Why a luxury London car dealership couldn't sell a car!

When my friend, a successful engineer, turned up at a London luxury car dealership ready to part with £40,000, she expected to have a few questions answered and then to put a downpayment, after all she had already built the car online.

When asked to give precise explanation surrounding two features, the “sales” person’s response was, “don't get this, you don't need it!” and “this option is a waste of money!”. The truth is, the “sales” person in question was probably unequipped to answer all of her questions and being a woman (as she felt) he probably thought she didn't need to understand every little detail, just the basic options and colours.

Frustrated and enraged, my friend complained to the head office who apologised and sent her to a dealership 20 miles away where a “specialist” would meet her. A “specialist” who is unavailable in all the branches of all the dealerships! When my friend sat two hours with the specialist, she ended up spending £2500 more than she had originally intended, out of which, she got reimbursed around £500 for a further mess up by the “specialist” who sold her an option incompatible with her iPhone.

Could this be the typical scenario of companies in pursuit of a lean machine, whereby cuts to staff are made in bid to increase profits by increasing productivity? Maybe maybe not, however, the wave of european and american companies looking to skim the hierarchy whereby the replacement is not technology, but humans taking on more responsibility, is undoubtedly detrimental to luxury. It is hard to imagine a sudden increase in workload not eroding the luxury service once delivered by the same person.
Such pursuits by suppliers of the masses maybe forgiven, but customisation in luxury is expected and customer deflection is inevitable if it is jeopardised. Once it occurs, customer deflection will raise the cost ratio of employee/output, hence reverting back to a higher cost whilst harming brand image.

In economics, the relationship between productivity and customer satisfaction is generally viewed as negative, this is especially true when the pursuit for customer satisfaction is directly linked with personnel efforts. Some even argue, that for a firm to make both customer satisfaction and productivity a top priority is only setting out to achieve the impossible.

When considering short term gain, it is obvious that cutting costs will increase profits, however when factoring in customer deflection in the long term, surely, customer loyalty in the service industry is a more accurate measure of future profits than costs are?

Travelling first class or with kids?

The American humorist Nathaniel Benchley pokes at the travel industry claiming that there are only two classes of travel - first class and with children; he does this to point out the burdens of travelling with children and how little the industry does in order to mitigate those burdens.

The hassle of travelling with children is often overlooked by the industry as the ‘child experience’ within tourism research is rare. Unlike the entertainment, food and toy industry, tourism has yet to cater effectively for the children in the travelling family unit. Furthermore, tourism is yet to treat the family as a unit where the decisions and outcomes are the result of negotiated and sometimes conflicting objectives. 


Holidays have a large spectrum of possibilities especially for families and the tourism industry is still treating it as a time whereby a “…radical divorce from everyday life…” (Obrador, 2012), takes place. This is probably one of the most critical factors affecting families with young children in leisure tourism, especially those who opt for a luxury stay at a four or five star hotel. Those families are left disappointed as they harbour all the expectations and receive none of the deliverables that cater for their children. Hotels are still providing a sewing and shaving kit to families who want inflatable pool toys and swim nappies.


In a recent research by Khoo-Lattimore, Prayag & Cheah (2015) published in the journal of hospitality marketing & management,  families interviewed want to see hotels provide toilet seats, bottle warmers, sterilisers, diapers, swim diapers, kids sunscreen, toddler snacks and drinks, inflatable toys for the pool even at a hire price. In essence families want to travel lighter and know that they don't have to pack the whole house before leaving on holiday…. the other end has it all. 

Apart from missing the basics, it is bewildering to some as to why any hotel would fail to design a child friendly pool as part of its offering. The minimal research that does exist on the ‘child experience’ constantly points to swimming in a pool or in the sea as occupying the first place in favourite child activity on holiday. 

Corporate hotels may do well for a number of years, but especially in cities that are rapidly expanding they may find themselves outshone by the new player in town, and therefore trying to target the leisure market with a less leisurely product, would it not make sense to build a pool from the onset that can accommodate families?


Food for thought:

According to travel weekly, family travel between 2001-2005 has increased by 20%. The UK holds 4th place as the most travelling nation. Almost 50%  of the British population lives in a household with dependant children and according to TripAdvisor, 9 out of 10 Britons planned a holiday abroad in 2013. 
As the baby boomers retire, spending money on holidays with grandchildren is also increasing, yet multigenerational travel is still overlooked. However, the leisure industry seems to have caught on with tickets to children theme parks now including a discounts 7 person families and senior citizen tickets.

Lastly, fathers have started taking a leading role in children entertainment on holiday, yet they are virtually non existent in leisure tourism research.



British Family travel, is the topic of my MSC Global Marketing Dissertation (University of Liverpool). Please contact me if you wish to receive the whole report once its completed.

Boring CEOs should get off Twitter!

Having spent the last couple of weeks reading & analysing the tweets of those who head large multinational corporations, it is my opinion, that many open the curtains to the windows of their life only to show us how they sit and watch paint dry! 

On their twitter profiles, they describe themselves as having interests and hobbies that include mountain climbing, fishing, photography, sailing, golfing, sky diving as well as being proud parents of an x number of children; In a nutshell,  they describe themselves as fun-loving rounded human beings and then do nothing but tweet randomly about the organisations they run!

Their tweets if favoured or shared are mostly favoured or shared by readily eager to please employees and they almost never answer to 'replies' even if they only have a triple digit following. They do know that ‘engaging’ seems to be the buzz word and yet they are seemingly ‘disengaged’. Essentially it seems that these rounded human beings are only an extension of their corporate brand and have somewhere lost the ability to communicate about other interests. Their brands have a Twitter account that we can follow, this is certainly not why we follow them!
People follow CEOs for the love of curiosity of what it’s like to run a large corporation, what they do for fun and mostly how they really are just humans like us! They have families and picnics, they play sports and go on holiday, they have controversial thoughts and bad days at work, they are just like us. Showing people the human side is precisely what makes CEOs interesting which in return reflects positively on their brand in the subconscious mind of the follower.

Traditionally, these people have been told to embrace privacy which I believe is the reason for them playing ‘safe’ on Twitter, but social media simply is not about pushing your corporate message its about being social. In fact many in the digital marketing industry have started to refer to Twitter as an online cocktail party; being on twitter and not tweeting or tweeting generic information only about your company is the digital equivalent of going to a party and either sitting awkwardly in the corner or basically spending the whole time telling us one story after another about the organisation you run! If that’s the case, its best to have an early night in and leave partying to those who enjoy it!

One leader who seems to have got it right is Richard Branson, he frequently tweets about people he met, lessons he learnt from various failures, his love of adventure and posts many photos of him engaging in ‘human’ activities

Social media is throwing a lot of people off balance, its important to get it right otherwise it ends up giving off exactly the opposite message one is trying to portray. I cannot put this any better than the American writer and futurist Alvin Toffler who has said “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. 

Conclusively, If you run a large corporation the chances are you have spent decades of dedication and hard work into successfully perfecting your game, we know your company, we now want to know you! 

The hotel that got flustered by my tweet!

Last December, my sister posted her location on Facebook indicating that she had just checked-in at a five star hotel in Chicago. So I, being the social media addict, LIKED her location and checked the hotel’s Twitter page. 

The hotel’s last tweet indicated that they had just launched a very special menu of Christmas cocktails, so I decided to use twitter to buy my sister one of those and tweeted the hotel to that effect. 

After two whole days -a century in cyber time, the hotel replied; they apologised about the delay (as they didn't see the tweet) and enquired if my sister was still staying at the hotel.

When I immediately responded positively they informed me that they needed to check with the hotel if my request is possible! with the hotel?!  I thought I was tweeting the hotel! obviously not!

I had been tweeting a subcontracted third party, who can only send messages but is completely lost when needing to engage in a dialogue that requires approvals. The person behind the tweet explained that my request is so unusual and that they were all flustered by it! 

Many tweets later, I went on to send my credit card authorisation form as directed by the person behind the tweet, but in fact my sister never did receive the drink even though she was in the hotel for one whole week! by the end of it all I figured that I deserved the drink much more than she did!

Lon Safko the author of The Social Media Bible said that businesses who fail to include twitter in their marketing efforts, are like those trying to bake a cake with all the ingredients and yet no oven.

Hotels who have a twitter account need to follow experts who discuss food and beverage, subscribe to communities who discuss the industry and form dialogue around their central interest, i.e. hotels, lifestyle, travel and so forth. Yes they will face the ‘unusual’ requests today, but tomorrow this may become the normal request, so it depends how pro-active they wish to be. 

Furthermore, twitter is not the mail service, its instant and doesn't understand working hours, companies need to understand this. No one is interested in a cocktail one week from now in a city where thousands of cocktails are made everyday. Twitter is the here and now communication channel.

Granted, the Japanese girl who tweeted over 36 million tweets (before the company suspended her account) may not be the norm, however with 300 million active monthly users who tweet 500 million tweets per day, twitter has become a powerful tool to share information instantly. A business can take advantage of this fact or can wait 200 million tweets later to respond to a customer, like the hotel in Chicago did.

The instant dimension to this technology has prompted some restaurants in Europe to encourage customers to tweet their food orders;  the advantages to the restaurants are very real and include a decreased labour cost, a reduction in human error surrounding order taking (especially due to accents in touristic hubs) and a faster table turn around time.

Spending time and effort to build a twitter community is essential for businesses and should not be left to a part-time third party individual. An abundance of effort is needed to stay relevant and engage in dialogue, but it has an incredible payoff. When the firm has a big announcement or sale the community responds speedily spreading the message through retweets like wild fire, however the first rule of social media is “give to take”, the community will only reward you if you have been active in dialogue but if you only use twitter to push messages, unless you are a celebrity, you can easily become irrelevant.

Companies need to invest in social media experts if they want to stay relevant in the cyber world.

Internal Marketing? Use Social Media

It makes absolutely no sense to promise customers excellent service if the firm’s employees are not ready to deliver it. Therefore continuous internal marketing needs to take place.

Different organisations have delivered their messages to employees in different ways, many have taken to hanging up posters on back of house walls, some, including South West airlines hang photos of staff parties, asserting that the airline is a fun place to work, others send email memos.

Yes, boards and back of house reminders of the core values the firm prides its self on are a great way to decorate, resulting in an enhanced ambience, however, today when most people walk glued to their smartphones, it is hard to believe that any of the posters ever get read.

If we claim that a photo speaks a thousand words, then at 25 frames per second, video adds up to 1.5 million words per minute, it would therefore be advantageous to be sending employees videos they can access on their smartphones during their commute to/from work, reinforcing the brand expectations and the services they are expected to deliver. The firm can create a series, a soap opera if you will to engage employees in a fun way with the brand. Here lies the key, a fun video on social media, will have comments from colleagues, likes, dislikes and shares.

Yammer, behind the firewall  can be used by employees, it will have no public appearances, management can tweet achievements, employees can tweet experiences and messages across the firm can be transported at a tweet of a second! 

Human resources can use podcasts to decipher complicated health insurance policies, give updates on benefits and retirement plans, announce competitions and winners, all information can be accessed at the employee’s convenience and during times they are fully focused on these messages.

It is a marketing firm that takes advantage of the new technologies that generation Y is obsessed with and hence through their engagement can send messages of expectations and of how the customer needs to be treated throughout their experience at the firm.

There is a lot of noise in the life of a typical employee, getting through the noise and reinforcing the brand values and expectations is becoming more of a pressing issue, therefore social media, short, fun videos, podcasts and internal tweeting have to be utilised, they are slowly becoming the only language that can filter through the noise.

Tiptoeing on the edge of ethical - Market Research

When Gillette conducted a focus group research that surrounded the usage of razor blades by women, they were told frequent blade changes took place, however, when they conducted observational research, they found that the same women rarely remembered to change the blade as they didn't keep a stock in the shower.

Perspective of action is rarely the same as perspective in action, what consumers
tell researchers is what they think they do, not what they actually do, so why do we continue to use surveys and focus groups? in short - they are a safe bet, we know what to expect and direct the line of thought, an ideology hardly conducive for innovation.

Observational research is exciting, it gives researchers a 3D view of the subject in question, it engages the researcher in the life of the subject and much can be recorded & analysed to uncover the subconscious behaviours; however failing to uncover the next big thing, is a risk that management simply has to accept.

The implications of using vidiography in observational research poses numerous ethical issues that researchers need to consider. 
In a recent survey of shopping motivations and habits, the shopping habits of people where observed for three hours in a mall by placing a camera on them, the mall management was aware of the experiment, but neither other customers nor shop clerks, that the subjects came into contact with, had any idea they were being videoed, which although not illegal is arguably an ethical misconduct.
Further complications occur when subjects forget about the camera (a marketeer's dream!) and therefore may engage in private behaviours, in this particular experiment some forgot to switch off the camera in the changing rooms!

Videography is a game changer, observational research is expensive and daring, its for those seeking innovation, however it needs to be handled with care, because until the technology is upgraded to black out other humans and interpret private behaviours switching off automatically, marketeers either undertake perspectives of action (i.e. just listen to what people think they do) or continuously tiptoe on the edge of ethical.

High Value Boundary Spanners - An overlooked Asset

Social Capital

Social capital is the sum of the potential and actual resources that can be leveraged by an individual through his various human connections.

Human resources management of the potential those individuals who are most likely to possess an abundance of social capital naming the high value boundary spanners (HVBS) is imperative for the success of the MNC.

HVBS are those individuals who infiltrate geographic and cultural boundaries regularly throughout their employment; they are located in any unit of the organisation but are in contact with others from different units

This infiltration of different organisational units allows HVBS to gain insight into different organisational behaviour, culture, norms and indeed dissipate knowledge and information and hence arguably can draw attention and curiosity from other employees.

Transferring knowledge throughout a firm’s global network is what gives  it a competitive advantage over local firms, therefore In order for the international human resources manager to be effective in implementing and achieving strategic corporate objectives they simply must master the ability to navigate individuals who essentially can reach formally and informally more employees at a closer distance than the International Human Resources personnel can, in essence HVBS can act as internal ambassadors of the directives of the HR department and if managed incorrectly can sabotage the HR initiatives. 

Managing culturally diverse social capital

Social capital has attributes that can be clustered into three dimensions naming, structural, relational and cognitive (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998 p.243), considering these dimensions when managing culturally diverse social capital is essential and although these attributes maybe recognised individually they are in fact interrelated (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998 p.243).

IHRM needs to consider the mental map of each individual they are placing in positions where information flow is essential.  This mental mapping is highly influenced by the individual’s ethnocentrism, the way they see things due to cultural influences and upbringing (Shenkar & Luo 2007, p.177).

Some may argue that globalisation can mitigate differences between cultures and that IHRM can afford to implement strategies that would suite all individuals however the cultural differences are apparent and hard to ignore, hence tailor made strategies should take place.

The IHRM should essentially be able to portray its message in a variety of ways in order to reach the maximum number of employees, some dimensions can be globalised such as health and safety regulations, anti-corruption disciplinary actions but others must be localised such as the respect of hierarchies in high power distance cultures and hence their directives must be glocalized. Glocal is the new buzz word and holds little evidence of being implemented to progress the organisational objectives. Many organisation personnel get overwhelmed with trying to follow the head office expectations and therefore never actually re-write the manual in the local language per se.  

When considering all three dimensions of social capital IHRM must be aware of the individuals individualism traits versus collectivism, this can influence their capability to interact positively with other units and different people. Individuals who lack the ability to build relationships may draw negative connotations to the information being dispersed if dealing with individuals from a collective culture, conversely those who suppress information whilst dealing with individualistic cultures (until they feel a relationship is built sufficiently) can hinder the progress of the organisation’s strategic goals. It is the IHRM’s role to train and develop those individuals on how to deal with those from other cultures dissimilar to theirs to realise maximum output.

It is important that IHRM does not take an ethnocentric approach on the power distance and its relevance in the organisation in different international subsidiaries. There are norms and protocols found in some cultures that simply must be abided by in order for HVBS to be able to co-ordinate tasks and knowledge. IHRM personnel from a western country or one with low power distance should be able to comprehend the strength of power distance and the barriers it may impose on offending parties and therefore must dissipate this knowledge to its employees from a low power distance country. It must not take a stance on free flow of information regardless of hierarchy attitude; some simply must follow the hierarchy protocols to reap the benefits of an ‘open door’ policy to different people in the organisation.

The relational dimension of social capital appeals to basic human instinct, those who come across as trust worthy are more likely to be able to extract information and dissipate it uncontested. Although IHRM cannot control a person’s demeanour, they can place those who have compelling trustworthiness attitude in positions, key to the flow of knowledge and hence key to the success of the organisation.

Conclusion

Whilst realising the power of leveraging knowledge and sharing information in an MNC, IHRM must recruit individuals that possess the capabilities to infiltrate numerous units of the organisation in a positive manner. Strategic HRM takes a long term view of the organisation’s staffing needs, opportunities and threats (Mead & Andrews, 2009, p327) hence must be proactive in identifying the correct individuals and not only start searching as and when a vacancy arises, keeping tabs on talent employed by competitors should be part of the HRM initiatives.

The recruitment of those with specialised skills and possibility the ability to develop a new language is beneficial to the role of HVBS, furthermore, individuals must be capable to effectively negotiate, mediate, coach and be assimilative, Individuals who possess these personal qualities of imagination, empathy, optimism and modesty are more likely to be successful at acquiring these skills (Tennyson 2003 p.19). Targeted recruitment and retention is key to IHRM when it comes to HVBS.

References: 

Booz R. (2000), 'Boundary spanners' perceptions of the nature of role and role performance: A study of socialization and communication strategies', Dissertation Abstracts International Section A, 60(8-A) pp. iii-194. PsycINFO, EBSCOhost, viewed 11 October 2013.

Mead, R. & Andrews, T. G. (2009) International management. 4th ed. Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons

Nahapiet, J. & Ghoshal, S. (1998), 'SOCIAL CAPITAL, INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL, AND THE ORGANIZATIONAL ADVANTAGE', Academy Of Management Review, 23(2) pp. 242-266. Business Source Alumni Edition, EBSCOhost, viewed 10 October 2013.

Shenkar, O. & Luo, Y. (2007) International business. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Taylor, S. (2007) 'Creating social capital in MNCs: the international human resource management challenge', Human Resource Management Journal, 17 (4), pp.336–354, Wiley InterScience [Online]. DOI:10.1111/j.1748-8583.2007.00049.x
http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.liv.ac.uk/10.1111/j.1748-8583.2007.00049 (Accessed: 10th Oct 2013).

Tennyson R.  (2003)‘The partnering toolbook’ [online] http://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CC4QFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.energizeinc.com%2Fart%2Fsubj%2Fdocuments%2FThePartneringToolbookMarch2004.pdf&ei=vvxXUpK9MMu-rgfj-ID4Cg&usg=AFQjCNFgrJoQM7tWMWqV_3SVY80KQlaMmQ&bvm=bv.53899372,d.bmk (Accessed 10th October 2013)