Marketers face new challenges in the era of crowdsourced opinions, where sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp allow consumers to share opinions that may contradict marketing messages. This article identifies ten sources of influence that can sway consumers, four of which (social networks, opinion aggregators, recommendation engines, and price comparison services) have only gained prominence recently. With the shift from traditional marketing channels to digital realms, consumers now comprehensively inform themselves, loudly inform others, and make purchase decisions at their own pace. Marketers can take four approaches in order to gain value from the crowd. 1) Endorse the crowd: Bringing the “voice of the crowd” into marketing efforts can provide the credibility and authenticity that consumers seek. 2) Venture among the crowd: Engaging with consumers directly, e.g. through social media, can highlight a company’s transparency and build trust with consumers. 3) Listen to and learn from the crowd: Monitoring online discussions of user needs, desires, and trends can provide highly valuable data. 4) Invite the crowd inside: Companies like WebMD offer users a diverse portfolio of guidance and a useful forum in which to hold their own conversations.
With the leaders of global organizations increasingly unable to individually grasp the full complexity of firms’ worldwide operations, the task more than ever falls to groups of leaders at the top. These groups of leaders must be diverse in expertise and experiences and yet also synchronized in directing global organizations. These two imperatives often lead to conflict, but leaders can overcome difficulties by forming “leadership ensembles.” Effective leadership ensembles are characterized by foresight and preemptive change, agility rather than fixed governance roles, and the application of synthetic intelligence. Research on top executives has yielded four blueprints for decision making that successful ensembles follow. “Incubators” value a cohesive corporate culture and emphasize cultural fit with any new addition. “Diplomats” allow flexibility between local businesses and headquarters. “Engineers” try to optimize organizational structures and processes and tie their firms together, as well as foster a single culture. “Directors” want decisions to be made by those closest to the operations. Global leadership ensembles can improve their decision making significantly by understanding which blueprint leaders prefer; continually assessing how their preferred blueprint helps or hinders the organization’s goals for global expansion; and understanding the connection between the blueprint and how the ensemble operates.
This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Managers and directors alike face tough choices as they decide on the quality and quantity of information that the board receives and uses in its governance and fiduciary roles. As the fallout from recent crises such as the subprime mortgage debacle illustrates, both sides must address the problem of "information asymmetry" -- the gap between the information available to management and to the board. The authors' research suggests that tomorrow's boardroom will be reshaped by three related forces: First, they face a thorough rethinking, brought on by concerned stakeholders, of directors' information needs. In responding to these pressures, boards and management must overcome several impediments: caution about altering the dynamics of the present manager-director relationship; directors' lack of needed skills for interpreting the new information; and the inertia of cultural norms. Second, they face dramatic improvements in the performance assessment approaches used to guide boards' decision making. The core of a healthy information relationship between managers and directors is their agreement on the most useful performance metrics to track and assess. This selection enables the building of trust and an eased and more pertinent workload for the board (having been freed from the need to decode reams of data while also gaining some independence from management's sometimes self-serving evaluations). Finally, boards and managers face the adoption of technologies that support critical board functions. Once access to such information is granted, new technologies can help directors obtain and use it. Board members may apply tools that, for example, enable improved visualizations and helpful alerts. And directors may engage in electronic "what-if" analyses, using company data as well as outside information -- related, say, to competing firms -- which is becoming increasingly available online.
Surveys the overall sequence of processes needed for the success of a strategy based on customer analytics. In particular, it charts the formulation and implementation of this strategy by a Spanish bank that decided to expand into the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) segment. Starting with the creation of information necessary for the bank to compete in this segment, it describes the strategic selection of the target customer group, the definition of the product offering, and the organizational changes needed to implement such a strategy.
Excellence in exploiting customer information and leveraging its affiliation to the GM group are among the strategic options that GMAC Insurance CEO Gary Kusumi is considering. GMAC Insurance, the wholly-owned auto insurance subsidiary of General Motors, formed through the merger of two smaller insurance firms, is at a strategic cross-roads. Progressive changed the competitive landscape with its superior pricing abilities, and now Kusumi must decide whether to compete on the ability to use customer information for pricing or whether even larger rewards could be found in leveraging the connection to the GM family. However, although jointly selling auto insurance and cars is common in many countries, the ability to do so at the GM Group is called into question by several significant organizational stumbling blocks.
The MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas had detailed information on loyal gaming customers, but could its information systems also be tailored to nongaming customers? As the nongaming business sectors became increasingly profitable both at the MGM Grand and in Las Vegas generally, understanding the nongaming customers appeared to be of critical importance to the continuing growth of the resort.
CEMEX has pursued an aggressive decommoditization strategy focused on its relationship with small Egyptian retailers. In particular, the strategic role and effectiveness of the Rewards Program, a tournament that rewarded the sales performance of the retailers, was called into question by Assiut Cement's management based on the results of its first two rounds.
MercadoLibre.com, eBay's Latin-American partner, needed to decide how far it was going to follow eBay's practice of offering "free listing days" and discounted special-feature days. Was this type of promotion prudent, given MercadoLibre.com's customer base, revenue expectations, and position in the Latin American market?