduce the number of vehicles owned, which lead to downfall to automakers’ profitability. Thus, it would be more difficult to Honda to remain its market position.

2. Changing regulations

More major global automotive markets increasingly place stringent regulations focusing on controlling carbon dioxide and gas emissions (Pearson, 2019). These legislations require automakers to invest heavily in R&D to develop low-emissions vehicles that meet the standards. Therefore, in order to maintain competitiveness, Honda needs to increase costs to drive innovation. However, at the same time due to the intense competition, it is difficult to pass the costs onto consumers. Hence, it might affect Honda’s profit margin.

Recommendations

To conclude, below are a few recommendations for Honda to address the strategic challenges.

1. Honda can either partner with new mobility companies or diversify its business to offer mobility services. Building long-term relationships with them through offering deals and discounts, allowing Honda to increase visibility to mobility users and access to customer data and analysis. Regarding to diversifying to new business, it is another source of ways to generate revenue. Honda can increase its engagement with more customers as these mobility services are just short-term rental program, hence there is possibility to turning these customers to increase preferences to choose Honda over its competitors.
2. To address the rise of autonomous vehicles, Honda should continue focusing on its strengths of developing more reliable and low-emission engines while joining with another automaker’ technology on self-driving. With the exchange of research results and information, they can combine their technologies to develop inventive autonomous vehicles with low-emission engines. Thus, once they introduce the vehicle into the global market, it enables them to gain first-mover advantage and set a premium price to achieve higher revenue.
3. Apart from Honda’s current R&D development, Honda can set up engineering programs and competitions for public to design and create new engines that can meet the local requirements. Because Honda only has limited capital and skills, it requires a long time for them to develop new products that comply with emissions regulations. Hence, organising engineering competitions and programs can generate more new ideas from the participants. They might even discover any talented participants and recruit them to work for Honda, in order to bring in new ideas to the company.

References

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An Analysis of Service Quality Provision Using Method of Mystery Shopper: A Case Study of Shampan 3, The Spinning Wheel

Background and Context-

Shampan is a small UK group of Contemporary Indian restaurants serving traditional curries and specials with a modern edge. Whilst all three of their (London and surrounding areas) branches offer high quality and authentic Indian cuisine, the most recent business venture for them, Shampan 3 is said to be ‘redefining Indian Cuisine’(Shampan, 2020) at their Westerham based branch called ‘The Spinning Wheel’ which offers it’s customers a timeless, high quality fine dining experience. This report will analyse and evaluate Shampan’s service quality through the use of theory-based literature with data provided from the mystery shopping experience.

1. Literature Based on Theory-

1.a- Evaluating Service Quality

Quality plays a significantly large role in determining and influencing the overall levels of customer satisfaction. Particularly within the hospitality industry, service quality has been defined as the extent to which the service fulfils the needs or expectations of the customers or conceptualised it as the overall impression of customers as regards the weakness or excellence of the service (Al-Ababneh MM, 2017). However, more recent observations and studies view service quality as the gap between the expected service and the actual perceived service. At Shampan 3, the standards for quality are relatively high and this report will make use of relevant theory in order to relay a quantifiable report in regards to the customer experience when viewed against different service quality assessment models. Whilst there are many service quality models out there, most notably, The SERVQUAL model created by Berry, Par-asuraman and Zeithaml consists of five dimensions, namely: empathy, reliability, assurance, responsiveness and tangibility. It evaluates customer’s perceptions of service quality and that based on the gap between customers’ expectations and their perceptions. Since service quality is a multidimensional construct, and therefore each dimension of SERVQUAL has different features for evaluating customer perceptions and expectations regarding service quality in the hospitality industry (Al-Ababneh MM, 2017).

2. Methodology-

2. i) Determining the correct research method and technique

Buckley and Chiang define research methodology as “a strategy or architectural design by which the researcher maps out an approach to problem-finding or problem-solving.” In this section of the report, it will become clear as to why it was important me to collect qualitative primary, data given the intricate nature of consumer behaviour. Firstly, in order to conduct the research, a suitable research method had to be carefully selected with the aims of giving qualitative data that can be ‘literally’ analysed rather than ‘interpreted’ thus making it more accurate. In order to stay on-topic and get the most relevant responses, questions centred around a review of existing literature on the subject area was used to identify themes for exploration. Although there are a multitude of qualitative research methods that was considered, they proved less effective against the final chosen method of the ‘Mystery Shopper’ as mystery shopping is traditionally used to facilitate measurement of service quality across various industries (Allison 2012, p4). Whilst it is relatively quick and easy to collect the data from mystery shopper reports, it is largely resource consuming in terms of time and money for the company on a grand scale as it requires many participants, perhaps with multiple trips to one restaurant. Nonetheless, mystery shoppers make it possible to control the homogeneity of compliance with standards in all facilities, which allows for the implementation of a consistent policy of the enterprise in the field of sales and brand image (Kirkpatrick, D. 2001).

2 ii)- Key Objectives determined before the study took place

According to Wilson (1998), results from mystery shopping studies are used for three main purposes:

1. To identify weak elements in an organization’s service delivery.
2. To encourage, develop and motivate service personnel.
3. To evaluate the competitiveness of an organization’s service provision by benchmarking it against the service provision of competitors in an industry.

These purposes give the study direction when it comes to understanding the key objectives that need to be attained for the research and will therefore, enable more targeted results.

2. iii) Structuring the mystery shopper experience

Van der Wiele, Hesselink & Van Waarden (2005) defined different steps in the design of a mystery shopping study.

1. The first step is to define goals. These goals can be used as the main basis for what questions are used on the checklists as it will highlight the elements that are to be evaluated upon analysis. The checklist should be created by going through the process of the service delivery from the very beginning all the way to end. In order to remain as objective as possible and therefore, reduce subjectivity, the checklist must allow room for both the positive and negative aspects of the service delivery. In order to get a deep meaningful analysis of the customers view of the service quality, it is important to us the five attributing dimensions of SERVQUAL, which can be useful for creating a checklist. (Appendix 1.)
2. The second step in the design of a mystery shopping study is the gathering of data. The gathered data should cover the attributed service quality dimensions and the key performance indicators defined by the organization which is aligned with the objections of the study. These key performance indicators are related to the vision and mission of the organization. The mystery shoppers who gather the data need to be independent, critical, objective and anonymous (Van der Wiele et al., 2005).
3. The third and final step in the design of a mystery shopping study is the reporting of results. First, the gathered data should be analyzed objectively. Then the data should be reported in a clear and transparent way and presented to responsible managers as soon as possible after the visits (Van der Wiele et al., 2005). Independence, objectivity and speed are crucial in determining the outcome of the study as results are more reliable when the mystery shopping is conducted without other influences from friends and family, when it follows a criteria that balances the strengths and weaknesses of the service and is reported back in a timely manner whilst the study findings are still fresh in the shoppers mind. If the findings are not relayed in and efficient timely manner, the mystery shoppers might forget to check some items on the list, since the items that need to be evaluated need to be learned by heart before the mystery shopping visit takes place (Morrison et al., 1997). Another challenge on the side of the mystery shopper is to remember all evaluations and report them correctly on the evaluation form (Morrison et al., 1997) and to evaluate all items on the checklist objectively.

2. iiii) Data Analysis-

The data from the mystery shopping experience was analysed by applying the benchmarking technique in which the results were weighted against the pre-conceived standards. These standards were based on the notable awards that have been won in the past such as; British Curry Awards in November 2013, The BEST NEWCOMER British Curry Awards in November 2015, and BEST IN SOUTHEAST Bromley Business Awards in November 2017. The criteria used to meet the requirements of such prestigious awards is similar of that used in the mystery shopper report and gave clear direction as to what elements of the service should be weighted and a definitive barrier to entry. In accordance with the awards, the analysis of data was also done with reference to the SERVQUAL Model using the five dimensions of reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibility. The study was conducted to evaluate the following areas of service quality: host quality, quality of food, general service and quality of menu items, consumer engagement online, telephone manners, aesthetic value of the facility, and on-site management. These areas were rated on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being the ‘poorest’ and 7 being ‘excellent’. (See Appendix 1)

2. v) Data Findings

After a quick one-minute phone call, the table was booked ahead of time with the fact that it was just going to be a single person taken into account, the option to choose which style of seating was preferred for comfort, this showcased the prestige of the restaurant and attention to detail through good telephone manners. The overall environment was highly rated in terms of cleanliness and quality of aesthetics from the feel of fabrics to the sensory experience induced by culturally appropriate music from the well-integrated surrounding speakers to the small charcoal fire gently burning in the bar/lounge area upon entry. The only issue that came out was their management of space as tables and chairs were close to other diners which can take away from the overall exclusivity and luxury essence of fine dining. Otherwise, the internal decor was well done and reflected a professional yet cosy touch and executed an understanding of the nature of modern-contemporary whilst still integrating the cultural attributes of India. The welcoming was warm yet professional, and the drinks and meals were prompt and of higher standard to not only other Indian cuisines, but many restaurants in the surrounding area. However, there were no suggestions from the server on the kind of drink to bring however, an appetizer was offered immediately. This added to the quality of service that was enhanced by the server’s effort to make the mystery shopper comfortable through regularly checking back. In general, the visit was a positive experience that lived up to the pre-determined expectations.

3. Service Quality Measurement-

Service quality measurement is regarded as a means by which managers get to identify mishaps in the service level goals of their businesses and thus make necessary adjustments to meet or even exceed customer expectations (Arlen 2008, p2). Arguably, there is no definitive consensus on the correct service quality model as they all use different service quality dimensions, but all of which agree on the fact that the quality nature of service is inseparable, often heterogeneous, and always intangible (Ghotbabadi, Baharun, & Feiz 2012, p4). The review identifies four major models that have prevalent use, two among them that are briefly discussed. These include: The Nordic Model, The Multilevel Model, The Hierarchical Model, and The SERVQUAL Model.

3. i) SERVQUAL

Focusing on the five dimensions of SERVQUAL, reliability, assurance, responsiveness, tangibles and Empathy, Nam and Lee (2011), used a modified SEVQUAL scale, and found that three dimensions of service quality (‘intangibles’, ‘tangibles’, and ‘food’), expectation, and value for money appear to positively influence customer satisfaction with restaurants. Luxurious restaurants must therefore make every effort to enhance service quality for better profits. Shampan being a relatively up-scale dining establishment, must continue to communicate their value through all three dimensions of their service quality. Research by Barclaycard in 2018 found half of consumers (52%) would rather pay for a good experience than splurge on material possessions. The same number (52%) would choose to tell their friends and peers about an enjoyable brand experience rather than a purchase they’ve made. With the current ‘experience economy’ progressively rising in economic value, Shampan 3’s efforts to differentiate themselves will become increasingly more of a challenge although they are currently providing high levels of customer service by; giving customers individual attention, dealing with customers in a caring fashion, noticeably putting the customer’s best interest at heart and understanding the needs of their customers, in such a competitive market such features of service quality will become a standard commodity even amongst fast food/lower-end restaurants. New research proves that consumers are expecting, if not demanding, highly personalized experiences. This means that customers are typically willing to spend more when they receive such custom-tailored service (Forbes, 2017).

Kim and Moon (2009) explored the psychological process by which service influences perceived service quality, pleasure-feeling, situational factor, and revisit intention. Their main emphasis weighted on the idea that restaurant managers should seek an understanding of customers’ perception process in relation to emotion and cognition. This correlates with the tangible aspect as Shampan offers luxurious materials to coat everything from the walls to menus to the furniture. However, Shampan is a true example of a ‘heterogeneous services’ as the business model depends greatly on their employees for quality whilst also providing the customers a very ‘inseparable’ service experience as production and consumption are simultaneous. According to cue utilization theory (Cox, 1967; Olson, 1972) products or services consist of an array of cues that serve as surrogate indicators of the product’s quality. Since Shampan 3 involves simultaneous production and consumption of service, the customer has to enter the service facilities and has to be within the servicescape before a purchase decision can be reached. Therefore, the servicescape offers a multitude of easily accessible cues to customers seeking an information searching shortcut (Baker, 1998). With the five dimensions taken into consideration, it is clear that Shampan 3 is doing well in terms of creating a long-lasting experience and a home away from home type of environment.

3. ii) Nordic

The Nordic model was the first mention service quality and defined service through two perspectives which were based on technical outcome and functional outcome. According to Gronroos who created the model in 1984, service quality is defined by the technical aspect, which refers to the service level that a customer receives, and the functional aspect, which refers to the perceived level of performance (Shahin & Samea 2010, p9). However, Gronroos did not include any means of measuring the two aspects. Later in 1994, Rust and Oliver attempted to refine the model using their Three-Component Model version of Nordic model, which included three components: service product, service delivery, and service environment (Ghotbabadi, Baharun, & Feiz 2012, p5). However, they failed to test their version of the model as the model is largely insufficient in measuring service quality provision.

3. iiii) Gap Analysis

Parasuraman et al. (1985, 1988) developed a service quality gap model. They believed that the model can be used to measure customer perceptions of service quality, and at the same time compare customer expectations of service quality with the service quality that actually received, so as to determine service level. Service Quality GAP is analysed on the basis of customers’ expectations and perceptions. In this case, it can be measured by subtracting the value of customers’ expectations that were based on pre-existing positive attributes to Shampan such as the numerous industry awards, overall cleanliness of the website, 4.7 star reviews on Trip Advisor and the general narrative that it is a fine dining establishment. The data shown in Appendix 1 gives an overall positive score of 6 that being relatively high in terms of customer satisfaction and should be viewed as a judgement of good service quality that met the customers standards and left little to no gaps in customer expectations.

4. Competitive Benchmarking and Best Practices-

Winners of the Asian Restaurant of the Year 2019 at the Asian Curry Awards, Tamarind Lounge is currently the pride of Kemsing having just picked up Asian Restaurant of the Year in the home counties at the Asian Curry Awards (Tamarind Lounge, 2019). Within close proximity to Shampan 3, Tamarind Lounge is the direct competitor and is also within the fine-dining arena. Although high quality service can differentiate two brands from each other, creating a clear and distinguishable divide is becoming increasingly harder. Examples of these best-practices that Shampan has put in place includes hiring for fit and ensuring employees have shared vision (Sui & Tsai 2014, p3) Shampan needs to hire the kind of talent that will meet its service level goals and for this, it will need to have in-house human resource function to work close with other departments to craft recruitment and selection procedure (Mattsson 2012, p5). The Executive chef, Sadek Miah stated on the website that “As a passionate creative team of food-lovers we work well together; with our different personalities come different ideas that we incorporate into our work. It is an absolute pleasure” (Shampan,2020). However, even after hiring the right talent, communicating clearly the goals of the restaurant and reminding employees from time to time, as well as empowering them in various ways, service quality will be the best approach to sustainability (MSPA, p6). The culture of service is part of the brand identity at Shampan .Shampan’s current competitive advantage amongst similar Indian cuisines is the level of service which leads to higher levels of customer satisfaction and in-turn, boosts not only brand loyalty but also, revenue will increase significantly as customers are typically willing to spend more when they receive such custom-tailored service (Forbes,2017). customer satisfaction tends to lead to customer loyalty (Jones & Sasser, 1995). Acquiring new customers costs the firm more than retaining them (Farber & Wycoff, 1991). However, consumers demand and expectations for such service quality is saturating the market and shifting businesses service standards.

Developing Solutions to Sustainability Changes and Business Today: Case Study of Coal Mining

System thinking stands as a really important structure where we can analyse the problem and know the problem from its roots, then we can find that where can we make changes to resolve the problem. Coal mining is a really profitable industry as coal is being used in a lot of high profitable industries. For example, it is used in electricity generation, which is used by everyone and everywhere, steel production- again a very commonly used thing, cement manufacturing, etc. but at the same time, coal mining has a lot of negative impacts on our environment. Impacts of coal mining includes land usage on a high scale which exploits the quality of land, water pollution is caused when the waste is dumped into rivers, apart from that when coal is burnt it causes air pollution and also leaves behind tons of solid waste. A wicked problem is a problem that is nearly impossible or really difficult to resolve because of the things happening around us which have been operating for a long time and most of them are still not even recognised. To identify a wicked problem, we need to know that wicked problems don’t have any definitive formulation, which means the wicked problem doesn’t has a well-defined statement according to which we can make a judgment about a problem. to understand if a problem is a wicked problem or not, we need to look upon the characteristics of wicked problem. Finding a solution to wicked problem has no “right or wrong” and it totally depends on the stakeholder’s decision. Ordinary problems have easy solutions and needs to be implemented in a manner to solve those issues, but with wicked problems every solution to the problem has its own consequences which cannot be undone. Every wicked problem has its own unique characteristics which maybe be similar to some other problems but needs to be resolved in the prescribed manner only (Elmansy, 2016). As the problem has characteristics which maybe mutual to other problem so it can be said that every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem. The problem of coal mining and its impact on the environment stand as a wicked problem as it has been operating since the time, we found coal and as it is a cheaper means of electricity generation, so it is widely used in that sector. Adani group is an Indian multinational conglomerate which has its headquarters in Gujrat running since 1988. After holding its coal mines and successful companies, Adani entered Australia and now Adani is trying to build the biggest coal mine sin the history of Australia which would result in a lot of harms to the environment (Brevini and Murdock, 2017). If they are successful in getting authority then their coal mines would most likely destroy the land they are operating on, allow more than 500 ships entering in Queensland through the great barrier reef. If Adani enters Queensland it would start expanding its business and start building up more and more coal mines and this would also lead to touching the untouched coal reserves. All these coal mines stand as the biggest reason of climate change, as these coal mines have the highest rate of carbon pollution in the atmosphere. Australians have been breathing fresh air for a long time and Australia is considered amongst one of the least polluted country with Melbourne showing up as most liveable city for good 6 years in a row (WM, 2011) (Newton, 2012). Let’s conserve Australia and Before the climate changes destroy the whole world let’s think about the future generations and start taking measures to slow down the climate changing processes.

If we start catching the problem, we would find that the problem of these coal mines setting up started around 1730 in America. After that first coal mine, there starts an era of coal mines. This was because it got people’s attention that energy can be produced using coal and really cheap and also coal was abundantly available, which dragged a lot of businesses into this field. Coal is a fossil fuel which Is made from the trees and plants which died millions of years ago. It is a non-renewable resource and the amount of coal mines establishing year depicts a threat to the natural resources as well as a terror to climate change. The second step of system thinking; the pattern level focuses on, from where did the problem started spreading. It is clearly stated above that after the first coal mines setup catches a lot of people’s attention so many more coal mines were setup. As the fortune of these companies rises and more prospects of opportunities were noticed, a group called Adani started working in this field. Now Adani has started expanding its business Queensland and there have been campaigns running to stop Adani. Coal is the cheapest way of generating electricity but apparently, it is a non-renewable source of energy which is not going to last long. Scientists are working on renewable sources of energy and one of them which is being used at a really high scale nowadays is solar energy. Apart from this there are a lot of renewable ways of generating energy that includes geothermal energy, wind power, biomass, tidal power. Coal comprised 41% of the total energy produced in 2016 followed by natural gas(21.6%) (BP: Statistical Review of World Energy, 2016). As it can be seen what climate change has been doing to the society, some remarkable events are- the California, United states fires, drought in Europe, floods in Japan (Banis, 2018). Keeping all this in mind the sustainable use of resources, people are moving to renewable sources of energy. It is predicted that wind and solar power would be the cheapest ways to generate power by 2040 (Martin, 2016). Carbon emissions rose by 1.7 % in 2018 to a record of 33.1 billion tonnes, with coal making up at least one third of total increase. Coal use accounted for a 10 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2018 from just China, United states, India (Lannin, 2019). Moving on to the third level of thinking we would find that third level stands for creating a focus on the statement. There should be a clear vision and a planned idea which needs to be executed in a systematic way. Identifying the structure is the next step in system thinking which means that after creating a clear vision, now it’s time for understanding the structure. How the problem has been operating for years, what is the main source of problem, this helps in understanding the pattern of the problem and its operations. Now start going deeper in the issue to find out the real roots of the problem. Just the profit is not the only thing which drives these businessmen to setup coal mining industries, but also the government has no strict laws and takes minimal actions to protect the environment for the people living in the country. This business has been running for so long time now that people are getting used to it and don’t take any action. Now it is high time and as people are watching out the consequences caused to the environment because of these coal mining industries, the youth is rising up to prevent any more harm to the environment and thinking of sustainable ways to work out these social, economic, environmental issues. The problem seems clear and so a plan should be formed which could be implemented and then through a formulated way all the issues can be resolved in a systematic manner. Through system thinking a problem cannot be solved quickly because these kinds of problems are the ones which have been composed over a long period of time and are nearly impossible to solve. So, these kind of problems require a long time to resolve. For example, in coal mine industry, everyone knows the impacts its causing to the environment and despite the fact that it is a really big cause of climate change, the government can’t just eliminate these industries and stop the coal mining sector. If government takes this action it is going to have a real bad impact on the economy as the coal mining industries are fetching a lot of income to the country and play a significant role in the Gross domestic product (GDP) of the country. It would also result in people losing jobs and unemployment maxing out.

Sustainability means avoiding the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain a balance of this ecological system. sustainable ways to operate our day to day tasks is the need of hour. Now discussing about Coal mining Industry’s impact in Australia in a whole in context to three pillars of sustainability that is environment, economy and the social community. Let’s start with the Environmental pillar, as we know that it gets a lot of attention because more and more companies are focusing towards reducing their carbon footprints, packaging waste, water usage (Beattie, 2019). Australia is the world’s third largest exporter of CO2 in Fossil fuels, where carbon emissions because of coal mining stands as one of the biggest reasons (Kilvert, 2019). There are much more ways to generate energy apart from coal, it’s just that they are expensive. Making a decision between “LIVING LONGER OR LIVING CHEAPER “is getting too hard. Taking into consideration the second pillar of sustainability; social pillar, a sustainable business should be taking into concern all the social factors like the interest of shareholder, employees and the society it is operating in. The industry might be having some negative externalities which needs to be resolved over time and should be eliminated as soon as possible. Coal mining industries are exploiting the society as the people living near those industry are getting affected by the harmful gasses and smoke led out by the chimneys. These industries also have poor waste management, if Adani group enters Queensland then the Great barrier reef would be destroyed over time because of poor waste management. The remarkable disaster happened in Mount Kembla describes everything clearly, 96 people lost their lives and lot of harmful gasses were emitted (Lee, 2003). The third pillar of sustainability is the economical pillar. The Coal mining Industry in Australia undoubtedly fetches a lot of profit each year and stands as a remarkable factor in GDP of the country. At the same time the harms it causes to the society also needs to be fixed out which also needs expenditure.

To conclude, it is true that system thinking helps in developing solutions to sustainability changes and business today are looking for a more sustainable environment to survive in long term. Coal mining industry in Australia would help to boost the growth of the country financially as it uses less efforts but has more output. So, it can be said to be really efficient, but this method won’t be running for long term. So, government should start taking measure as it is high time and all results are in front of us. Coal mining industries are going to ruin Australia and to stop this, measures should be taken by the government, like implementing strict policies towards carbon emission, waste management, etc. and switch to renewable sources. These industries cannot be shut down in one go and need some time as the labour working in those industries needs to migrate to equalize the balance of employment. At last now it’s time to answer the statement- ‘system thinking is critical in developing solutions to sustainability changes’, after all the analyses and research it could be said that this statement is agreed to some extent as system thinking would be really helpful in solving the problem of coal mines in Australia as system thinking analyses the data and disintegrates the problem to make it easy to understand. In this scenario a proper solution may be developed to solve the problem, but it doesn’t remain the same in every situation and just relying on system thinking might not be a good idea.

Competition of Emerging Technologies: Case Study of Sony

Abstract

Historically Sony has been a trailblazer when it comes to technological innovation. From their humble beginnings to the giant they are now, this growth has been the direct result of their willingness to embrace the opinions and feedback of their customers. This willingness to listen has led Sony to be able to innovate and stay ahead of the fierce competition they face from multiple competitors in the film, music, and gaming industries just to name a few.

Introduction

Technology hasn’t been around for too long and yet that hasn’t stopped it from rapidly advancing. With artificial intelligence and virtual reality, our world is completely different than it was 50 years ago. Sony Corporation is one of the companies who has played a big role in advancing current technology and keeping up to date with the latest innovative practices. Sony Corporation is composed of a few different segments including the following: 1) games and network services 2) music, pictures, home entertainment and sound 3) imaging products and services and 4) mobile communications to name a few (Eassa, 2019). Within the games and network services, Sony has brought us popular gaming machinery such as the Playstation, Playstation 2, Playstation 3 and Playstation 4. Within the music, pictures, home entertainment, and sound division we see subsidiaries such as Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment which have been responsible for many multimedia films and products. While Sony has undeniably had a ton of commercial success with each of these divisions, that is not to say that they have not faced their fair share of competition as well for prospective consumers. There is a lot of competition that Sony must go against in order to continue having a leading role in the world with respect to technology. For instance, in the electronics department, Sony has the PlayStation 4, while Microsoft has the Xbox One. These are two consoles which have been fighting back and forth since the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Additionally, Sony faces competition from production studios like Universal and Disney when it comes to their cinematography. From a mobile phone perspective, they also face extensive competition from companies such as Google and Apple. Given these close competitors in many of their divisions, the onus is on Sony to continue to innovate and integrate newer and better technology while also aggressively creating never before seen technology if they hope to stay relevant among consumers and stay ahead of their ever-persistent competitors (Huseyin, 2019).

Background

Early Beginnings of Sony

Originally named “Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation,” Sony started as a company who created heat seeking missiles for the Japanese Imperial Army in World War II (Hall, 2019). It was founded by Ibuka Masaru and Morita Akio. Sony was not initially the technology giant it is today. Some of the first products that Sony created were an electric rice cooker and a tape recorder both of which sold poorly and resulted in a significant loss in revenue due to the development of (Hall, 2019). While being in Japan, Sony wasn’t doing a good job bringing in money. To grow, Sony had to be willing to gradually expand by making deals with other countries and corporations (Kennan, 2017 & Sony, 2019). “In 1952 Ibuka visited the United States and made the initial contacts for licensing the transistor from Bell Laboratories” (Hall, 2019, para. 2). This initial contract was the first of many. This led to a deal between Western Electric and Morita (Hall, 2019). Shortly after this deal transistor radios were in production and they were extremely successful (Hall, 2019).

The Walkman to Now

After the success of the transistor radio, the Sony Walkman was introduced in 1979 despite initial pushback from company engineers (Hall, 2019). While engineers had initial concerns about the concept behind the Sony Walkman, Morita urged developers to create the product even going as far as to offer to resign should the product not be successful (Hall, 2019). This shows that Morita was confident in the products that were in development and he was willing to take the risk of their business by making the Walkman which was a great financial and commercial success for Sony. This also showed Sony’s commitment to their ideals of innovation and persistence for looking to their consumers for guidance on how to improve and modify the products and services they offer. Additionally, their business model ensures that Sony doesn’t depend on any one area to make a profit. allows them creative flexibility (Eassa, 2019). This commitment to the customer, aided by a strong business model, continues today with Sony’s willingness to expand on successful product lines and discontinue those that are not (Kennan, 2017).

Discussion

Early Beginnings of Sony

From its earliest beginnings, Sony has strived to be a leading innovator in relatively new world of technological advancement. However, in order to do this, it has required that Sony be open to listening to the needs of their prospective consumers and adapt their product line to fit that feedback. In this pursuit, Sony has excelled. As a result, Sony has changed quite a bit since they created an electric rice cooker, transistor radio and the Walkman in their effort to adapt and grow. This is especially true with their success creating the Sony Walkman. Due to the United States fitness craze in the 1980’s, the Walkman was a huge hit and millions of copies were sold (Santo, 2019). This enhanced the attitude towards working out because people were able to listen to their favorite music while doing so.

Sony in Film

The Interview. Since Sony Pictures has been founded, they have created a lot of movies including Men in Black, Rambo, Spiderman and Ghost Busters. Something that these movies have in common is that they were all played on the big screen. The movie The Interview, starring Seth Rogan and James Franco, was also produced by Sony Pictures. In this movie Franco and Rogan are assigned by the United States government to assassinate Kim Jung Un after they interview him on their show. Due to controversy, the video was not set to show in theaters and was released on streaming services (Kokas, Tryon, Gusterson & Braun, 2016). Sony found that consumers enjoy the theater experience and without showing movies in theaters they become unsuccessful (Kokas, Tryon, Gusterson & Braun, 2016). Sony was testing their audience reaction to releasing movies via video on demand rather than in theaters. As a result, Sony realized that their customers were still interested in the movie-going experience they receive when going to theaters to watch movies compared to on demand streaming (Kokas, Tryon, Gusterson & Braun, 2016).

Spider-Man. Spider-Man is a huge character in Marvel Comics. Since Sony had purchased the rights of Spider-Man in 1998, they are the only company who can release a movie about him or with him in it (Graser & Lang, 2015). As long as they release a movie at least every five years they are allowed to keep their rights. Sony did a great job at first, releasing three movies in the early 2000’s featuring Tobey Mcguire as Spider-Man. But after the release of The Amazing Spider-Man in 2012 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014 starring Andrew Garfield, Sony realized that they weren’t making a lot of money on the franchise (Russo, 2019). Since the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has most of the Marvel characters involved in their movies, Marvel felt that Spider-Man had to be in the same universe (Hughes, 2019). The MCU attempted to buy the rights for Spider-Man in 2015 but Sony would only lend the hero for five movies in which all of the profits would go into their own pockets (Russo, 2019). The only money that the MCU can receive is from the merchandise that is associated with Spider-Man. After the five movie deal ended between the MCU and Sony, Sony wanted to take Spider-Man back and keep him for themselves (Russo, 2019). Due to the amount of fans who were angry about Sony’s decision, Sony has decided to keep Tom Holland, the current Spider-Man, in the MCU and for now will be casted into a third solo film following Spider-Man Homecoming, and Spider-Man Far From Home (Graser & Lang, 2015 & Hughes, 2019).

Sony in the Music Industry

Early Beginnings. In addition to the success of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony is also very active within the music industry. Starting as a partnership with CBS in 1968, Sony Music has been its own branch of Sony since 1988 (Kennan, 2017). Consistent with their business model that prioritizes the public, Sony has joined the Artist Discovery Network that looks to identify talent and provide them with the investment and sponsorship opportunities they may need as new and budding musical artist (Shore Fire Media, 2019). Additionally, recent efforts by Sony Music have resulted in new record labels that will focus on family entertainment reaching a genre that Sony thinks has potential to grow (Silva, 2019). These efforts by Sony reveal that even when it comes to music production, Sony is willing to go in whatever direction their customers want.

The Rise of Playstation. With Nintendo being one of the largest video game companies around, Sony wasn’t far behind. In 1994, Sony released the Playstation. This console was revolutionary because it was one of the first to use a disc. Fast forward to now with the Playstation 4 which has had a lot of success since the release in 2015. The Playstation 4 can also support Virtual Reality (VR) games with the purchase of a VR headset and controllers. This is important because as VR becomes more popular, Xbox, owned by Microsoft, will start to fall behind Playstation due to their lack of capability to run VR games. Video games for the Playstation 4 have been constantly released every year since it has been released keeping them in competition with Xbox. Due to the major success in the Playstation 4, Sony has announced that they will be releasing the Playstation 5 in the fall of 2020. As of now, it is said that the Playstation 5 will be backwards compatible, meaning it will be able to play games made for the previous generation. This would be a great addition the the Playstation 5 because Xbox already has a backwards compatibility feature.

Conclusion

With the competition of emerging technologies, Sony has been able to stay towards the top. Sony has been able to compete with other movie studios including Disney Pictures. With a strong start, Sony was able to keep their rights to Spider-Man, but it came down to a contract with the MCU to keep the franchise alive. Sony does a great job listening to their consumers and staying ahead of the never-ending game in technology and entertainment. Because of their great success in selling the Playstation 4, Sony is confident that they will be successful in selling the Playstation 5.

Reflection

Looking at Sony Corporation as a whole, I believe that this would be a great company to work for because they are continuously looking to stay towards the top in innovation. To do this, they have created a culture and business model that truly seeks to understand and value the needs of consumers. As a result, Sony has been able to not only improve upon their previous work but also create and innovate new and better technologies.

References

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7. Russo, D. (2019). Sony has big plans for Spider-Man cinematic universe, but a key hero is unavailable: Spidey. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/24/sonys-plan-for-spider-man-cinematic-universe-lacks-a-hero-spidey.html.
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Ways to Improve Customer Experience Quality and Business Performance: Case Study by Mystery Shopper Practices

1. Paper Title: How Improving Customer Experience Quality and Business Performance? A Case Study by Mystery Shopper Practices

Authors: Yung-Lung Lai & Shih-Chieh Chang. International Journal of Marketing Studies; Vol. 5, No. 6; 2013

1.1 General description of the research method: Case Study

Case study method was first defined by Benbasat et al. (1987, p. 370) as “examining a phenomenon in its natural setting, employing multiple methods of data collection to gather information from one or few entities (people, groups or organizations)”.

Sociologists and anthropologists discussed people`s way of living, the experience of different situations and their approach toward the understanding of their world and to lead them to gain intuition into how individuals make sense of their experience and their surrounding work (Johansson, 2007). Many authors have argued methods to enhance case studies such as positivism (Lee, 1989; Yin 1989) and few authors discussed interpretive research. Eisenhardt (1989) presented a direction for developing theories from the positivist case study which integrated past qualitative studies (Yin 1981, 1984) and grounded theory construct (Glasser and Strasuss, 1967). Table 1 shows the different aspects of both approached. The particular interest of the paper 1 involves interpretivism approach to build theory from fieldwork (researchers as mystery shoppers) as well as developing a deep understanding of the interaction between Chinese restaurants and customers, process and policies within the restaurant (Cepeda et al. 2005) Lee (1989) presented field research consists of three levels of understanding:

1. Subjective perception: detailed tracking and understanding the actors or participants
2. Understanding interpretivism: the researcher’s concept of participants’ subjective knowledge
3. Positivism: the researcher`s viewpoint of the “objective facts” of a case that is mandatory to be updated by interpretive understanding.

Table 1 Positivist vs Interpretative approach (Cepeda et al. 2005)

Similar to other methods of qualitative research, understanding, analysing and showing participants perspective is the researcher`s aim (Creswell 2013). A Case study is illustrated as an adaptable tool by means of conducting qualitative research most convenient for a thorough, integrated and in-depth study of a complicated problem.

Proposing and integrating the case can be as tough as defining variables and overlapping points of interest in case study research. Designing the research questions and selecting the case, identifying the focus and refining the research context is suggested for establishing the elements in designing the research (Merriam, 2009; Yin, 2014).

The selected paper applied case study as the research method which shows the improvement of customer experience quality in Chinese restaurants via the mystery shopper service which improves customer satisfaction and revisiting of customers as well as overall business performance.

Yin (2007) defines a case study as an approach to understanding the cause, the means of comprehending and the factors affecting the final result. In addition to that, he also emphasised on ‘how’ to come up with an insight into the research questions. Therefore, interviews and secondary sources are counted as the data collection phase.

This research aimed to fill the gap between eastern and western approached through a constructive manner- applying case study method defining research objects using the mystery shoppers- to seek peculiar details of customer experience in Chinese restaurants and facilitate their quality improvement process as well as their business performance.

1.2 Research Ethics

Since one part of the collected data has been obtained via interview, the ethical issues concerned with this research are:

1. It is very important to provide the interviewees with the written procedure of the interview and verbally explain to them about the content of the questions, approximate time frame before starting the interviews.
2. Interviewees should be given the choice of selecting the interview location whether they prefer it in public or private.
3. The interviewer should be aware of their own safety while conducting an interview. All the details including their own contact details, location, date and contact details of interviewees should be left with a trustee.
4. Confidentiality is another essential matter. Interviewees should be kept anonymous unless they have given their consent. In this case, the name of the interviewee is essential if it is eminently relevant to the research question.

1.3 Advantages of a case study

Case studies are mainly appropriate for studies that are at their infant and formative level (Roethlisberger, 1977). Moreover, case study is most useful in ‘sticky, practice-based problems where the experiences of the actors are important and the context of action is critical” (Bonoma, 1983) as well as acknowledging the knowledge of practitioners and extracting theories from it. By adopting case studies as the method, the researcher gets the chance to conduct the research I “natural setting” to gain a more in-depth understanding of the issues and produce theories from the result.

In addition to that, the extensive qualitative report often written in case studies not only help to seek or explain the data in a real-life environment but also clarify the elaboration of real-life issues that may not be recorded through an interview or secondary data sources. A case study of reading methods of an individual subject can illustrate not only the information about the reading strategies but also provide the researcher with reading behavior or habit of reading.

Besides, the case study method enables the researcher to be able to answer “how” and “why” problems leading to understanding the structure and complication of the research happening (Cepada, 2005).

Last but not least, case studies are capable of transforming complicated science and technology projects to a coherent and compelling to non-experts. This method is flexible and comprehensive which covers brief descriptive summaries to deep, definite narratives.

1.5 Disadvantages of a case study

Regardless of the advantages, case studies have been criticised as well. Yin (1984) argued against case study research in three groups.

First, case studies are often blamed for lack of accuracy. Yin (1984:21) notes that “too many times, the case study investigator has been sloppy, and has allowed equivocal evidence or biased views to influence the direction of the findings and conclusions”.

Second, case studies are often identified as being protracted, troublesome to conduct and producing piles and piled of documentation (Yin, 1984). Notably, case studies in ethnographic or longitudinal studies a massive amount of data can be produced as time goes by. The situation gets worse when the data is not managed and organised properly over time.

1.6 My research (evaluating and modeling Customer Experience (CX) via deep learning) and case study

Customer experience defined by Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) as “a phenomenon directed towards the pursuit of fantasies, feelings, and fun”. In addition to that, they developed that “the consumer behaviour is the fascinating and endlessly complex result of a multifaceted interaction between organism and environment”.

Owing to the fact that the case study method is founded on participative actions within single or multiple cases, this approach appears to be an appropriate and applicable approach to adopt for the implementation of qualitative customer experience research. My research will be focused on CX in the case of Airbnb reviews in London as my secondary data source. Since there are more than hundreds of thousands of reviews (people`s opinion) available online, going through each and every comment seems challenging and almost impossible. Thus DL is a powerful tool to:

1. Access and make sense of disconnected and unstructured big data (e.g. inconsistent customer reviews).
2. Make more accurate predictions of buyer behaviour;
3. Personalise experiences to every single customer in real time.

My research adopts Sentiment Analysis (SA) which is a computational tool of interpreting people’s opinions, sentiments, emotions, appraisals and attitudes towards guests experience in Airbnb accommodations and their attribute – extracting sentiments from user-generated texts in social networks, blogs or product reviews. My research could be counted as a case study of customers experience staying at Airbnb accommodation and their reviews as the secondary data sources. The reviews are in the form of qualitative raw data and it shows the potential of acquiring positivist case study research (after doing the design tests such as construct validity, internal validity, external validity and reliability (Yin, 1984).

Despite having access to qualitative secondary data, the process of converting the massive number of reviews is no longer qualitative (computational methods must be applied which are pure quantitative). Thus, conducting research by adopting the methods involve big data, does not sound applicable for embracing case study as the methodology.

2. Paper title: Using netnography research method to reveal the underlying dimensions of the customer/tourist experience.

Authors: Ahmed Rageh, T.C. Melewar and Arch Woodside (2013). Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 16 Issue: 2, pp.126-149

2.1 Theoretical and philosophical perspective of the paper

In paper two, the researchers basically highlighted the nature of the research objectives to explain the notion and the element of customer experience from the consumer perspective. Generally, researchers always develop the building and testing of theory from two tactics which are deductive and inductive. In a deductive approach, “the researcher begins with an abstract, logical relationship among concepts, and then moves towards concrete empirical evidence” (Neuman, 2003, p. 51). While in the inductive approach “the researcher begins with detailed observations of the world and moves towards more abstract generalizations and ideas” (Neuman, 2003, p. 51). The authors of this article, adopt deductive and inductive approaches. Deductive approach indicates that research is designed on theories that already have been developed (Bryman and Bell, 2007). An inductive approach is suitable for studies which there is a likelihood of identifying additional factors to those already exist in the literature.

Based on Crotty (1998), to design a research proposal, four aspects should be considered:

1. The type of epistemology notifies research such as objectivism or subjectivism.
2. The type of philosophical perspective (positivism and post-positivism, interpretivism, critical theory-which have been described briefly in paper 1 summary) lies behind the methodology
3. The type of methodology that rules the researchers` choice and the application of methods such as carrying out experiments, surveys, ethnography, etc.
4. The type of methods suggests conducting the research such as questionnaire, interview, focus group, etc.

With respect to Crotty`s model, Creswell (2003) focused on three elements of inquiry (i.e. knowledge claim, strategies of inquiry and methods). In the case of this article, the researcher followed the Creswell model in order to illustrate the research design.

There are four sets of philosophies relating to the knowledge claims; post-positivism, constructivism, advocacy/participatory, and pragmatism (Creswell, 2003). However, the most popular approaches of conducting social research are positivism and interpretivism. Positivism is the most matured and long-established approach (positivist has been described as more in-depth in the description of the previous article). On the other hand, interpretivist researchers try to clarify the understanding of social life and unravel the way people build meaning in the natural setting (Neuman, 2003). They discuss the importance of using common sense to guide ordinary people in their daily lives (Neuman, 2003).

This research adopts uses netnography research method which grounded in interpretivism approach and is explained thoroughly in the next section. and the merit of the netnography research method is the fact that it excels at telling the story, understanding complex social phenomena and assists the researcher in developing themes from the respondents’ points of view (Kozinets, 1997, 1998, 2001, 2002).

2.2 General description of the qualitative method: Netnography

Netnography is a conventional method to qualitative research which the name is drawn from the combination of “Internet” and “ethnography” (Kozinets, 2010). In simple terms, netnography applies the nuts and bolts of ethnography to study the online world. The Sage Dictionary of Social Research Methods defines it as, ‘A qualitative interpretive research methodology that adapts the traditional, in-person ethnographic research techniques of anthropology to the study of the online cultures and communities formed through computer-mediated communications ‘.

Netnography is a flexible approach that gives the opportunity of exploring and explaining diverse, rich societies to researchers. Adopting Naturalism in direction, it reaches cultural aspect in their local contexts, showing an indication on instinctive responses. The result of a netnography could be illustrated descriptive or analytical and the method leans towards to produce strong descriptions by means of grounded interpretations (see Willig, Chapter 10, this volume), thus bringing together a thorough picture of the online experience of cultural, ethnic or racial members. There are many differences between ethnography and netnography from many aspects and it requires specific skill sets (Kozinets, 2010). These dissimilarities start with a distinctive method of computer-mediated communications. More specifically, creating the virtual environment and data collection phase, deciding about the data types and analysing, assessing the quality of the study and ethics are the main features of disparity between ethnography and netnography (Kozinets, 2002). By means of conducting netnography as a naturalistic method, its analysing could be varied out by combining elicited and repress data. These data are captured and recorded over and done with the researcher’s observation of and participation with people as they interact online within their normal environments and life (Kozinets, 2010). Online cultural research is far less interfering than classic ethnography, as well as collecting data while the researcher could be invisible to the members (Beaulieu, 2004; Kozinets, 2010). In such cases, non-participative activity is suitable; conversely, this approach is not appropriate when the researcher tends to participate in an online field site.

2.3 Ethical consideration

The ethical issues concerning netnography were suggested by Kozinets (2002). He suggested:

1. the researcher should clearly explain her/his presence and aim to members and participant
2. Each community member should be granted confidentiality and anonymity
3. Members` feedback should be involved in the research process.
4. The researcher should be thoughtful in case of taking the role as online meditator in the public or private environment.

2.3 Advantages and disadvantages of netnography

Researchers can take benefits of applying netnography over other research methods. First, the data obtained from it are counted rich and naturalistic which reflects the accuracy of the studied group. (Kozinets, 2002). Despite ethnography, netnography enables the research to be invisible which promote the view of people`s everyday life (Giesler and Pohlmann, 2003). Particularly in the situation of sensitive subjects, the invisibility of the researcher could be necessary to elicit relevant data (Kozinet 2010). Second, netnography is a flexible qualitative method that has confirmed beneficial in numerous studies (Kozinets, 2015). Netnography is also well-matched with other methods, such as interviews (Walther and Sandlin, 2013), ethnography (McGrath et al., 2013) and even surveys (Adjei et al., 2010). Finally, netnography is evidenced as being quicker, more convenient and more economical than ethnography (Kozinets, 2006). However, netnography has its own limitations as well such as the legitimacy and quality of the data (Xun and Reynolds, 2010), the difficulty of establishing the demographics of participants and suitability for studies involving factors such as age, ethnicity or gender (Mkono, 2013). Moreover, it is beyond the ability of netnography to be generalised its outcomes to cases in groups outside the online environments (Kozinets, 1998, 2002).

2.4 Netnography and my research

Considering my research title and subject have been described extensively in section 1.6, applying netnography as the method to collect my dataset which should be reliable, big set and product/service oriented seems a feasible approach to me. My research on big data of customer experience is based on the qualitative data of customers` perception of the product/service they received during their all touchpoints. But for using netnography as the method I should categorise my research to specific ethnic, age or geographical region which is not in the scope of my research. While my research requires a very big data set, netnography is not capable of producing the amount of data for my research. Moreover, my research is about detecting the peoples feeling of a purchase which will be analysed by quantitative approach to detect the pattern and predict the future sentiment of customers, as mentioned above, the data obtained via netnography is not reliable nor generalizable beyond online environment. Thus netnography does not seem a viable research method for my quantitative research.

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Analysis of Advancement in Computer Processor: Case Study of Intel

Q. Advancement in computer processors.

A central processing unit (CPU), likewise called a central processor or main processor, is the electronic hardware inside a PC that does the instructions of a PC program by doing the fundamental arithmetic, logic, controlling, and input/output (I/O) tasks indicated by the instructions.

So the advancement of CPU is very essential for better performance with great power efficiency. So let’s begin from the first to latest processor’s evolution in terms of core, clock speed, cache, ram, architecture, etc.

Firstly let’s see the historical evolution/advancement of processors:

Baron Jons Jackob Berzelius finds silicon (Si), which today is the fundamental part of processors in 1823. Nikola Tesla licensed electrical rationale circuits called ‘gates’ or ‘switches’ in 1903. Then the first transistor is created by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley at the Bell Laboratories on December 23, 1947, and they patent it in 1948. The principal integrated circuit was first created by Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor and Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments. The integrated IC was shown on September 12, 1958.

Intel Corporation was founded by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore in 1968 and AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) was founded on May 1, 1969.

Intel with the assistance of Ted Hoff presented the primary microchip, the Intel 4004 on November 15, 1971. The 4004 had 2,300 transistors, performed 60,000 OPS (operation per second), addressed 640 bytes of memory, and cost $200.00. Intel presented the 8008 processor on April 1, 1972. Intel’s improved microchip chip was presented on April 1, 1974; the 8080 turned into a standard in the PC business. Intel was presented the 8085 processor in March 1976. The Intel 8086 was presented on June 8, 1976. The Intel 8088 was introduced on June 1, 1979. The Motorola 68000, a 16/32-bit processor was discharged on 1979 and was later picked as the processor for the Apple Macintosh and Amiga PCs. The Intel 80286 and 80386 presented on 1982 and 1985 respectively. Sun introduced the first SPARC processor on 1987. After that Intel presented 80386SX in 1998.

On the other hand AMD also presented their AM386 microprocessor family in 1991. Then Intel also released their 486SX chip in April at a price of $258.00 which bring a lower-cost processor to the computer industry. Intel discharged the 486DX2 chip on March 2, 1992, with a clock multiplying capacity that creates higher working rates. Intel discharged the Pentium processor on March 22, 1993. The processor was a 60 MHz processor, joins 3.1 million transistors, and sells for $878.00. Intel introduced the second era of Intel Pentium processors on March 7, 1994. Intel presented the Intel Pentium Pro in November 1995. Intel reported the accessibility of the Pentium 150 MHz with 60 MHz bus and 166 MHz with 66 MHz bus on January 4, 1996. AMD presented the K5 processor on March 27, 1996, with speed of 75 MHz to 133 MHz and bus speed of 50 MHz, 60 MHz, or 66 MHz. The K5 was the first processor grown totally in-house by AMD. AMD presented their K6 processor line in April 1997, with rates of 166 MHz to 300 MHz and a 66 MHz bus rate. Intel Pentium II was presented on May 7, 1997. AMD presented their new K6-2 processor line on May 28, 1998, with clock rate of 266 MHz to 550 MHz and bus speed of 66 MHz to 100 MHz. The K6-2 processor was an upgraded adaptation of AMD’s K6 processor. Intel presented the first Xeon processor, the Pentium II Xeon 400 (512 K or 1 M cache, 400 MHz, 100 MHz FSB) in June 1998. Intel introduced the Celeron 366 MHz and 400 MHz processors on 1999. AMD discharged its K6-III processors on February 22, 1999, with speeds of 400 MHz or 450 MHz and bus speeds of 66 MHz to 100 MHz. It likewise included an on-die L2 cache. The Intel Pentium III 500 MHz was discharged on February 26, 1999. The Intel Pentium III 550 MHz was discharged on May 17, 1999. AMD presented the Athlon processor arrangement on June 23, 1999. The Athlon would be created for the following six years in speeds running from 500 MHz up to 2.33 GHz. The Intel Pentium III 600 MHz was discharged on 1999. The Intel Pentium III 533B and 600B MHz was discharged on 1999. The Intel Pentium III Coppermine series was first presented on 1999. On January 5, 2000, AMD discharged the 800 MHz Athlon processor. Intel discharged the Celeron 533 MHz with a 66 MHz bus processor on January 4, 2000. AMD initially discharged the Duron processor on June 19, 2000, with speeds of 600 MHz to 1.8 GHz and bus speeds of 200 MHz to 266 MHz. The Duron was based on the equivalent K7 engineering as the Athlon processor. Intel declares on August 28th that it will review its 1.3 GHz Pentium III processors because of a glitch. Clients with these processors should contact their merchants for extra data about the review. On January 3, 2001, Intel discharged the 800 MHz Celeron processor with a 100 MHz bus. On January 3, 2001, Intel discharged the 1.3 GHz Pentium 4 processor. AMD declared another marking plan on October 9, 2001. Rather than distinguishing processors by their clock speed, the AMD Athlon XP processors will bear monikers of 1500+, 1600+, 1700+, 1800+, 1900+, 2000+, and so forth. Each higher model number will speak to a higher clock speed. In 2002, Intel discharged the Celeron 1.3 GHz with a 100 MHz bus and 256 kB of level 2 cache. Intel Pentium M was presented in March 2003. AMD discharged the first single-core Opteron processors, with speeds of 1.4 GHz to 2.4 GHz and 1024 KB L2 cache, on April 22, 2003. AMD discharged the first Athlon 64 processors, the 3200+, and the first Athlon 64 FX processor, the FX-51, on 2003. AMD discharged the first Sempron processor on July 28, 2004, with a 1.5 GHz to 2.0 GHz clock speed and 166 MHz bus speed. AMD discharged their first double core processor, the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (2.0 GHz, 512 KB L2 cache for every core), on April 21, 2005. Intel discharged the Core 2 Duo processor E6320 (4 M cache, 1.86 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB) on April 22, 2006. Intel presented the Intel Core 2 Duo processors with the Core 2 Duo processor E6300 (2 M cache, 1.86 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB) on 2006. Intel presented the Intel Core 2 Duo processor for the PC with the Core 2 Duo processor T5500, just as other Core 2 Duo T series processors, in August 2006. Intel discharged the Core 2 Quad processor Q6600 (8 M cache, 2.40 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB) in January 2007. Intel discharged the Core 2 Duo processor E4300 (2 M cache, 1.80 GHz, 800 MHz FSB) on January 21, 2007. Intel discharged the Core 2 Quad processor Q6700 (8 M cache, 2.67 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB) in April 2007. Intel discharged the Core 2 Duo processor E4400 (2 M cache, 2.00 GHz, 800 MHz FSB) on April 22, 2007. AMD renamed the Athlon 64 X2 processor line to Athlon X2 and discharged the first in that line, the Brisbane series (1.9 to 2.6 GHz, 512 KB L2 cache) on June 1, 2007. Intel discharged the Core 2 Duo processor E4500 (2 M cache, 2.20 GHz, 800 MHz FSB) on July 22, 2007. Intel discharged the Core 2 Duo processor E4600 (2 M cache, 2.40 GHz, 800 MHz FSB) on October 21, 2007. AMD discharged the first Phenom X4 processors (2 M cache, 1.8 GHz to 2.6 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB) on November 19, 2007. Intel discharged the Core 2 Quad processor Q9300 and the Core 2 Quad processor Q9450 in March 2008. Intel discharged the Core 2 Duo processor E4700 (2 M cache, 2.60 GHz, 800 MHz FSB) on March 2, 2008. AMD discharged the first Phenom X3 processors (2 M cache, 2.1 GHz to 2.5 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB) on March 27, 2008. Intel discharged the first of the Intel Atom series of processors, the Z5xx series, in April 2008. They are single cores processors with a 200 MHz GPU. Intel discharged the Core 2 Duo processor E7200 (3 M cache, 2.53 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB) on April 20, 2008. Intel discharged the Core 2 Duo processor E7300 (3 M cache, 2.66 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB) on August 10, 2008. Intel discharged a few Core 2 Quad processors in August 2008: the Q8200, the Q9400, and the Q9650. Intel discharged the Core 2 Duo processor E7400 (3 M cache, 2.80 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB) on October 19, 2008. Intel discharged the first Core i7 desktop processors in November 2008: the i7-920, the i7-940, and the i7-965 Extreme Edition. AMD discharged the first Phenom II X4 (quad-core) processors (6 M cache, 2.5 to 3.7 GHz, 1066 MHz or 1333 MHz FSB) on January 8, 2009. Intel discharged the Core 2 Duo processor E7500 (3 M cache, 2.93 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB) on January 18, 2009. AMD discharged the first Phenom II X3 (triple-core) processors (6 M cache, 2.5 to 3.0 GHz, 1066 MHz or 1333 MHz FSB) on February 9, 2009. Intel discharged the Core 2 Quad processor Q8400 (4 M cache, 2.67 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB) in April 2009. Intel discharged the Core 2 Duo processor E7600 (3 M cache, 3.06 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB) on May 31, 2009. AMD discharged the first Athlon II X2 (double core) processors (1024KB L2 cache, 1.6 to 3.5 GHz, 1066 MHz or 1333 MHz FSB) in June 2009. AMD discharged the first Phenom II X2 (double core) processors (6 M cache, 3.0 to 3.5 GHz, 1066 MHz or 1333 MHz FSB) on June 1, 2009. AMD discharged the first Athlon II X4 (quad-core) processors (512 KB L2 cache, 2.2 to 3.1 GHz, 1066 MHz or 1333 MHz FSB) in September 2009. Intel discharged the first Core i7 versatile processor, the i7-720QM, in September 2009. It utilizes the Socket G1 socket type, keeps running at 1.6 GHZ, and highlights 6 MB L3 cache. Intel discharged the first Core i5 desktop processor with four cores, the i5-750 (8 M cache, 2.67 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB), on September 8, 2009. AMD discharged the first Athlon II X3 (triple-core) processors in October 2009. Intel discharged the Core 2 Quad processor Q9500 (6 M cache, 2.83 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB) in January 2010. Intel discharged the first Core i5 mobile processors, the i5-430M, and the i5-520E in January 2010. Intel discharged the first Core i5 desktop processor over 3.0 GHz, the i5-650 in January 2010. Intel discharged the first Core i3 desktop processors, the i3-530, and i3-540 on January 7, 2010. Intel discharged the first Core i3 mobile processors, the i3-330M (3 M cache, 2.13 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB), and the i3-350M, on January 7, 2010. AMD discharged the first Phenom II X6 (hex/six-core) processors on April 27, 2010. Intel discharged the first Core i7 desktop processor with six cores, the i3-970, in July 2010. It keeps running at 3.2 GHz and highlights 12 MB L3 cache. Intel discharged seven new Core i5 processors with four cores, the i5-2xxx series in January 2011. AMD discharged the first mobile processors in their A4 line, the A4-3300M and the A4-3310MX on June 14, 2011. AMD discharged the first mobile processors in their A6 line, the A6-3400M and the A6-3410MX on June 14, 2011. AMD discharged the first mobile processors in their A8 line, the A8-3500M, the A8-3510MX, and the A8-3530MX on June 14, 2011. AMD discharged the first desktop processor in their A6 line, the A6-3650 (4 M L2 cache, 2.6 GHz, 1866 MHz FSB) on June 30, 2011. AMD discharged the first desktop processor in their A8 line, the A8-3850 (4 M L2 cache, 2.9 GHz, 1866 MHz FSB) on June 30, 2011. AMD discharged the first desktop processors in their A4 line, the A4-3300 and the A4-3400 on September 7, 2011. AMD discharged the first desktop processors in their A10 line, the A10-5700 and the A10-5800K on October 1, 2012. AMD discharged one of their quickest desktop processors to date, the Athlon II X2 280, on January 28, 2013. It has two cores and keeps running at 3.6 GHz. Intel discharged their first processor to use the BGA-1364 socket and highlight an Iris Pro Graphics 5200 GPU. Discharged in June 2013, it keeps running at 3.2 GHz and has 6 MB of L3 cache. AMD presented the socket AM1 engineering and good processors, similar to the Sempron 2650, in April 2014. AMD discharged their first Pro A series APU processors, the A6 Pro-7050B, A8 Pro-7150B, and A10 Pro-7350B, in June 2014. They highlight on or two cores and keep running at 1.9 GHz to 2.2 GHz. AMD discharged their first Ryzen 7 processors, the 1700, 1700X, and 1800X models, on March 2, 2017. They have eight cores, keep running at 3.0 to 3.6 GHz, and highlight 16 MB L3 cache. AMD discharged their first Ryzen 5 processors, the 1400, 1500X, 1600, and 1600X models, on April 11, 2017. They have four to six cores, keep running at 3.2 to 3.6 GHz, and highlight 8 to 16 MB L3 cache. Intel discharged the first Core i9 desktop processor, the i9-7900X, in June 2017. It utilizes the LGA 2066 socket, keeps running at 3.3 GHZ, has 10 cores, and highlights 13.75 MB L3 cache. AMD discharged their first Ryzen 3 processors, the Pro 1200 and Pro 1300 models, on June 29, 2017. They have four cores, keep running at 3.1 to 3.5 GHz, and highlight 8 MB L3 cache. Intel discharged the first desktop processor with 12 cores, the Core i9-7920X, in August 2017. It keeps running at 2.9 GHZ and highlights 16.50 MB L3 cache.

AMD discharged their first processor with 16 cores, the Ryzen Threadripper 1950X, on August 10, 2017. It keeps running at 3.4 GHz and highlights 32 MB L3 cache. Intel discharged the first desktop processor with 14 cores, the Core i9-7940X, in September 2017. It keeps running at 3.1 GHZ and highlights 19.25 MB L3 cache. Intel discharged the first desktop processor with 16 cores, the Core i9-7960X, in September 2017. It keeps running at 2.8 GHZ and highlights 22 MB L3 cache. Intel discharged the first desktop processor with 18 cores, the Core i9-7980X, in September 2017. It keeps running at 2.6 GHZ and highlights 24.75 MB L3 cache.

INTEL I9-9000

This processor is introduced in May 2017. With their high number of core, high power draw, high warm yield, superior, and extraordinary work area attachment, LGA 2066, they are planned to be utilized by aficionados. A portable form dependent on the standard BGA1440 socket was discharged in 2018, including six hyper-threaded core and 12 MB of the cache. It successfully accomplishes 5 gigahertz under perfect conditions.

This processor Core i9 is into the top model in the Core ‘I’ series processors. The first i9 CPU (7900x) depends on 14 nm technology and the Skylake-X microarchitecture. It highlights four channels of DDR4 RAM and 44 paths of PCI Express (as compared to 28 in the i7). Intended for high performance and gaming, the 3.3 GHz i9 chip can be overclocked to 4.5 GHz

The 9th Gen Intel Core processor are mainly for desktop PC performance to a new level. At the highest point of the stack, their mainstream flagship, the new i9-9900. The first Intel Core i9 desktop processor for the standard users. the i9-9900K with 16MB of cache1 and Intel Turbo Boost 2.0 technology cranks maximum turbo frequency up to extreme up to 5.0 GHz. Throw in high-performing multitasking support powered by 8 cores with Intel Hyper-Threading Technology (Intel HT Technology) to achieve the most demanding clock speed.

Want to achieve even greater levels of performance?

We can overclock confidently with new and advance features like Solder Thermal Interface Material (STIM) and improved overclocking customizations to tweak the processor for High Performance.

So from the above details we can clearly see that the improvement of CPU takes place rapidly with the help of new technologies. Advancement of cores and frequency rate of clocks speed are clearly visible. Along with the CPU performance, the graphic (GPU) performance also increased and the efficiency of the processors increases day by day. Due to smaller architecture, the battery life also increased without harming the performance.

Super Computer’s Processors:

Supercomputers basically utilize customized compute units (called blades) which generally house many nodes (CPUs, GPUs). In the case of the Cray XK6, the most dominant sharp edge on the planet, every blade contains four nodes, and every node houses a 16-core AMD Opteron CPU and Nvidia Tesla GPU, along with 16 or 32GB of RAM. These nodes are associated together with a restrictive interconnect (typically optical). Numerous blades are then stacked together in racks (once more, optically organized), taking into account a huge number of nodes to be packed into an expansive room.

For example, Titan consist of 18,688 nodes (4 nodes per blade, 24 blades per cabinet), every node having a 16-core AMD Opteron 6274 CPU along with 32 GB of DDR3 ECC memory and an Nvidia Tesla K20X GPU, having 6 GB GDDR5 ECC memory. It contains 299,008 processor cores, along with aggregate of 693.6 TiB of CPU and GPU RAM.

In this case a vast advancement is takes place i.e. using of some extremely powerful CPU cores and GPU along with the uses of customized compute units and large number of RAM, ROM, cache etc. for ultra-performance.

Quantum Computer’s Processor:

Now let’s talk about the advancement that will be happening in near future and the most awaited processor is quantum processor for quantum computers.

A quantum computer is developed some of the mystical phenomena of quantum mechanics to deliver gigantic jump forward in processing power. Quantum machines promise to outstrip every processor even the most capable of today and tomorrows supercomputers.

It will not wipe out old computers, But. Using an old machine will still be the easier and most cost-friendly solution for tackling most problems. But quantum computers promise to power in various fields, from materials science to pharmaceuticals research. Many companies are already experimenting with Quantum computers to develop things like lighter and more powerful batteries for an electric car.

The main secret of a quantum computer’s power in its ability to generate and manipulate quantum bits, or qubits.

What is a qubit?

Modern computers use bits a stream of electrical or optical pulses representing 1s or 0s. Everything from your tweets and e-mails to your iTunes songs and YouTube videos is long strings of binary digits.

Quantum computers, use qubits, which are typically subatomic particles like electrons or photons. Generating and managing qubits is a scientific and engineering challenge. Some companies such as IBM, Google, and Rigetti Computing, use superconducting circuits cooled to temperatures colder than space. Like IonQ trap individual atoms in electromagnetic fields on a silicon chip in ultra-high-vacuum chambers. In both cases, the goal is to isolate the qubits in a control quantum state.

Qubits have some quantum properties that mean a connected group of qubits can provide way more processing power than the binary bits. One of those properties is known as superposition and another is called entanglement.

What is superposition?

Qubits can represent a number of ways of possible combinations of 1 and 0 at the same time. This ability to continuously be in multiple states is called superposition. To put qubits into superposition, researchers manipulate those using microwave beams.

The counterintuitive phenomenon, a quantum computer with many qubits in superposition can crunch through a large number of potential outcomes continuously. The final result of a calculation emerges only when the qubits are measured, which immediately can cause their quantum state to “collapse” to either 1 or 0.

What is entanglement?

In quantum, computer researcher can generate pairs of qubits that are “entangled,” which means the two members of a pair exist in a single quantum state. Changing the state of one qubit will instantly change the state of the other one in a predictable way. This happens even if qubits are separated by very long distances.

No one really knows quite how and why entanglement works. It even baffled Einstein, who famously described as spooky action at a distance. But it is key to the power of quantum computers. In a normal computer, doubling the number of bits causes doubles its processing power. But thanks to entanglement, adding extra qubits to a quantum machine produces a higher increase in its number-crunching ability.

Quantum computers harness entangled qubits in a kind of quantum chain to work their magic. The machine’s capacity to accelerate counts utilizing uncommonly planned quantum algorithms is the motivation behind why there is such a great amount of buzz about their potential.

The quantum machines are much more error-prone than normal computers because of coherence.

What is decoherence?

The interaction of qubits with their own environment in ways that cause their quantum behavior to decay and ultimately disappear is called decoherence. The quantum state is extremely fragile. The slightest vibration or change in temperature or any kind of disturbances known as noise in quantum can cause them to tumble out of superposition before their job has been done. This is why researchers Working their best to protect qubits from the outside world and keeping them in supercooled fridges and vacuum chambers.

But despite the efforts, noise still causes lots of errors in calculations. Smart quantum algorithms can compensate for some of these and adding more qubits is also helpful. However, it likely takes thousands of standard qubits to create a single qubit, highly reliable one, will know as a logical qubit. This will help a lot of quantum computer’s computational capacity.

And there is the rub: till now researchers haven’t been able to generate more than 128 standard qubits. So we are still many far away from getting quantum computers that we can use in day-to-day life.

That hasn’t dented pioneers hopes of being the first to demonstrate quantum supremacy.

What is quantum supremacy?

In this point at which a quantum computer is completely a mathematical calculation that is demonstrably beyond the reach of even the most powerful computers.

It is still unclear exactly how many qubits are needed to achieve this because the researchers keep finding new algorithms to boost the performance of old classical machines, and computing hardware keeps getting better day by day. But researchers and companies are working hard and running tests against some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.

There is plenty of debate in the world about how significant achieving this milestone will be. Rather than wait for supremacy to be declared companies are already started to experiment with quantum computers made by companies like IBM, Righetti, and D-Wave, a Canadian firm. Chinese e-commerce like Alibaba is also offering access to quantum computing machines. Some businesses are buying quantum computers, while many others are using services available through cloud computing services.

One of the most useful applications of quantum computers is for simulating the behavior of matters down to the molecular level.

Automobile manufacturers like Volkswagen and Daimler are using quantum computers to simulate the chemical compositions of the electrical-vehicle batteries to find new ways to improve performance.

And pharmaceutical companies are leveraging them to analyze and compare compounds that could lead to the creation of new drugs.

The quantum machines are also helpful for optimization problems because they can smash through huge quantities of potential solutions amazingly quick.

Fig: IBM Q – Quantum Computing

PC’s processors are continually showing signs of improvement, quicker and all the more dominant. This is on account of tech organizations always attempting to draw out the next best thing. What’s to come is unquestionably greater and more brilliant, with energizing and ground-breaking PC processors not too far off.

Effectiveness of Morrison’s Use of ‘Own Brands’: Case Study of Mystery Shopper

In this assignment, I am going to investigate the effectiveness of Morrison’s use of ‘own brands’. Background information Morrison’s is a public limited company (PLC) which was founded in 1899, 120 years ago, by a man named William Morrison. Mr Morrison started selling eggs, butter along with other dairy products at a small, local market until eventually, 53 years later; William’s son took over and opened their first store. Morrison’s are continually growing and are currently the fourth largest British supermarket with approximately 550 stores across the UK. The store currently sells a wide range of items varying from houseware items to clothing, as well as daily appliances. Morrison’s target market is every day working people. They employ 132,000 members of staff (as of 2017) who contributed to Morrison’s revenue of £16,317 million.

Research methods and sources I used Morrison’s website (see appendix 1) to gather information about the range of items Morrison’s ‘savers range’ offer to its customers. This is a secondary source of desk research. This information is up-to-date because the website is controlled by the company themselves, and updated when new products are added. On the other hand, this information may contain bias because it was produced by Morrison’s themselves and they would only want to show the positives of their products. This information was easy to find because I had access to the internet, therefore, I could visit the website had all the information laid out so it was easy to access the information I required. I used a survey (see appendix 2) to gather what individual customers think of Morrison’s ‘savers range.’ This is a primary source of field research. This information is useful as the questions are related to my specific purpose so will be relevant to my research. However, this information is only targeting a small group of people (albeit a wide range of ages and backgrounds); therefore, it is not a true representation of what all Morrison’s customers think.

This information was more time consuming to collect, as I had to wait for people to respond to my survey, which took a few days. Lastly, I used a website that showed a mystery shopper’s (see appendix 3 – “tiredmummyoftwo”) results to gather information about the quality of Morrison’s ‘savers range.’ This is a secondary source of desk research. This information is going to be accurate and truthful, as the mystery shopper would not benefit from lying. On the other hand, this information is only one person’s experience and for all we know, they might dislike Morrison’s or they may really like them, therefore, it will be opinionated. Findings, analysis and interpretation An ‘own brand’ is a retailers replica of a popular, well-known brand but sold at a much lower price. The price range is significantly different in most cases. An ‘own brand’ item does not need to be advertised as it takes advantage of the branded versions marketing. Morrison’s website (see appendix 1) showed that Morrison’s offers a wide range of ‘savers’ products meaning they effective at attracting many customers especially people who have a low disposable income. They offer 95 products in total. This means they are effective as they almost certainly meet everyone’s desires meaning they will not lose customers to competitors as they have a vast range of products on offer. Morrison’s website (see appendix 1) also showed that only 15 per cent of all items available is rated three stars or below. This further proves their effectiveness as 85 per cent of products are four stars or above meaning people are satisfied with the quality of the product they have purchased. Due to customers being satisfied with the quality of the product, they have purchased they are more likely to return and shop again which would increase the sales revenue.

My survey (see appendix 2) showed that everyone’s opinion on Morrison’s ‘savers range’ was different. My survey asked; “Compared to Morrison’s competitor’s, is Morrison’s ‘own brand’ better than others?” The results are shown to the right. Out of all the people surveyed, 50 per cent think the quality is the same as other competitors such as Aldi, Asda, Lidl and Tesco. This means that Morrison’s current quality of their ‘saver’s range’ is not to a good standard; therefore, they may lose customers. Next, on my survey (see appendix 2) I asked, “How likely is it that you would recommend Morrison’s ‘savers’ to a friend or colleague?” The results are shown to the left. These results conclude that 45 per cent of people would be (50 per cent or more) likely to recommend to a friend or colleague. This could be because the other 55 per cent of people do not shop at Morrison’s, or it might be due to people not liking the items they purchased. On my survey (see appendix 2) I asked: “Overall, how satisfied are you with Morrison’s ‘own brand’?” These results are shown below. On average people were 78 per cent satisfied with Morrison’s ‘savers range’ as a whole. This shows they are effective as the majority of people are satisfied with the range. However, Morrison’s should be trying to make this number higher, so it sits in the 90s or at 100 so they are gaining the satisfaction of the reaming 22 per cent. The mystery shopper, tired mummy of two, (see appendix 3) concluded that some savers items are extremely good and they would repeat the purchase again. However, some are not so good and they would rather buy the dearer branded alternative.

This means they are only partially effective due to only some items being better than the dearer, branded versions and some being worse. This could be because of a poor batch that was produced in this shopper’s store, or it might be due to the product just lacking in general. The mystery shopper (see appendix 3) reviewed 24 products; 75 per cent (18 items) she will re-purchase regularly. This means three-quarters of products, in her opinion, are better than the dearer alternative, suggesting Morrison’s are effective in their use of ‘savers.’ Conclusions and Recommendations I conclude that people are happy with the quality of products offered by Morrison’s ‘savers range’ because only 15 per cent of items rated were one, two or three stars. The other 85 per cent were rated four or five stars, which suggest the ‘savers range’ has high quality. Originally, on Morrison’s website, I thought that the 95 products was a good range however, I have now realised that they could increase this amount to attract a broader range of customers. I suggest Morrison’s increase this figure, as this would increase the sales revenue of Morrison’s. From my survey, I found that half the people thought Morrison’s quality was the same as competing supermarkets, therefore I recommend that Morrison’s increase their quality so they have a greater competitive edge. This may lead to more people buying the ‘savers range’ and enjoying the item they purchased. If this was the case then the customers who enjoyed the ‘savers range’ item to, most likely, tell friends and family, which would increase the reputation and attract new customers. From my survey, I found customers are 78 per cent satisfied with Morrison’s ‘savers range’ therefore I recommend that Morrison’s try to increase this number to the 90s or 100. From the mystery shopper, I found that some products that Morrison’s ‘savers range’ offer are poor in quality; therefore, I recommend that they increase the quality of products, which have been rated one, two or three stars. This means that customers would start viewing the ‘savers range’ as a higher quality meaning they could charge an equal price to competitors ‘own brand’ whilst having a more premium quality. … [Message clipped] View entire message

The Hayes Wheelwright Four Stage Model: Case Study of Red Bull

Since then Red Bull has continued to grow and now holds the largest market share of any energy drink selling 6.970 billion cans in 2018 and over 75 billion since the product launched in 1987. Dietrich Mateschitz was inspired by a functional drink called ‘Krating Daeng’ first sold In Thailand by Chaleo Yoovidhya in the early 1980s. Mateschitz partnered with Chaleo Yoovidhya in the late 1980s to create a new business venture by creating a similar product to ‘Krating Daeng’ with a few modified ingredients to suit the taste pallet of the western world. Since launching Red Bull in Austria in 1987 and the delay in getting the product to international markets in Hungary and Slovenia by 1992, it has continued to grow worldwide. Dietrich Mateschitz is now the 31st richest man in the world with a net worth of $23.7 billion all thanks to his 49% share in Red Bull GmbH.

Brief understanding of Hayes Wheelwright 4 stage model

The Hayes Wheelwright 4 stage model is a basic framework which demonstrates the operations function towards organisational competitiveness. The model consists of 4 different stages (1) internally Neutral (2) Externally neutral (3) Internally Supportive and (4) Externally supportive.

In stage 1 the objective is to minimise the negative impacts and eliminate any mistakes in running of the operation while trying to build a positive reputation and stable client base. Stage 2 is where most companies perform, they adopt the best practice to be on par with competitors but have no strategy to create any competitive advantage. Stage 3 is where a competitive strategy become linked to operations. This is where operators offer better product and incentives in order to increase market share. This stage is where all competitors aim to achieve with the hopes of reaching stage 4 at some point. At Stage 4 operations have built up a highly desirable level of competitive advantage that operations are then able to build a new organisational strategy around it.

Marketing

The marketing strategy adapted by Red bull is unlike any other, rather than following the traditional approach of mass marketing Red Bull created what is called a ‘brand myth’ with their slogan “Red Bull gives you wings”. Red Bull’s aim in marketing was not to sell the product but to sell an experience. They were able to capture their market with the products association with speed and fearlessness.

Red Bull capitalised on the lack of interest in extreme sports to use the 500+ sports as a platform to sell the niche market a product as well as an experience. The idea behind using these events to sell products is that the consumer will see these athletes thrive and will be encouraged to push themselves further. Red bull hold hundreds of extreme sport events around the world such as the Red Bull cliff dive and the Red bull Air Race.

In 2004 Red Bull went that one step further buying the Jaguar Formula 1 racing team and rebranding it as their own. This adds to Red Bull’s image of adventure and adrenaline. Since then they have purchased other successful formula 1 racing teams and gone on to win many titles. They saw purchasing these racing teams as a clever way of branding and merchandising instead of paying other companies to advertise their brand and logos they may as well buy into the sport and invest money in their own success instead of being a part of someone else’s.

Red Bull only uses word of mouth, viral online marketing and buzz marketing for advertising as they believe that print advertising doesn’t match the brand identity and the experience they’re trying to sell. Red Bull uses many platforms of social media to get their message and products across. They even run their own online TV channel called Red Bull TV which will stream most of their event worldwide so they’re easily accessible for anyone interested. A huge breakthrough for Red Bull on social media was the Red Bull Stratos project. The Stratos Project sent a Red Bull Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner from near space, 39km into the stratosphere to jump back to land. This gained huge publicity for the brand, breaking world records while linking perfectly to the Red Bull slogan ‘gives you wings’. The live stream of the jump was watched by 8 million people and the video of the highlights has since been viewed 37 million times on YouTube.

Red bull was introduced to the market as a high price energy drink and still continues to cost more to purchase than competitors like Monster and Lucozade. Originally Dietrich increased the price of the energy drink because the co-founder Chaleo already had produced a cheaper alternative ‘Krating daeng’ in Thailand. By having two very similar products at either end of the cost spectrum they were able to capture a bigger market. Consumers are willing to pay more for the premium brands quality and benefits.

In relation to Hayes Wheelwrights 4 stage model Red Bull have held a competitive advantage since launching in 1987 as Red Bull was the first energy drink introduced into the Western market while also having invested in the cheaper alternative. Likewise, other competitive advantages consist of the unique taste and clever marketing strategies. Even though it is believed they have held competitive advantage since the very beginning minor setbacks show that Red Bull have operated at the earlier stages of the Hayes Wheelwright 4-stage model too.

Red bull had a number of setbacks including law suits over their slogan falsely claiming that the product “gives you wings”. The claim stated that the drink hadn’t enhanced consumers’ physical or intellectual ability. Although this claim seems outrageous Red bull had to settle the suit for $13 million as it was deemed as false advertisement. This event would fall into stage 1 of the Wheelwright model drawing negative publicity and dampening their reputation. Red Bull aimed to minimize backlash from lawsuit by offering to pay $10 to anyone who has consumed the energy drink from 2002. They also received lawsuits questioning the quality of the product claiming that the ingredients in Red Bull led to the death of a healthy 25-year-old man who regularly consumed the energy drink and many similar claims to do with health issues. These claims were swiftly put to rest by a statement from Red Bull stating that their product is sold in 171 different countries because health authorities have concluded that it is safe to consume followed by many reports to support this statement.

Design of product and process of manufacturing

There are 5 features which a company addresses in order to create a successful product; quality, cost, speed, dependability and flexibility. Reb Bull GmbH has covered all 5 features which enhanced the performance of the operation. Red Bull is a private company so it is near impossible to get exact figure but it is estimated that the production cost per can is very low. The manufacturing cost of carbonated drinks is usually extremely low leading to huge profit margins. This is why many fizzy drinks have the ability to invest the majority of returns towards further research and development, and advertising. Even though the cost of production of Red Bull may be low this does not mean they have sacrificed the quality of their product. Today Red Bull cans weigh significantly less than years ago and are smaller in size, which saves precious raw material and money spent on transport. These changes help reduce the cost of production. Any reduction in cost of production just increases profit margins and ability to partake in mass production. This progression helps the organisation move towards the 4th stage of the Wheelwright model as they are able to retain loyal customers while creating incentives for new ones.

As previous mentioned Red Bull is sold worldwide due to the health authorities approving its standards. Red Bull is known as a premium energy drink for its taste, quality yet it comes at a relatively high price. Red Bull still remains one of the most expensive energy drinks on the market even though it comes in a smaller 250ml can. The idea of luxury is known to come at a higher price. The marketers’ at Red Bull GmbH aim to sell an experience with their products. By keeping prices high and stable they’re creating a loyal customer reputation where it is worth spending extra in order to receive maximum satisfaction and benefits. This falls into stage 2 of the Wheelwright Model where brands aim to be on par with competitors. Similar products like Lucozade and monster fall within the same price bracket as Red Bull yet they offer larger portions at that price. Lucozade offer larger cans of 330ml as well as larger bottles, whereas Monster just offer a large 500ml can. Speed and dependability is another huge factor Red Bull have improved on since launching. Red Bulls main aim in this sector was to minimise the time wasted between beginning of production and reaching the customer. They have adapted a ‘wall to wall’ concept. This means that the cans are manufactured and filled in the same site helping them save time and money on transport. It is estimated that since adapting the ‘wall to wall’ concept they have saved 11,845 tons of CO2 emissions from entering our environment which is roughly the equivalent to 16.2 million kilometres travelled per year by trucks. In addition to this the energy used to run these manufacturing plants 80% of energy comes from renewable sources. Red bull predominantly uses trains and boats as their mode of transport to get product to market as the cans are small and light it is easy to move large quantities quickly. By changing the size and material of the cans this created a competitive advantage as other competitors are unable to transport the same amount of their products for the same price. This highlighted advantage of the transportation of high quantity of products shows that this particular operation falls into stage 3 of the Wheelwright model. Stage 3 is where competitive advantage comes into play and the level most business aim to perform.

Flexibility is important as it allows a business to grow and adapt to changes in market demands and consumer expectations. Due to a huge increase in variety of products in market Red Bull needed to expand their brand identity from just one particular drink in one flavour. Red bull started added artificial flavours and ventured into different product types such as sugar free coconut flavour, red bull cola, Red Bull energy shot and what they call the ‘edition line’. The edition line consist of many different flavours linking artificial flavours to colours e.g. the yellow edition is pineapple flavoured, the orange edition is tangerine flavoured and so on. This showed Red Bulls initiate to please a forever growing market. Red bull introduced these flavours to remain on par with competitors (this was done to remain in stage 2 of wheelwright model).

The Red Bull can design although it is a very simple design it is eye catching due to its striking colour combination and clean cut lines. Dietrich mateschitz was cautious when launching Red Bull in Austria to hold on to the branding of Krating Daeng as any change could cause decrease in sales in a very small, sensitive market at the time. Krating Daeng used the charging bulls’ image which suited the red bull brand identity of fearlessness, strength and endurance.

Red Bull tried to stay as true to their brand identity when introducing the new range of Red Bull flavours. They held onto the strong bull image and the aluminium silver can then adding different vibrant colour depending on flavour. The thinking behind the branding of the new flavours was in order to retain competitive advantage and remain in stage 3 of the Wheelwright Model was to keep as close to the original design as possible.

Overall performance and business strategy

As Red Bull is a private company they do not have to share any financial reports. This stops competitors from seeing their strengths and weakness’ in their business strategy. Even though we cannot avail of these records we can full heartedly say that Red Bull GmbH is a very successful operation with huge profit margins due to their marketing strategy, design and manufacturing processes and taking full advantage of the progression in technology.

Red Bull very clever business strategy of creating a product that has been marketed to promote a fun, exciting life style is the main reason behind their success. Mateschitz and Chaleo have developed the idea that energy drinks aren’t just for the original market of overnight truck drivers in Asia but for people looking for an exciting lifestyle. They didn’t stop by just getting their product into bars and nightclubs they continued promoting their product until they were in bigger chain corner shops around the world. Since launching into international markets in 1997 Red Bull have gained between 70 and 90% of energy drink market share in over 100 different countries. Even though their product has tried to copied by competitors like Coca Cola they have not been able to take their high market share percentage away from them.

In 2018 Red Bull sold 6.790 billion cans, this is an increase of 7.7% from a very successful 2017 with sales increasing by over 10% in Brazil, India, Western and Eastern Europe and Germany. This increase in sales in combination with the decrease in cost of mass production shows that Red Bull are still striving for the next best thing.

Conclusion

The Hayes Wheelwright Four Stage model is a great, insightful process which allows us breakdown the production process and sets standards for operations to strive for. Red Bull has operated at each stage of the Hayes Wheelwright model from setbacks like lawsuits to moments of greatness with the Red Bull Stratos project. Red Bull took a risk in approaching the marketing and business strategy in such a unique way but the risk has definitely paid off. The idea of selling an experience instead of just a product was truly brilliant and growth in sales and market share is proof of this.

What Makes a Good Leader: Case Study of Robert Kuok Hock Nien

Case Study: Robert Kuok Hock Nien as a Role Model of a Good Leader

Introduction

Robert Kuok Hock Nien is a Malaysian business magnate and an active investor. Born on 6 October 1953 in Johor Bahru. His father is a Chinese from Fujin. He is the youngest of three brothers. Robert Kuok is a graduate student from Raffles Institution and English College Johor Bahru. According to Robert Kuok, he began herself into work as an office boy and then starts a business with a relative’s support. Upon graduation, Robert Kuok became a collaborator and work as a clerk in a company of rice-trading department of a Japanese industrial conglomerate. Then, he was promoted to lead a rice-trading department.

As we know that Robert Kuok’s family have their own business, so he learned the sthe kills of business world from occupying force to the family business in Johor Bahru. Robert Kuok is a wonderful businessman with diversified interests. He was also recognized as the ‘Sugar King of Asia’ for having 80% of sugar production in Malaysia. Robert Kuok has his own amazing’s story of rising up from poverty and becoming Southeast Asia’s richest person. It also makes inspiration a lot of people to become successful. In achievements, Robert Kuok controlled 80% of the Malaysian sugar market with production of 1.5 million tonnes, equivalent to 10% of world production.

Robert’s philosophy in business also can be summed up into four-word: work hard, work smart. From every young age, Robert has not only learned the value of hard work and diligence, but he also discovered that takes brains to become successful in business life including general life. Robert’s Kuok personality definitely is a humble person. He was among the very first foreign entrepreneurs who did business with Communist China. He prefers to live a simple live and rarely indulges himself in a pleasant life, nor does he love to be in the company of the press. In fact, Robert Kuok is known to be as media-shy.

We choose Robert Kuok as a role model for leadership because he has fulfilled with all aspects of being a successful leader. Robert’s Kuok has an effectiveness of being a leader by using the leadership concept, the concept is seven characteristics of effective leaders, eight competencies of effective leaders, and The Blake and Mouton Managerial Grid. This concept is characteristic of an effective leader’s topic. By using this concept, we can see that Robert Kuok has complied with these characteristics in order to be a good leader. As we can see, now he is a very successful person. In spite of having wealth, Robert Kuok remains to be humble about his accomplishments. He was a very ambitious man. . He tend to be realistic when dealing with work. The key to his success is his bravery in all areas of business plus his honest and loyal workforce. So, we can conclude that Robert Kuok has an effective leader to be inspired by us to be a great leader in the future.

Competencies of Effective Leader

Personality

Personality is one of the competencies of effective leadership. What is the meaning of personality? Personality is something we could say a characteristic way of behaving, feeling, and how thinking about the environment. A good personality is very important for every leader because it can embrace moods, attitudes, and opinions and it can be clearly expressed when interacting with people. Besides, the leader of a company must have a good personality because they act as an idol to the employees.

Robert Kuok has a very good personality. Even though he is very rich and being called “the Rich man in Asia” but he is still humble to everybody. He also responsible for everything he do, in 1963 kuok almost bankrupt, because of his responsibility he was able to make it up again and he able to sell his sugar in a good price. Secondly, Robert Kuok is very kind hearted leader who always give bonus for his employees. He know how to appreciate his employees and make them feeling worth to be work with him.

Thirdly, Robert Kuok is good in looking for opportunities who would pick on other’s brain to learn new knowledge and expand it. He also share the knowledge to others, so that everyone can be a good leader and business man too. In a nut shell, Robert Kuok once sponsored for the Asian games but he refused to make it viral. He is not looking for attention from others. He willing to make it in secret.

Self-concept

Next, self-concept is one of the competency of effective leadership. Self-concept? Did you know self-concept is important for being a good leader? First, self-concept is refer to how someone react, thinks about, evaluate or perceive themselves. To make it detail, self-concept is when individual’s belief about themselves. Self-concept is important for a leader to make themselves confidence in their abilities, self-acceptance, not worrying what others think. Besides, this self-concept will be the measurement for a leader to know themselves.

Robert Kuok works faster than his competitor. He believe his competitors faster than he, with that mind set Robert Kuok tried to think further than his competitor to make sure he not left behind. For instant, in 1973 China face a shortage of sugar and money, Chinese high minister secretly asked a favour from Robert Kuok to overcome the problem.

Furthermore, Robert also remind himself and other businessman that everything in business have their own risk, he also said that it is okay if we lost the opportunities if there a better one in future. If you are not strong enough to overcome it the poor will always with you. Robert Kuok keep remind to be brave and believe in ourselves to be a good businessman and a leader to a company.

Knowledge in business

Furthermore, knowledge in business. This is the vital asset for a leader in a company. We can defined that business in knowledge is sum of experiences, skills, capability and expert insight of a leader. Knowledge is very important because its shapes and effects all the activities in our business. As we know Knowledge is very important for us to make sure we never leave at the back. Besides, to be a good leader we need knowledge to run a business, if not we just run the business without getting any profits, benefits and just wait for the bankruptcy.

Rober Kkuok is very knowledgeable in business, he know how to run a business properly. No wonder he being the high respected businessman in Asia. Robert Kuok belief that success is 90% knowledge and hard work. For an instant, he always get a book to study about business such as demand, supply, production, consumption, export and import. He always good in searching for knowledge to make sure his business always follow the trend and never get cheat with competitor.

Next, Robert Kuok is very intelligent and fluent in English this is one of the advantage for knowing the international language. He could speak English fluently and it able him to go further in business. With the good communication in English Robert kuok believe that he will never left behind from his competitors.

Case Study: The Blake Mouton Managerial Grid

Robert Kuok is well known for his great leadership by his employee and also citizens. Well, the company that he builds for many years will not succeed until now if there is no strong, great and effective leadership that he practiced within his company’s management. As you all know, he already achieved a title as a ‘Sugar King of Asia’ because almost 80% of sugar production in southeast Asia is the products from his company.

In conjunctions with the matter above, we will associate it with one of the most popular managerial grid which is The Blake Mouton Managerial Grid by Robert R. Blake and Jane Mouton. This managerial grid is based on two behavioral dimensions which are about the concerns in people and the concerns in results. For the concerns in people, this is literally about how the leader deal with the needs, interest ,and areas of personal development of their team members so the task that was given can be accomplished greatly. However, the concerns in results is more about how the leader emphasizes concrete objectives, organizational efficiency ,and high productivity when deciding the best method to complete any task given.

There are five leadership styles that will describe and only one of them will be chosen as the one that close to the leadership style that sis hown by Robert Kuok within his company. Firstly, Impoverished Management (low results, low people). The leader will exert a minimum effort to get the job done. It only has a little bit of interest in motivating team environment and the result of it will cause dissatisfaction, disharmony ,and inevitably organization. Secondly, Authority Management (high results, low people). This type of management takes their employees’ needs as a second while productivity is a priority. Usually, there will be strict rules, policies, and procedures and usually take punishment as a view to correct their employees’ wrongs. Thirdly. Organization Man Management (medium results, medium people). A so-called ‘status quo’ manager is usually the one that tried their best to balance the results and also people. However, it doesn’t sound as effective as it might be. This is because through continual compromise, the company’s performance will drop so do the needs of the team members cannot be fulfilled. It will cause only mediocre performance. Fourthly, Country Club Management (high people, low results). This leadership style prioritizes their employee’s comfortableness. As long as the employee is happy and secure, they will work hard. However, this work environment tends to make the employee become too relaxed that causes bad effects to the company’s performance. Lastly, Team Management (high results, high people). This management requires their employee to take part in determining the production process. The team manager is also committed to the organization’s goals. This situation will create a trusting and respectful work environment that will be resulting in a good outcome.

Among those leadership styles, the one that suits Robert Kuok the most is Team Management. This is because he was known to be a democratic leader by his employees which mean he want his employee to have the sound to give opinions even though he is the one that will make the last decision. He once said that the biggest responsibility as a leader is to take care of employees. The reason for this is that his philosophy is that said 90% to build a successful business empire is from the hard work and 10% is intellectual. The effort he put in making a contribution to his company makes him become an exemplary leader and motivator toward his employees. The employees also got appropriate percentages for their contribution to the team.

In his company, he uses a narrow span of control. This is good for a business from a big company. This type of organizational control has shown that he requires his employee to deliver the best results because they are being led by a team manager to control a small number of subordinates. It will also be able to motivate the employees to work hard as the opportunities to get promotion and career progression will be secure for those who have the potential to strive more for the company. Both of these show that he prioritized organization goals and also employees’ needs. In addition, this kind of leader that has passionate about his work and does his best for his people is a good example of a leader that should be idolized by communities.

Next, transformational leadership that it focuses on clear communication, goal setting, and employee motivation. Transformational leadership offers something more than self-gain to the follower to work for. The leader also will provide an inspiring mission and vision to the followers to move to another level and transformational leadership is driven by a commitment to organizational objectives. It is because this type of leader spends much time on the big picture, this style is best for teams that can handle many delegated tasks without constant supervision. This shows that every leader must have this kind of style where problems that arise can be solved easily. This can be proven when Robert Kuok solve his business problem where there was a risk in his business where excessive order for 200k tons of sugar. He managed by giving a clear vision to his team for them to work out and solve the problem.

Conclusion

We can conclude that Robert Kuok is a good role model for us. Despite of having a lot of property, he is still a humble person and this attitude is favored by the people around him. By having the characteristics of a good leader and competencies of an effective leader, ‘Sugar King of Asian’ has been a good leader with the success that he has achieved. Despite the many obstacles and was also almost bankrupt in 1963, but he still did not give up on achieving his goals.

He solves those problems with the all knowledge in business that he has. Besides, he reminds us that we should always be up to date with the latest information so that we did not miss out in order to stay on top. He also said that we must be brave to take a risk in business because every business has its own risk. It depends on us to take or leave. He believes that it is okay to get failure in many times but we have to be brave to face the risk.

Robert Kuok shows us how important hard work and intelligence are in business work knowing there are so many competitors out there who are smarter than us. So, we must always be hardworking and work faster with a creative mind to expand our business and make it at the top. Besides, we should always keep the relationship between employees because the employees are the most important people in achieving success. We have to give some motivation to our employees. Sometimes, we as a leader also have to hear any opinions from others because we are not always right. A good leader will lead to a better organization and will make it easy to achieve a goal.

Always open-minded is also the lock of success that Robert Kuok practices in his life. We should not afraid to grab the opportunity and try something new. If it leads us to fail, we will get a new experience which is we learn that and we are not repeating that mistake again.