Marketing as a social concept has a crucial role to play in creating socio-economically inclusive Smart Cities: Here is how

Projections show that urbanization, the gradual shift in residence of the human population from rural to urban areas, combined with the overall growth of the world’s population could add another 2.5 billion people to urban areas by 2050 (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2018). How all those citizens of cities live, and what their lives are like, will depend on important choices policy makers working with other stakeholders make today and in the coming years. 

Smart cities and the technology that underpins them has the capacity to improve citizens’ lives, with big data from multiple sensors a crucial component. For example, the city of Nanjing, China, has installed sensors into 10,000 taxis, 7,000 buses and 1 million private cars. The resulting big data transfers daily to the Nanjing Information Centre, where experts centralize and analyse traffic data and send updates to commuters on their smart phones to help improve their journeys. IBM is working with the city Rio de Janerio in Brazil to create a citywide-instrumented hub that integrates big data streams from thirty agencies, including traffic and public transport, municipal and utility services, emergency services and information sent by city employees and the public through their Smartphones. This single data analytics centre allows city officials to access real-time information, allowing them to make sense of and manage living in the city in the here-and-now, envisioning, and enabling future developments. Hypothetically, the mobilisation of big data citizen insight should provide the basis for transitioning Rio communities, with their extreme inequality and poverty, to a socio-economically inclusive and equitable places to live for all citizens. This is largely dependent on views on two distinct but related understandings as to what makes a city smart.

First, the notion of smart city represents a response to incoherent infrastructure design and urban planning of the past, with smart cities promising real-time monitoring, analysis and improvement of city decision-making. Ubiquitous computing and digitally instrumented devices are built into the fabric of urban environments, monitoring, managing and regulating city flows and processes in real time and producing big data and about citizens and their use of city utilities. Smart cities make use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices to fetch data and efficiently process it for implementation in specific locations. By inserting sensors across city infrastructures and creating big data sources — including citizens via their mobile devices — city policy makers are using big data analysis to monitor and anticipate urban phenomena in new ways. Smart city sensors and connected devices collect big data from various smart city gateways installed in a city and then analyse it for better decision-making in transport and communication infrastructure, security, educational and health developments. The results proponents say improve efficiency, sustainability of resources and citizen engagement. Criticism points to propagation of technocratic forms of governance, with projects like Songdo Ubiquitous City, South Korea, and Masdar City in the United Arab Emirates led by policy makers and corporates using big data in a way that can infringe citizens’ privacy. This smart city definition holds interest as it is a dominant paradigm, cutting against the smart city concept espousing the increased liveability of cities inclusive of all citizens.

Second, the notion of smart city can be viewed as one whose socio-economic development and governance is driven by innovation, supported by digital devices and big data and enacted by smart people. While smart cities instrumented with digital devices to produce big data and real-time analysis offers considerable potential, this technology in and of itself embedded in urban infrastructure does not make a city smart. It is rather how big data insights, in conjunction with human and social capital and wider socio-economic policy, can manage urban development that makes a city smart. The use of big data in smart cities, must enable citizens to participate fully in so-called knowledge societies. This notion of smartness is closely linked to the questions of economic and social equity. A smart city must be liveable, socially inclusive and must promote the wellbeing of all of its citizens. Smart city projects are big investments that are supposed to drive socio-economic transformation in areas such as transport infrastructure, education and employment and inclusive of traditionally deprived communities. This smart city definition positions participatory governance as key to creating inclusivity around urban issues (i.e. economic, social, and environmental), constructed through deploying big data to facilitate constructive interplays between policy makers, private and third sector and civil society.

Consideration of these two smart city perspectives, allow one to make a simple choice in terms of the marketing discipline and its relevance. On the one hand, smart cities are unique 21^st Century opportunities for marketing to position itself as crucial for corporate behemoths to develop value propositions for their technological offerings, such as artificial intelligence and analytics packages. On the other hand, smart cities are unique 21^st Century opportunities for marketing to position itself as a social concept to develop value propositions that harness technology for the socio-economic good of all citizens. Commercial marketing typically seeks to create value by understanding the various needs of diverse groups of customers, selecting relevant segments of customers with similar needs and targeting them with value propositions. Social marketing is the application of marketing principles to transform peoples’ well-being and social welfare. Social markets in a smart city, include a range of stakeholders involved in exchanges to improve or add value to citizens’ well-being and social welfare. Social marketing begins with understanding the barriers these stakeholders perceive to engaging in activities that improves, for example, employment opportunities in smart city communities. Social marketing also emphasises the importance of strategically delivering programs so that they target specific segments of smart city communities and overcome the barriers to them engaging with stakeholders to improve their socio-economic conditions. To achieve this, requires specific steps to be taken by smart city policy makers: 1) designing a governance platform to create collaboration between policy makers, private sector and local communities in smart cities; 2) deploying through this platform social marketing tools to mobilise smart city big data in segmenting local communities into groups with specific socio-economic challenges; 3) using social marketing and big data to promote inclusive socio-economic opportunities to these communities. While these steps may look straightforward, they will be continually buffeted by competing socio-economic needs of different stakeholders participating on the governance platforms. Creating value for these stakeholders that meets their needs through exchange of ideas and collaboration is facilitated by big data mobilised by social marketing.

This principle of exchange lies at the heart of reflexive governance as well as social marketing, with the recognition that there must be a clear socio-economic benefit perceived by stakeholders if change is to occur. The notion of targeted audience reflects the use of the customer orientation by social marketing. Social marketing in a smart city to achieve socio-economic change, needs to target specific, identifiable and reachable segments in relevant stakeholder groups. Such an approach can work with different target groups, for example at the community level segmenting by age, ethnicity and demographic profile. Part of the goal of such smart city engagement should be to understand the needs of all stakeholders and particularly local communities, to enable the resolution of competing goals. The compelling challenge for reflexive governance in smart cities is harnessing the power of big data using to resolve the competing socio-economic needs of multiple stakeholders. Changes of individual behaviour resides at the centre of this process, dependent on creating relationships and partnerships between various stakeholders. A key contention of my research going forward is that social marketing tools are crucial to mobilising big data insight to achieve this change in smart cities, through empowering reflexive governance.

Small Firms and Big Data

We all know the power and potential of Big Data to help businesses become more competitive. What is not so widely known, or discussed, is that Big Data threatens to create a deep divide between the have-datas and the have-no-datas. What I mean, is that the big corporations gain advantage by crunching the numbers while small firms are left to stumble in the dark. They are at a disadvantage to big competitors, which have the financial muscle to buy Big Data and expertise to exploit it. 

Over the past ten years I have worked with many small firms to help them source and make sense of Big Data. What have I found? ‘To use it’. That is the significant point when it comes to small firms and Big Data. Most often, small firms do not know how to use Big Data to gain competitive advantage. While cost of data is often prohibitive, lack of expertise to exploit the data is as, if not more, significant. 

Small firm owner-managers often rely on well-honed intuition to hold their own against data-rich, bigger competitors. In many cases they’re justifiably proud of their competitive intangibles—a gut sense of the market and the flexibility to change quickly. But is this sustainable and what are the implications for the UK economy? 

The UK Federation of Small Business states that at the start of 2020, there were 5.94 million small firms (with 0 to 49 employees), 99.3% of the total business. SMEs account for 99.9% of the business population (6.0 million businesses), three fifths of the employment and around half of turnover in the UK private sector. So, this Big Data challenge is a ‘big’ thing for small firms in the UK.

In my experience, once small firms are given access to Big Data the key to successful adoption is integration with their marketing and NPD process. This does not have to do away with their intuitive and flexible approach to understanding customers and competition in their markets. Rather, the data complements these essential small firm attributes. 

I have found that successful exploiters of Big Data are small firms that adopt, often for the first time, a considered approach to segmenting and targeting customers and positioning existing and new products to them. ‘Using the data’.

They were then able to envision new product innovations that precisely targeted what customers wanted, rather than reacting to competitors’ actions or pure gut instinct. One small-firm owner-manager said that Big Data had changed their ideas about how to grow its customer base. Another said, “Now we know precisely who our target customer is.”

So, what to do? Governments and Universities can play important roles in bridging the larger firm-small-firm Big Data divide, providing funds and expertise so that small firms can get access to, and learn to integrate it into their marketing and NPD. This is critical, given that COVID-19 is creating profound changes to how customers shop and what they are shopping for. If UK small firms are to respond, and survive, then access to and the capability to exploit Big Data will be key.

Geoff

Welcome to my Blog!

Below in the Blog Archive you have what I hope are informative and thought-provoking posts on how digital tech is impacting and will impact business and society. Drawing from my world-class research. This is a critical area for all of us, with new tech such as AI, IoT and robotics transforming our lives. I will post critically on implications of transformative digital tech for smarter management and a more inclusive society.

You can also find out more about me using the tabs, viewing my professional profile in key academic areas. I encourage you to comment on my posts and I will be happy to discuss them further with you.

With very best wishes.

Geoff

Bob Dylan wrote the album The Times They are a-Changin’ in 1964. There is no doubt that back in the early 1960s, the times certainly were a-changin’. They still are. The rate and pace of change in global trade, global communications, global culture and global technology in 2018 is nothing short of stupendous.

What strikes me most is not so much the change, although it is spectacular, as the fusion of global trade, global communications, global culture and global technology. The totem pole of this fusion is the power of global branding. Take Red Bull, a brand whose global success hinges entirely upon using social media to become a cultural and commercial phenomenon.

Red Bull doesn’t take the usual route of interrupting time-constrained and data-bombarded people with an unwanted message and product. In Red Bull’s Stratos campaign, it wanted to generate buzz around the brand association with an adventurous spirit and the breaking of new technological ground. Their audience was the extreme sports crowd so they knew that Felix Baumgartner jumping from space and free-falling to Earth would capture the imagination of their target demographic.

The jump was caught on video so they used YouTube, non-branded hashtags and tweets on Twitter to let people know about it, and encouraging the viral spread of the video by using Facebook Connect to get email addresses in order to publicise the event. Did they know it would go viral? Hmm

The digital heart of Red Bull’s “extreme branding” is significant given the challenge faced by 21st-century brands in gaining our attention. Social media and new technologies means you and I can and should be treated differently as individuals, and this demands figuring out how to let us control of product and branding decisions.

Take the example of bringing together 3D printing and social media to customise products. We are moving ever closer to people being able to print off from Facebook a smartphone incorporating the chips, antenna and other three-dimensional components. A feature edition of the Economist has gone so far as to relate digital manufacturing, including 3D printing, robotics and collaboration online, to a third industrial revolution.

Old control

Take McDonald’s, which is providing brand content to Generation Z (the iGeneration or post-Millennials, born since 2000) users of Snapchat. Sixty per cent of Snapchat’s users are under 25 and one-quarter are of school age. Snapchat offers a fixed and ephemeral messaging service where photos and videos disappear after 10 seconds, encouraging Generation Z users to creatively push the boundaries in manipulating the McDonald’s brand.

McDonald’s is effectively empowering the Snapchat community to deliberately transform their brand. Snapchat users edit multimedia messages provided by McDonald’s, referred to as “snaps” consisting of a photo or short video, overlaying it in irreverent and humorous ways.

For McDonald’s, letting go and losing control of its brand to Generation Z makes sense, given its problems in attracting younger consumers. In many ways they are embracing what ground-breaking thinkers such as Seth Godin have identified as a move away from mass production and mass marketing based on transactional relationships with consumers towards permission-based relationships. These treat people with respect and involve them with branding and product development as the best way to get their attention in a cluttered world.

As Godin notes, when someone chooses to pay attention, they are actually paying you with something precious. Attention becomes an important asset for a brand, something to be valued, not wasted.

In the climatic lines of the final verse of Dylan’s title track on that album, he quips “the order is rapidly fadin’”. With the irresistible march of digital into every facet of our lives, and the sophistication and empowerment of consumers, the old control logic of branding is rapidly fading.

Like Felix Baumgartner, the space jumper with the Red Bull wings, brands have to jump. And, like Felix, leaving behind what is familiar and known is not always easy!

Professor Geoff Simmons
4th March 2018

Big data key to Irish food industry overcoming Covid-19 challenges

Covid-19 is impacting global food consumption behaviour in significant ways. According to Kantar Worldpanel research, 503 million more in-home meals per week will be consumed in this lockdown period – a rise of 38%. Kantar in January reported a total of 69 billion in-home meals consumed during 2019 – which is likely to be equalled or surpassed during extended periods of lock down. Kantar note that typically 69% of meals would be eaten in the home in normal times, with 31% out of the home (52 weeks to Jan 2020).

So, what happens when the lockdowns are lifted, and we move to a semblance of normality? Significant economic disruption will lead to permanent shifts in food shopping behaviours. For food firms, this represents arguably the biggest challenge most have ever faced. How they understand changing food consumption is going to be critical to determining many firms’ survival. One evident and major change is that consumers will eat less out and more at home as Covid-19 changes attitudes and behaviours of food consumers. A further key point is that many people will be out of work, with less disposable income to spend on more premium food purchases. A potential global recession or even depression will exacerbate this.

 

For the Irish food industry this presents a specific challenge. It is dominated by small food firms, with less than 50 and often less than 10 employees. With limited resources and expertise compared to larger firms, how can they source consumer behaviour trends and make sense of them? Technology in the form of advanced Big Data consumer insight provides a means to achieve this. For example, Dunnhumby the firm behind Tesco Clubcard Big Data sourcing and analysis is a global leader in Customer Data Science.  I spent the past 10 years as an academic at Ulster University and Queen’s University Belfast, working with Professor Andrew Fearne from the University of East Anglia to make Tesco Clubcard consumer insight available free of charge to small food firms in N. Ireland. Supported by Government agencies and food industry bodies, we made available to many small firms’ consumer insight representative of over 40% of buying behaviour of the UK food market. Multiple case examples show how this leads to new product innovations, new listings with multiple retailers and other successes.

Advanced technologies such as Clubcard Big Data and its analysis, are crucial to helping Irish small food firms respond to Covid-19 change in food consumption. It is also crucial for ensuring that Irish consumers’ changing food preferences due to Covid-19 are catered for. Big Data consumer insights provide small Irish food firms with changing consumption behaviours for specific food products. Such as changing socio-demographics of their consumers along with shifts of existing consumers to cheaper products, larger baskets but lower average spend per basket and so forth. This allows small Irish food firms to respond to changing consumer behaviours by deploying innovative and consumer-oriented Category Management, Price; Promotions, Customer Knowledge and Customer Engagement strategies.

 

Irish Government and food industry bodies need to come together to fund access to Big Data consumer insights and the expertise to help small food firms make sense of it. The richness and precision of these insights is typically beyond the reach of small Irish food firms. However, at this critical juncture it could be the key ingredient for ensuring their survival and future success in the face of Covid-19 and its economic fall-out.

 

Professor Geoff Simmons 

4th April 2020

The Currency of an MBA for Northern Ireland's Economy

Northern Ireland as a UK region is rebalancing its economy towards a greater level of private sector activity. The public sector is to be reduced in size and the need for the private sector to grow significantly is therefore a policy priority. Proposed cuts to Corporation Tax, for example, present an opportunity to grow the local economy and also a challenge. Inward investment by multinational businesses and growth of indigenous businesses is not just going to happen on the back of a cut to Corporation Tax in Northern Ireland.

 

Another key consideration moving forward is the need for increased effectiveness and efficiency in the Northern Ireland public sector. Policy makers are already forming plans to not only reduce in size this sector but to also introduce new ways of working. In part this will require radical changes to working practices that have a more private sector approach to management and leadership. Bureaucracy and organizational structure as well as culture are likely to be key considerations in making these changes.

 

Critically, in parallel to both these change contexts there needs to be development of the management and leadership skills of the Northern Ireland managers from the private and public sectors. These skills require grounding in knowledge of the various functions of business, whether that is marketing or human resource management for example. Potential inward investors will look not only at Corporation Tax but also at the talent pool and particularly pertaining to managers with capacity to lead functions and at more senior levels of the business. Similarly, radical changes to the working practices and approach of the Northern Ireland public sector requires managers and leaders with the skills to enact them and also to lead employees in the change process

 

For managers in both the Northern Ireland private and public sectors the change context outlined presents significant opportunities and threats. An MBA presents a means for them to be ready to exploit the opportunities arising from developing further the private sector in Northern Ireland and reforming the public sector. Participants of MBA programmes develop the management and leadership skills to allow them to be more effective functional managers. They are also better positioned to take on more senior roles in firms, having gained the requisite in-depth knowledge of the different business functions from operations to accountancy and finance to strategic management.

In this time then of change in the Northern Ireland economy, there is no better time for managers in Northern Ireland to consider the currency of an MBA. Whether public sector or private sector an MBA will position them to take full advantage of the transforming Northern Ireland economy. Policy makers should proactively seek to support firms and Government departments seeking to send employees on an MBA programme. That would represent a positive step in the rebalancing of Northern Ireland's economy and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of its public sector.

 

Dr Geoff Simmons

5 September 2016

Small Business and Big Data - A Match Made in Heaven?

If you run a small business, chances are you haven’t felt a need to invest in Big Data, relying instead on your well-honed intuition to help you hold your own against data-rich, bigger competitors. A lot of small firm owners and managers feel that way, and in many cases they’re justifiably proud of their competitive intangibles – a gut sense of the market and the flexibility to change quickly.

Through funding provided by UK Government Agencies, I was involved with a colleague in a 3-year project that provided Big Data market intelligence from Tesco Clubcard – a leading UK store loyalty card with upwards of 18 million members – to small food and drink producers in the Northern Ireland region of the UK. The data covered such things as sales performance year on year, consumer profiling (life stage & lifestyle), basket analysis as well as regional analysis – such as best performing stores for a small firm’s products.

 

The focus of our in-depth longitudinal study was seven small food and drink producers. These small firms, ranging in size from 7 to 45 employees, sell such things as dairy products, baked goods, vegetables, and desserts to food retailers, such as Tesco and Sainsbury.

This was the first project of its kind as Clubcard Big Data is typically purchased by big food and drink businesses such as Unilever, P&G and Coca Cola. Only small firms of £10 million or less turnover where eligible for this data. Small businesses rarely have access to this kind of data, with a key aspect of the project being the provision of the data available to the small firms free of charge. 

The level of expense typically precludes small firms due to financial resource constraints. The data was made available to small business by dunnhumby (the marketing consultancy firm who manages Clubcard data). Our aim for the project was to build awareness in small firms from various food and drink sectors (e.g. dairy, beef, pork) and a ‘taste’ of what the data could do for their business.

Small firms also often lack the expertise and time resources to exploit Big Data. The formalized structure within a statistical format requires them to take a more formalized and struc­tured approach to marketing planning – that’s a challenge for small firms. To address this the lead researcher provided one-to-one analysis of the Big Data working with small firm owners and managers. The researcher was provided with an intensive training course before the project started by dunnhumby on interpreting Clubcard data. A key reason why this project worked was this data delivery mechanism. Big Data is only as good as the people who use it!

Typically owner-managers attended a generic workshop on a broad category area - such as bakery products. They were then invited to submit a request for information form. The lead researcher followed up and worked with owner-managers on a one-to-one basis asking the ‘right’ questions and then retrieving the most relevant data from the loyalty card database (e.g. how is my category performing? what is the most popular flavor of bread? what type of consumer buys a product similar to my product?). Working with the small firms key information was distilled from the data through in-depth discussion to provide new consumer and competitor insights.

We found that the small businesses tended to be dominated by their owner-managers, who made decisions on the basis of their past experience and any consumer information they could get their hands on. For example, one firm, having been asked by a retailer to produce a range of ready meals, simply looked at other products already on the market and tried to imitate them. In other cases, the small firms followed guidelines laid down by the big retailer buyers. The small firms knew they were at a disadvantage to big competitors with the financial muscle to buy-in loyalty-card data.

Once they were given access to loyalty-card data, the majority of the seven small firms studied took to it immediately. They were quick to adopt a more formalized approach to marketing planning. They were able to envision long-range innovations, rather than reacting to competitors’ or the retailers’ actions. One small firm owner said the data had changed its ideas about how to grow its consumer base. Another said, “Now we know precisely who our target consumer is.”

But the small firms didn't abandon their reliance on experience. Instead, the Big Data complemented the owners and managers' intuition, giving them new confidence. Also, the Big Data was found to amplify the innovative dimension of the small firms’ inherent entrepreneurial nature. This encouraged most of the small firms studied to share the data outside of the owner-manager clique, encouraging employee involvement. As employees outside the leadership clique were informed about the data they were also encouraged to offer new ideas, with the workplace becoming more collegial.

To conclude, we found from the research that Big Data can be a critical part of small firms attempts to create competitive advantage in their markets. This is an emerging area of thinking and much more work is required to ensure that policy and practice is informed in the adoption of Big Data by small business.

Dr Geoff Simmons

2nd June 2016

The Times They are a-Changin'

Dylan wrote the album The Times They are a-Changin' back in 1964. There is no doubt that back then the times certainly were a-changin. Fast forward to 2012. The rate and pace of change in global trade, communications, politics, culture and technology is, like Felix Baumgartner, about to break the sound barrier.

On Felix, and his space diving exploits, what strikes me most is not so much the jump, although that was spectacular, as the fusion of global trade, communications, culture and technology in the jump. In that jump, and in that fusion, the essential element was marketing.

The jump was part of a global brand narrative: 'Red Bull Gives You Wings'. Red Bull has built its story around extreme sports and innovation. With the jump, the brand ascended with Felix to new heights and in doing so transcended how brands relate to us. The spin-off from the jump in space travel innovations and in inspiring millions, took the Red Bull brand as a social construct into the realms of higher order benefits way above the often timid concept of corporate social responsibility.

8m concurrent views of the spectacle on YouTube are testament to its digital reach and impact, tied up in the minds of millions with the Red Bull brand. Red Bull didn't take the usual marketing route of interrupting time-constrained and data-bombarded people with an unwanted message. They gained our permission to engage and in doing so captured the imagination of millions of us - move over Madison Avenue with exposure predicted to be worth up to £100 million for the brand.

The digital heart of the jump and Red Bull's 'extreme marketing' is significant to me. Like almost any other academic or professional discipline you can think of, marketing theory and practice is being significantly affected by the digitisation of our lived experiences and the opportunities that provides for brands in this instance. As a marketing academic I get to spend a lot of time thinking and writing about this. I have published since 2007 a number of articles which reflect my thinking and have a growing interest in the branding element. What is clear to me is that we are in an era of what could turn out to be the third industrial revolution: based on social media, the rise of 3-D printing and open innovation, as well as significant social and economic shifts around the world.

In the climatic lines of the final verse of Dylan's song of the same name as the album The Times They are a-changin', he quips "the order is rapidly fadin". With Felix and his jump, the irresistible march of digital into every facet of our lives, and the sophisitcation and empowerment of consumers, the old marketing order is rapidly fading. The challenge for marketers is to ensure the new order is relevant for firms and customers in our digital world. Like Felix, we have to jump and, like Felix, leaving behind what is familiar and known is not always easy!

In this blog I hope to share some of my thoughts on this coming from my research and reflections on marketing in a digital world.

Dr Geoff Simmons
20 October 2012