Channel Evaluation

Channel evaluation is a multidimensional construct and includes both performance measures of the channel and measures of contribution to consumers by th channel. These measures of channel performance have been grouped under three main dimensions also known as 3Es, i.e., Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Equity. Effectiveness is further subdivided into delivery and stimulation.

• Delivery is defined as a short term measure of how well the channel meets the demand for service outputs placed on it by the consumption sector.
• Stimulation is defined as a long term, goal oriented measure of how well the channel member stimulate latent demand to reach optimum levels of demand.

Efficiency is further subdivided into productivity and profitability:

• Productivity is defined as the efficiency with which output is generated from resources and inputs used. In essence, productivity is a measure of physical efficiency.
• Profitability is a general measure of financial efficiency of channel member, in terms of return on investment, liquidity, leverage, growth patterns in sales and profits, growth potential in sales and profits, market share, average inventory maintained, etc.

Equity is the extent to which marketing channels serve problem-ridden markets and market segments, such a disadvantaged or geographically isolated consumers.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures

Human Resource Strategies

Human resource strategies are functional strategies, like any other—financial, information, marketing, procurement. Any functional planning effort follows a pattern complete with its variations. In many companies, long-term functional planning (for human resources, finance, information systems, technology, etc) is a mandated element of the long range business planning process.

Human resources strategies are different, however, in that they are inter-twined with all other strategies’ management of people is not a distinct function but the means by which all business strategies are implemented. If anything, human resources planning ought to be an integral part of all other strategy formulation. Where it is separate, it needs to be closely aligned..

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Market-Development Strategy

A market-development strategy dictates that an organization introduces its existing offerings to markets other than those it is currently serving. Examples include introducing existing products to different geographical areas or different buying publics.

The mix of marketing activities used must often be varied to reach different markets with differing buying patterns and requirements. Reaching new markets often requires modification of the basic offering, different distribution outlets, or a change in sales effort and advertising.

Market development involves a careful consideration of competitor strengths and weaknesses and competitor retaliation potential. Moreover, because the firm seeks new buyers, it must understand their number, motivation, and buying patterns in order to develop marketing activities successfully. The firm however must consider the strengths, in terms of adaptability to new markets, in order to evaluate the potential success of the venture.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Social Interactions

Social interactions establish the role that people play in a society and their authority responsibility pattern. Their roles and patterns are supported by a society’s institutional framework, which includes, for example, education and marriage.

Social roles are established by culture. For example, a woman can be a wife, a mother, a community leader, and/or an employee. What role is preferred in different situations is culture-bound. Most Swiss women consider household work as their primary role. For this reason, they resent modern gadgets and machines. Behavior also emerges from culture in the form of conventions, rituals, and practices on different occasions such as during festivals, marriages, get-togethers, and times of grief or religious celebration.

With reference to marketing, the social interactions influence family decision-making and buying behavior and define the scope of personal influence and opinion. In Latin America and Asia the extended family is considered the most basic and stable unit of social organization. It is the center for all economic, political, social, and religious life. It provides companionship, protection, and a common set of values with specifically prescribed means for fulfilling them. By contrast, in the US the nuclear family (husband, wife, and children) is the focus of social organization. The US wife plays a more autonomous role than the Dutch wife in family decision-making. Thus social roles vary from culture to culture and are likely to affect marketing behavior.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Inter-Cultural Communication

Companies face special challenges when they market their products and services to people in other countries and to people in their home countries who come from other cultures:

• Companies have to make their communications understandable and clear to their target audiences. The company that does not modify its information risks offending its audience and losing the opportunity to do business.
• Companies are ethically obligated not to reinforce patterns of discrimination in product information.
• Companies are not obligated to challenge the prevailing prejudice directly. Organizations that actively oppose discrimination are acting admirably.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Incremental Change Analysis

Most business focuses on the current situation, with changes defined on an iterative, cumulative basis. In this context, issues represent problems or opportunities for change from the current situation. The gaps represent ways that a company may achieve or enhance a competitive edge.

The most common way to define issues is to assess the changes that are expected t occur. These are derived from either internal or external changes, intended by management or occurring as a result of uncontrolled forces (as in workforce changes). Issues are identified in the way that people normally think—incrementally from the present toward future.

In this process, managers identify and evaluate human resource issues by sorting through available strategic planning, competitive, and environmental information for evidence of changes having human resource implications and then define human resource issues that may be addressed. Such analysis may examine employee productivity issues, service quality, staffing surpluses or shortfalls, succession needs, skill requirements, utilization, costs, turnover/retention patterns, or employee attitudes.

Managers also obtain and consider perspectives of relevant constituents, such as other managers and employees, vendors, suppliers, and customers. Companies solicit inputs from managers at various levels through their participation in the planning process or through interviews, focus groups, or surveys with key managers. Many companies survey employees, either specifically for planning inputs or more broadly as an assessment of organizational climate and human resource practices. Companies may involve employees through interviews or focus groups to help define issues and alternative strategies. Some also interview or survey customers, contractors, and other business partners regarding human resource issues to be addressed.

Environmental scanning is used to identify prospective human resource issues deriving from changing external conditions. Scanning the many changes occurring in social, political, legislative, demographic, economic, technological and other areas yields a wide array of issues that may be considered.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Managerial Functions

There are four basic managerial functions are planning, organizing, lending, and controlling. By applying these functions to the various organizational resources—human, financial, physical, and information—the organization achieves different levels of effectiveness and efficiency.

• Planning: The first managerial function is the process of determining the organization’s desired future position and deciding how best to get there.
• Organizing: It is the process of designing jobs, grouping jobs into manageable units, and establishing patterns of authority among jobs and groups of jobs. This process designs the basic structure of the organization.
• Leading: It is the third managerial function, is the process of getting members of the organization to work together toward the organization’s goal. Major components of leading include motivating employees, managing group dynamics, and leadership per se, all of which are closely related to major areas of organizational behavior.
• Controlling: It is the process of monitoring and correcting the actions of the organization and its people to keep them headed toward their goals.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Basic Thinking Patterns

Teamwork can be managed into existence by teaching people to use consciously and cooperatively four basic  patterns of thinking they already use unconsciously and individually. These four basic patterns of thinking are reflected in the four kinds of questions managers ask every day:

1. What’s going on? It begs for clarification. It asks for a sorting out, a breaking down, a key to the map of current events, a means of achieving and maintaining control. It reflects the pattern of thinking that enables us to impose order where all had been disorder, uncertainty, or confusion. It enables us to establish priorities and decide when and how to take actions that make good sense and produce good results.
2. Why did this happen? This indicates the need for cause and effect thinking. It is the pattern that enables us to move from observing the effect of a problem to understanding the cause so that we can take appropriate actions to correct the problem or lessen its effects.
3. Which course of action should we take? This implies that some choice must be made. This basic pattern of thinking enables us to decide on the course of action most likely to accomplish a particular goal.
4. What lies ahead? This pattern looks into the future. This is used for thinking when we attempt to assess the problem that might happen, the decision that might be necessary next month, next year, or in five years.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Creative Abuse

A tactic involves Candid Camera-like observations of how your product is actually used by the customer. You may have a wonderful product, created for one thing, but it may end up being used for an entirely different purpose.

Some don’t find real product until they understand with little unexpected help that they are selling the right product to the right customers for the wrong purpose. Their products don’t really take off until customers tell that they misuse it as partial substitute.

You can see creative abuse all the time in the world of fashion: women wearing men’s shirts, and men sporting women’s earrings, sport coats made out of heavily starched wallpaper, evening gowns patterned after lingerie.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Why People Resist Change?

1. Loss of Control: When people feel on top of things, change threatens them with losing control of their personal area of control or influence.
2. Uncertainty: Predictability is contributing to many people. Change brings uncertainty, which some people find threatening.
3. Surprise: We like new things but hate surprises. Sudden change is very unsettling to most of us.
4. Habits: We love our habits. They are efficient and don’t require thought. Establishing new behavior patterns is difficult.
5. Familiarity: The more we know things, the better we like them. (that’s why companies spend a lot on advertising) The unfamiliar is disturbing.
6. Work: New things usually mean more work (at least at the beginning).
7. Competence: People know that they can do what they already do. Change means they will have to master new skills, and they don’t know if they will be able to do it
8. Ripples: People fear that change in one thing will lead to change in others.
9. Adjustment: People are afraid it will take them a long time to adjust to any change.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.