Marketing in a Digital & Cross-Cultural World

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Evolution of communication models started with one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many models. Just when you thought this is as complex as it could be, the customers that these organisations and marketers are only TALKING TO initially, started to TALK BACK even when they are NOT being "talked to". Nowadays organisations have to utilise technologies to crawl all corners of the virtual world for any mention, comments and feedback about your organisation and your products and services. We are now living in a world where your listeners, customers, constituents etc TALK BACK to/at you.

In the discussion of marketing in "Second Life", organisations are using the virtual worlds to perform their study of possible human reactions to simulated situations. The use of Avatars provides some sort of "out of body" experience to some individuals. One study uses a handsome / beautiful avatar to represent a less-than proportionate human to conduct business discussion in the virtual world. These beautifully-avatared-individuals are observed to have done very well in these discussions. The more surprising thing is that the positiveness and confidence developed in virtual world are carried on into their real life. An aspect for further study by psychologists?

Why did Phillips decide to sell the TV business to Chinese? Hypothesis - Selling TV is a sunset biz 'cos people don't want or don't need to watch the same programme at the same time together no more. Entertainment has become very personalised using Tablets, laptops etc. We watch what we want to watch at our own time and convenience.

Consumers are prepared to be "fair" ie. pay $1 to download a song that could be used across a few platforms. But people are not prepared to pay for the whole album. The definition of "fairness" differs across individuals and organisations. People don't want to cheat if they can.

Social media can amplify positives and negatives. But on occassions, malicious videos about your organisations or your product/service could be made and placed on Youtube. But we could also have a real issue between an organisation and a customer which exploded into a major publicity nightmare. David Carroll made a satirical song about United Airlines breaking his guitar while being transported. The video was viewed by 11.9 millions people. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo)

G1, G2 and G3 population profile in Malaysia
It is observed that the Chinese Newspaper subscriptions are holding steady over the years. These newspapers are mainly read by the first generation of immigrants from China, G1. G2, the children of G1, are mostly educated in the British education system with English being the primary medium of instruction. G3, being the children of G2, are encouraged to rediscover their roots and also to achieve multi-lingual capabilties to ensure releavant in an increasingly gloabalised world.