How High-Tech Is Changing Retail Globally

The difference between the winners and losers in retail increasingly comes down to one factor: tech savvy.

The retail industry is undergoing significant changes in the merchandising process--at least, so says a recent survey by retail consulting firm RSR. The best of the national performers have picked up on a crucial strategy: Target your store's selection of goods to the needs and interests of specific communities. It's better for sales and for controlling costs. The savviest retailers know this and they're using technology to help give them edge.

How High-tech Has Changed the Game

According to the survey, firms that outperform industry averages for annual same-store sales comparisons tend to use and understand specialized computer software tools to manage specific aspects of merchandising. The most important tool was forecasting. Such systems help predict what goods customers might want and stocking patterns to satisfy customer demand while minimizing the amount of capital invested in excess inventory. Three quarters of the retailers surveyed said that retail forecasting is "extremely important" to financial success.

This is an interesting shift. In the past, forecasting systems were largely seen as supply chain management tools, where the focus was on reducing operational costs. Now such systems and techniques have become important to expand sales opportunities, moving from a strictly bottom-line focus to a top-line one. As RSR says, "Advances in hardware computing power make sku-level forecasts not only feasible, but imperative."

Almost equally as important as demand forecasting is customer analytics. This makes a great deal of sense. You can't create a good demand forecast without understanding your customers and what they might want. About 34% of the respondents plan to optimize product assortment for key customer segments this year.

Winners & Laggards

The study focused on the differences between what it called "'Retail Winners,' judged by year-over-year comparable store/channel sales improvements," the "Average" performers that hit industry average 3 percent growth in comparable store and channel sales growth, and "Laggards" that saw lower growth.

The winners had an edge not in being better at the same activities as the average and laggard performers, but in putting more emphasis on different aspects of their businesses. For example, RSR asked participants to rate themselves as having a solid understanding of specific merchandising tools and techniques. The chart below shows some of the differences.

The different groups of retailers were roughly equal in how they rated the importance of these tools. The big difference is in how well they thought they understood them. As RSR puts it:

"Operationally, the best performers 'know what they don't know,' and have a generally better understanding of what they need to change to improve their merchandising strategies; by comparison, laggards are asking for more customer segmentation information, but at the same time, citing stalled performance on their inability to identify new merchandising ideas that would appeal to new customer preferences quickly."

Laggards tended to see lower growth because they fall into a self-perpetuating cycle of increased promotional activities to bring in revenue and stay afloat. The constant parade of sales and specials, however, has a negative effect on gross margins.

Mid-market retailers might have some of the biggest problems going forward. Although 51% of big retailers and 44% of small ones implement analytics, which can help them understand their customers' behavior, none of the mid-market retailers used the technology. Furthermore, mid-market retailers had significantly less interest in using either customer segmentation or planogram optimization, which can help improve shelf layout and product placement to improve sales.

Public can explore Middle East through space and time with new tool from Carnegie Mellon and Google

The Arabian Gulf has seen remarkable growth over the past decade. Cities like Doha, Dubai and Abu Dhabi have emerged from the desert thanks in part to the help of some of the greatest architects of our era.

And, with the help of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute in Pittsburgh, working with colleagues at Google and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the public is now able to easily explore that growth with 13 years of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Landsat imagery of the Earth's surface using the Google Earth Engine.

This new capability within Google Earth Engine enhances the public's ability to view the massive amount of imagery collected by the Landsat program between 1999 and 2011. Users can watch a time-lapse animation of these 13 years of imagery for any place, zoomed in to almost any vantage point on a map.

This "time-exportable" map can only be viewed in Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari web browsers (To get at it, go to Google Earth Engine, click through to one of the featured galleries, and a link "Explore Map" will appear below, taking you to the map).This enables anyone to see the rapid creation of Doha Metropolitan area, the sprouting of artificial islands at the Palm Dubai and the urbanization of the desert throughout Abu Dhabi, as well as the growth of many other megacities in the region like Istanbul or Tehran.

For the past 40 years, the Landsat program has continuously collected imagery of the Earth's surface and, since 2008, the USGS has made that imagery available free to the public. But accessing that data — measured in petabytes, or quadrillions of bytes — has long been cumbersome, said Randy Sargent, a system scientist at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute's CREATE Lab in Pittsburgh and a visiting researcher at Google.

Google has improved access by building the largest library of Landsat imagery on hard-drive storage, Sargent said. Google Earth Engine has already amassed more than 1.5 million Landsat images of Earth and this is growing by thousands of images per day as new satellite data is collected.

The new tool for Earth Engine, based on Carnegie Mellon's GigaPan Time Machine technology, takes this access to another level. When combined with Google Earth Engine's massively parallel computation power, the Landsat image archive is transformed into a set of seamless, zoomable videos easily accessible from a modern Web browser.

"The sheer volume of visual data is daunting to explore by conventional means," said Rebecca Moore, engineering manager of Google Earth Engine. "Together we can now offer an intuitive, effortless method to explore the planet in space and time."

Google, NASA and Carnegie Mellon previously collaborated to create GigaPan, a technology for capturing a mosaic of hundreds or thousands of digital pictures and stitching those frames into panoramas that be interactively explored via computer. 

GigaPan Time Machine, developed with Google's support, took advantage of the HTML5, a markup language for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web, incorporated into such browsers as Google Chrome to extend GigaPan into the realm of video. Sargent, along with CMU colleagues Paul Dille and Chris Bartley, developed algorithms and software architecture that made it possible to shift seamlessly from one video portion to another as viewers zoom in and out of the imagery.

One of the first applications of the Time Machine technology was to 12 months of imagery from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, satellites. Sargent said the success of that project led directly to the effort to create a tool for accessing Landsat and other satellite imagery available through Google Earth Engine.

Sargent predicted that the enhanced access to satellite imagery will help ground public discussions about land use, climate change and environmental policy.

"You can continue to argue about why deforestation has happened," he explained, "but you no longer will be able to argue whether it happened."

"Exploring the data is now much faster — hundreds of times faster than it used to be," he added. "That leads to discoveries. That leads to making connections."

In addition to Sargent, Dille and Bartley, computer science student Richard Hofer, Robotics Institute intern Saman Amirpour and Illah Nourbakhsh, professor of robotics and director of the CREATE Lab, have contributed to this project. They are continuing to work with Google scientists to increase access to additional imagery from Landsat and other satellite programs.

The Robotics Institute is part of Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science, who oversees an undergraduate degree program at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar.

Educational Technology Revolution Transforming Middle East Education Sector

In an effort to transform education to align with international standards, governments across the Middle East are turning to the increased integration of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in schools. In April this year, HH Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al  Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai, launched a new smart learning initiative that will transform classrooms as well as integrate teachers, students, parents and administrators into a single e-platform. The Dh1 billion ‘Mohammad Bin Rashid Smart Learning Initiative’ is part of the UAE Vision 2021 and will be introduced in four stages over five years.

Last year saw the debut of BETT Middle East, the regional edition of the world's leading education sector exhibition and conference, which was endorsed by the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC). Present at the event were over 100 exhibitors whose innovative e-learning solutions promise to drive the evolution of the smart school. Equipped with vast ICT facilities, smart schools create more innovative and creative teaching lessons towards achieving the technology-literate and knowledge-based society.

Sufian Dweik, regional manager, MENA at  Brocade Communications says that with the proliferation of modern smart devices, the education sector is ripe for change. The old ‘one size fits all’ classroom paradigm of a teacher lecturing to a classroom full of students cannot hope to compete with the ways that today’s digital natives learn on their own. Schools at all levels are racing to capture the interest and imagination of students by bringing the innovations of e-learning technologies and applications into the classroom and the curriculum.

The educational technology revolution is providing a three pronged answer to this question. The first is making sure that students have access to the wealth of information available on demand via the Internet. The second is challenging them with a wide array of innovative new e-learning applications. Last, but definitely not least, is reaching them through the high-speed communications networks that connect students both in and out of the classroom.

Delivery of bandwidth-intensive e-learning applications such as streaming video and multimedia is a challenge for virtually every school. Multiple single-purpose technologies are cost-prohibitive. A technology that can be leveraged for multiple uses costs less and provides agility to respond to growing and emerging needs. The answer lies in the deployment of a high-performance campus network.

A Case for High-Speed Wireless Deployment: Intelligent Campus Networks

Although most schools have existing wired systems that still provide value, as e-learning needs grow to include new applications, leveraging one IP network to provide connectivity for multiple uses will prove more cost-effective than adding additional wired networks. More and more, institutions are turning to outdoor wireless broadband networks and indoor wireless LANs as more cost-effective alternatives to wired expansion as the education technology revolution takes hold. These wireless environments can be used simultaneously for data and file transfer, automated testing, video learning, video security, voice calls, and inventory management.

Wireless solutions are also faster and easier to deploy, and simpler to manage, than wired solutions; and only wireless technology enables the mobile access that is crucial for the delivery of anywhere, anytime learning on- or off-campus. With these solutions, each classroom is enriched with data, video, and voice connectivity, while the same network provides connectivity to technical and support staff so that students’ activities are coordinated, and supplies and facilities are fully prepared.



Smart Devices and the 1:1 Classroom

Today’s students live their lives with access to the latest, most functional devices imaginable, such as smartphones and tablets. Schools can capitalize on the opportunity presented by these technologies through the deployment of specialized applications for learning. Smart devices also pave the way for 1:1 classrooms, which foster a personalized learning environment. In the true 1:1 classroom, students have individual laptop computers, notebooks, tablets, and smartphones, and they are able to simultaneously view streaming video content from the web or from a third-party educational video management system. Each individual student is able to view and work with the content in his or her own way, and also is able to work more closely with the teacher in one-on-one sessions.

Extending the Classroom

Next generation, high performance campus networks help schools extend the school day by enabling students to safely and securely access the schools’ learning tools and other education-appropriate materials available on the Internet. This enables them to work collaboratively with peers and to interact with faculty from anywhere on campus. In many cases, they can also access the network from home and from within the community.

Better Security

Schools can also leverage their campus networks to help increase operations efficiency. Universities can use their networks to deliver powerful security solutions, including remote video surveillance. Wireless networks that connect the campus both indoors and outdoors are ideal solutions for increased security for people and things. High-speed network infrastructures can be exceptionally valuable by integrating existing and new video, access control, and asset management solutions into a more proactive, intelligent campus-wide security system managed at a centralized command center. Such a security system would be easy to use, making monitoring simpler and more effective through built-in intelligence and automatic alerting mechanisms. The end result would be enhanced situational awareness and a faster, more effective response.

Single-Point Management

The modern campus network offers the benefit of better management. It enables administrators to manage their entire access switching layer as if it were a single device, from initial deployment to ongoing configuration, software upgrades and monitoring. Single-point management in effect dramatically reduces the cost and time required to manage the campus network lifecycle. It also improves compliance by ensuring consistent policy among all access layer ports, and increases network availability by reducing human error, which is the number one cause of network downtime.

The advantage of the modern campus network lies in its ability to deliver maximum performance and uptime while paving the way for emerging applications such as BYOD, rich video, virtual desktop environments and unified communications for increased collaboration. This technology also allows administrators to monitor and manage a single network from a single command center, helping to increase campus safety and security, network availability, and performance consistency. Equally important, an effectively deployed education campus network offer a measurable return on investment (ROI), lowering technology, deployment, and operational expenses and reducing total cost of ownership (TCO).

For educational establishments to get the best of both worlds – a campus environment that accommodates the requirements of the modern educational institute, while providing the bullet-proof resilience, simplicity and cost-efficiency needed to successfully lay the foundations for today and the future – they need to look to innovative vendors and partners. While there are a number of network solutions available in the market, only a mere handful of these combine data center class performance with a practical pricing model. If you want a campus that can deliver on all your requirements, while offering an in-built path for the future needs you cannot yet predict, there is only one real choice.

Radio In The Middle East

Radio In The Middle East

 

    When radio first came into this world, people thought it would prove to be the newspaper killer even as when TV emerged people believed it would overpower radio. However, not only have the three medium survived, they have grown together with each other. In the Middle East however, radio has yet to realise its full potential.  

Historically radio in the Arab world has been state sponsored and controlled leaving a lot of questions about its objectivity and its ability to grow. However, liberalisation in most of the Arab world in the last decade has ensured that the radio segment in the Arab world, though small today, will have a long way to go in the future.

According to a report titled ‘FM Radio in the Arab World 2012’ by the Arab Advisors Group, by the end of 2011, there were close to 289 FM radio stations in 14 Arab countries. The key factor for the growth of private FM radio stations has been liberalisation. Yet, there are countries in the Middle East like Qatar, UAE and Yemen that still do not allow private radio station to come in. On the other hand, there have been other peculiar problems. In Mauritania and Algeria for example, despite licensing of private radio stations being allowed in 2011, by the end of the year there were still no private takers.

Another important factor leading to the growth of radio stations in the region has been the presence of a large number of expats leading to FM channels in multiple languages. Take the case of UAE that has FM channels broadcasting in Arabic, Malayalam, English, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil and Persian.

It is hence not surprising that radio manages to attract only a very tiny proportion of the US $ 4 billion that is spent on advertising in the Arab world. The ad space here is dominated by television and newspapers. That, however, is set to change.

The absence of something in any region is an invitation for daring players to make an entry into the market to grow the market, and thus reap its benefits. Hence, though it came as a surprise that Indian Hindi-language station Radio Mirchi hit the airwaves in the UAE as part of their global expansion drive, it was but a very calculated move by India’s largest FM player. Their confidence was evident when they even flew Bollywood star Rani Mukherjee to Abu Dhabi to launch the station whose format would be a mix of music and chat. The FM station is collaboration between the Entertainment Network (a subsidiary of The Times of India Group) and Abu Dhabi Media (ADM).

The future of radio in the Middle East is thus bright. The air waves are just opening up and though it is still to attract major investors, the time is not far when both investors and advertisers will see the potential. Radio thus has nowhere to go but up.

Five interesting infographics from the Middle East

Five interesting infographics from the Middle East

Infographics are becoming more and more popular in digital marketing circles in the Middle East, particularly as the volume of statistics, market data and research increases in the region.

Here we round up five of the most interesting infographics we've seen in 2012, related to internet marketing, online trends, and social media. 

Social media drives UAE auto sales

Social media has emerged as one of the main factors that influence consumers' buying intentions in the auto industry - while the importance of traditional advertising has declined, according to a new report.

The joint study by Zarca Interactive and GolinHarris, shows that 25.7% of UAE participants base their decision on what car to purchase from opinions and reviews appearing on social media, blogs and forums.

Only 10.1% of the 444 people surveyed believed their buying habits were affected by TV advertisements, while just 5.4% considered outdoor billboards to hold any sway. Radio came even lower with only 2.7% believing they had been influenced by ads on the airwaves.

Combined spending for traditional advertising streams, including TV, radio and outdoor, in the UAE totalled $43.8m in 2011, out of a combined $349m ad spend - the highest in the Middle East. "Advertisers, marketers and communicators need to veer to the fast lane where actual consumer decisions are swayed away from traditional media," says George Kotsolios, Joint Managing Director at GolinHarris.

"Look at mobile advertising figures in America, which is estimated to exceed the $5bn mark by 2015. Information consumption habits constantly change due to technological innovations and markets and sectors need to move with the times."

Even though consumers are increasingly influenced by online media to determine what car to buy, auto makers only invested Dhs24m on Internet marketing in 2011 - the industry seemingly out of touch or finding it difficult to make a successful transition into the digital age.

Country of origin plays a huge role in buying habits

According to Zarca there are other factors in play, with 59.5% of respondents saying that a car's country of origin is a major decision influencer.

Javed Farooqui, Executive Director & Head Middle East and Africa Zarca Interactive says: "With the exception of Germany, with four of its brands amongst those considered for purchase by UAE residents, European brands do not fare well in terms of intention to buy.

"Britain, France and Italy see just one of their brands each in the same list. Japanese and American cars list a combined total of 12 brands dominating UAE consumers 'preferences."

Word of mouth top influencer of car buying in UAE

The study found the highest influencer of car buying habits in the UAE was word of mouth, with 68.2% of those surveyed citing it as the main factor. Nearly 80% also pointed to previous experience being highly important.

Other key factors include perceived reliability (viewed as important by 61.5% of respondents), durability (58.1%), value for money (48.7%), fuel efficiency (37.2%) and low emissions (29.7%).

Less than half of respondents (42.6%) plan on buying new cars, while 33.7% showed a preference for SUVs and 20.6& eyed luxury sedans.

Toyota topped the pile of favoured manufacturers with a quarter of respondents mulling a purchase from the Japanese firm. BMW came second with 13% of those surveyed preferring the German carmaker, followed by Mercedes, Ford and Nissan respectively.

The survey was conducted online with drivers invited to participate via email, Twitter and Facebook. Most respondents were aged 41 or older (49%) with an even spread of ages below 40. Of those surveyed, Asian expats accounted for almost half of the results (46%), followed by westerners (12%), local Emiratis (9.5%) and Arab expat consumers (7%), Farooqui told AMEinfo.com.

Olympic flame casts little warmth for Middle East advertisers

 

Sponsors of the London Olympics are playing down their promotional activities in the Middle East, citing a regional lack of interest in the Games.
Panasonic and Coca-Cola - which each paid a reported US$100 million (Dh367.3m) for the global sponsorship of the Olympics - said there would not be a big promotions push in the UAE.
"This year we didn't do anything for the Olympics," said Antoine Tayyar, the public affairs and communications director at Coca-Cola Middle East.
"In terms of doing a direct promotion, or something directly related to the Coke brand in the UAE, we did not do any activity."
Global brands have spent a total of $2.2 billion sponsoring the Olympics, which start on Friday.
But some sponsors say Arab consumers prefer football to the Olympics, creating a hurdle to the activation of their sponsorships in this market.
Mr Tayyar said special Coke glasses were being distributed by its partner McDonald's, another Olympics sponsor, in the UAE.
But he said Coca-Cola was not engaging in direct promotions. "The sport that we are focusing on across the Gulf is football," he said. "You have to identify what are the aspirations and the overall drive of your consumers and what they like more."
Panasonic, another global sponsor of the Olympics, has followed suit. "We are not doing a mass, umbrella campaign," said Anthony Peter, the director of communications at Panasonic Marketing Middle East, adding there was less interest in the Olympics in this region than elsewhere.
"The Olympics in the Middle East - apart from certain sports - doesn't have as strong a following as in western countries or in Europe," he said.
Mr Peter said the fact that the event coincided with Ramadan was another factor in the company's decision. "
In Ramadan most of the sales are for the home appliances and Panasonic is not a home appliances sponsor," he said.
"TV sales are also good during the initial part of it but towards the end of it it's more of the home appliances, such as kitchen appliances and food processors."
In addition, Panasonic has already done a promotion around the Olympics this year, in which the prizes included trips to see the Games in London.
Although the company said it was still promoting its association with the Olympics though advertisements in UAE newspapers and on billboards as well as through its regional distributors, the wider consumer promotions have now stopped.
Other brands said they would make more use of their sponsorships in the Arabian Gulf region.
Cheil Worldwide - which handles advertising for Samsung, another Olympics sponsor - said it was planning an "engagement programme" in the Middle East around the Games.
"We have road shows, we have activation in retail shops [and] competitions where you take a picture of yourself with the Olympic mascot," said Azmi Yafi, the chief operating officer for Cheil Worldwide in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena).
Mr Yafi said most local brands were not paying enough attention to the Olympics.
"The Olympics comes once every four years," he said. "If you look at how many Olympians from this region are going to participate, there's only [a few]. Because it won't necessarily get as much exposure, it doesn't present to advertisers enough opportunities.
"But is there a potential? I think there is."
Visa, another sponsor of the Olympics, said it had promoted its association in a number of ways in the Middle East. Karim Beg, Visa's head of marketing for the Mena region, said campaigns included a 3D interactive promotion held at Mall of the Emirates in Dubai.
Sponsorship of the London Olympics in general has been controversial amid accusations that the rules to protect official trademarks are too strict.
Organisers of the games have deployed about 250 so-called "brand police" on the streets of London.
Logos of non-sponsors are banned from Olympic venues and local businesses are not allowed to use Olympic logos or words such as "gold" or "silver" in their marketing material.
Offenders face fines of up to £20,000 (Dh113,826).
The regulations and anger at the ticketing process have prompted groups including the Official Protesters of the London Olympics, who sport a logo very similar to the official Games insignia, to express their displeasure on social networking sites and in irreverent posters across the capital.