Aims and Objective of Amazon

 Amazon's mission/vision statement is as follows: "Our vision is to be earth's most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online." Amazon has been successful in attaining that goal. The company currently offers a lot of products and services, and have made acquisitions of emerging companies; these acquisitions certainly extended their product line. Among these acquisitions include shoe retailer Zappos and online bookstore Abebooks. The company has also expanded to other industries. For example, Amazon is a retailer of digital content. Amazon also introduced their own tablet, their own e-book reader, video streaming and cloud storage. In accordance with their vision, Amazon has constantly been expanding their line of products and services, to truly build a platform in which anything can be purchased. Advantages of this strategy include the growth of their global brand and the growth of their customer base. The main disadvantage is that Amazon might not be able to focus on all these products or services.
Maintaining good customer "experience" is key, even when it's an outside merchant making the sale

This year's list of customer service champs.

Last summer, Lisa Dias was poking around the Amazon.com (AMZN) Web site for books that could help her start a home business. The 45-year-old found a used workbook for would-be entrepreneurs that sounded promising and was described as "like new." The seller wasn't Amazon itself, but one of the merchants that market through its Web site. Still, Dias went ahead and dished out $24.95 for the paperback.

When the book arrived at her New Jersey home, though, it wasn't anywhere close to new. The worksheets were already filled in with someone else's scrawling. She felt burned but didn't do anything about it until November. She first tried the merchant and didn't get any response. Then Dias called Amazon. The company immediately gave her a refund, without her having to return the book. She's still a bit baffled that Amazon paid her money the company never received in the first place. "I felt like they stood up for me," says Dias.

For the most part, Amazon has earned a reputation for strong service by letting customers get what they want without ever talking to an employee. Sales clerks are nonexistent. Orders ship with a few mouse clicks. Packages arrive on doorsteps quickly. It all happens with monotonous regularity even as the number of customers has doubled in the past five years to 88 million. But when things go wrong at Amazon—and they occasionally do—the company's employees get involved. That may be where Amazon stands out most markedly from other companies, and helps explain how the company earned the No. 1 spot on Business Week’s customer service ranking this year.

One recent February day in Manhattan, Jeff Bezos, Amazon's excitable 45-year-old founder and chief executive, sat still long enough to explain the ideas behind his company's approach. He talked about the distinctions Amazon makes between customer experience and customer service. The latter is only when customers deal with Amazon employees—and Bezos wants that to be the exception rather than the rule. "Internally, customer service is a component of customer experience," he says. "Customer experience includes having the lowest price, having the fastest delivery, having it reliable enough so that you don't need to contact [anyone]. Then you save customer service for those truly unusual situations. You know, I got my book and it's missing pages 47 through 58," he says, breaking into a booming laugh.

Fixing customers' problems builds customer loyalty with people like Dias, says Bezos. But it's also a good way to spot recurring issues that need to be addressed more systematically. Outside merchants, like the one Dias dealt with, are a prime example. For years, Amazon has allowed other retailers to sell through its Web site to broaden the selection of products it offers. But these companies can be an Achilles' heel. At eBay (EBAY), which also lets merchants sell through its site, there have been complaints about poor service and fraud.


Banking Sector in the United Arab Emirates

The banking sector is one of the most growing sectors in the world economy and considered as the backbone of the economy. The customer behavior in banking industry varies from the customer behavior from other industries. Banking decisions are very crucial decision since they have direct money involvement in them. The following research was aimed at finding out the factors which affects the consumer behavior in banking industry and the sources of information which customer look for while deciding about the bank.
From the research carried out through collecting the primary data from the banks’ customer after designing the questionnaire for getting the responses, it has been revealed that customers give importance to the place convenience and brand image of the bank while deciding about the banking service. Hence, marketers should look for the wider reach and strong brand image of their bank.

What has Changed?

Since the loyal customer provides lot of benefits to the company like high purchase value, premium price, insensitive to prices change and positive word of mouth. The commercial banks in the UAE are providing all kinds of services which are given by banks in any developed nation in order to achieve improved service quality for its customers. According to the national statistics in year 2000, the number of branches has reached to 430 and number of ATM has reached to 880. So there are approx. 7000 people per branch and 3500 people per ATM in the country.
In total, the UAE has 47 commercial banks and out of 47 banks, 27 commercial banks are foreign banks. Some of the major players in commercial bank segment in UAE are Citi Bank, HSBC Bank and Standard Chartered. Banks in UAE needs to evaluate their service quality in order to combat the competition and position them as the service oriented bank.
The sources of information accessed by the consumers while deciding about the bank customer responded that the TV media and referrals are the most effective medium. Hence, the customers should create the positive word of mouth publicity and should promote themselves through TV media.    

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Adoption of Internet Banking Assignment

A comparative study of Saudi Arabia and United Kingdom.

Abstract


Banking is evolving day by day and innovative services are offered by banks nowadays. Internet banking is getting popular with the invention of high speed internet services and increasing internet penetration and usage. The project will focus on the adoption of internet banking by the customers. The comparative study of the existing customers of the banks in United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia will be the focus of the research.


The research will be an exploratory research and will be carried out using primary data collected through surveying the customers. Apart from the primary data, literature review will be carried out using the sources like books, magazines, articles, journals and working papers.

Project Objectives


The project objectives are as follows:
1. To study the level of customer adoption for internet banking
2. To analyze and compare the customer adoption of internet banking in UK and Saudi Arabia.
3. To study the factors limiting the customers from using internet as a medium for banking

4. To study the factors encouraging the customers for using internet as a medium for banking

Learning Outcomes From this Project


The project summary is an indication of your intent to carry out a project in a certain field of discipline for a Masters level module.  

The project must be mindful of and demonstrate EACH of the following learning outcomes 
1. Apply intellectual rigor to a topic area or subject that is of interest to the student and relevant to the programme of study undertaken at a Masters level.
2. Conceptualise and articulate a particular area of research or industry requirement in the body of a coherent, comprehensive and logically argued professional report.  
3. Utilise and justify a range of research methods to identify, select and review a wide range of fully cited information sources to support the subject matter, both historical and current.
4. Identify and apply appropriate approaches, methodologies, tools and techniques that will support the progression of the subject matter and theme of a project.
5. Develop well structured solutions to an identifiable industry requirement or support a hypothesis / intellectual argument regarding an area of research. 
6. Critically evaluate options and make justifiable recommendations for the subject matter. 
7. Critically evaluate the approach and conduct of the project. 
8. Demonstrate and conduct a project to good project management characteristics and Quality Assurance techniques.
9. Apply appropriate measures to address any legal and ethical issues relating to the project work.
The project must fall in the scope of YOUR programme of study i.e. if you are an engineering student then your subject matter must be related to the world of Engineering although comparisons can be made to other disciplines, similarly for KM students then subject matter must be related to the world of ICT in support to the discipline of choice.

This document can form the basis of allocation of staff to your project.  This summary document will then be further worked for detail through a Project Proposal document, which will be similar to the document prepared in the study skills module.

Notes on the Document


General Subject Area (with Keywords) 

A broad topic area that defines the area of project and keywords that could be used in a search facility

Topic areas for Engineering it could be : Contract management, Engineering management, Engineering strategy, Entrepreneur and innovation , Finance / Decision making and risk, HRM, ICT, Lean management or operations, Manufacturing (/ simulation), Marketing, Production management, Project Management, Quality management, Supply Chain Management, Telecoms/ ICT,  Vehicle Engineering design, material technology, environmentally sustainable, innovation, automation,  Technology etc

Topic areas for KM could be : Strategy, Logistics, Management, Business Intelligence, project management, Ecommerce, Mcommerce,  Quality, Networks, Software development, Health and IT etc.

Keywords could be any list of words that could be used in locating your project in a library database search facility.

Proposed Subject Title

A proposed title of the project, succinct and clear as to the project undertaken Eg Feasibility of …, How Lean principles in Large scale companies can be applied to …, A case study of the barriers and triggers for Ghana to adopt WAP, etc 

Brief Project scope and abstract

The background about the project, topic, company, situation and overall summary as to the nature of problem and what is required.  

This would explain the aim of the project and put it into context /setting the scene.  If you have a client then this is mentioned with their relevance to the project.  This is really a mini-executive summary of the whole project, with considerations to the scope/ boundaries.  

Project Objectives

List overall objectives of the project listing approx 7-10.  These should be measurable and will be used in part assessment in determining the level of achievement of the project.  

These can be a breakdown of what you are trying to achieve and can be representative of activities/ phases that are to be conducted in arriving at the project deliverables.  Words such as acquire, identify, evaluate, conduct , develop, demonstrate, analyse etc could be used. These should reflect the Learning outcomes of the Module for example :

1.  Research the principles / background / impact of chosen subject matter in terms of either engineering or ICT, regionally, nationally and or globally.
2.  Conduct GAP/ PESTLE analysis/ SWOT analysis and define some strategic positioning to provide context to the subject matter.
3.  Identify appropriate case studies to analyse in respect of primary and secondary research for comparison and contrast; these can be regional, national and/or global case studies.

4.  Evaluate triggers and barriers of subject matter in the context of the problem domain and given scenario.

5.  Analyse and build a requirement specification / feasibility study or design using an appropriate and justified business, IT or Engineering lifecycle.

6.  Instantiate the relevant business, IT or Engineering lifecycle within the context of the project

7.  Determine and discuss possible options, scenarios and solutions

8.  Draw conclusions and clear recommendations for the progress and approach for the future realisation of the solution with provision of a timeline

9. Make critical evaluation of the project and approach.    

The objectives should be relevant and specific to your project, reflect the aims and the learning outcomes.  They should be realistic, though sufficiently challenging and measurable. 

This document should be submitted on Moodle on the module web (M99EKM or equivalent) also handed in at ASG 20 post grad support office by the relevant date 

Failure of Islamic Banking to Achieve Mainstream Acceptance

Islamic banking is a growing sector and majority of multinational banks have opened a subsidiary or a dedicated centre to cater to the growing need of Islamic banking. It is estimated that currently about $400 Billion of asset is being looked by the Islamic banks and institution worldwide and it has the capacity to increase 10 times form the current level going forward. Thus the growth prospect of such a sector is high but there are few pointers that could decrease the pace of growth of this sector. Some critical factors are as follows:

• Reach of operations 


Most of the Islamic banks and institutions that are presently working across globe does not have a global reach. Most of the bank operations are concentrated in the middle east, northern Africa, south Asia, and parts of ]Europe and America where there is presence of Muslim community in a sizeable number. Thus, this restricts the operations of the bank. Consider the following example a country like America trades with Russia, both these countries are huge and it is natural of them to trade, but we find that since the presence of the Islamic bank and institution is limited in Russia, most of the Islamic bank looses such opportunity because of not being present there. And even if they try to scale up it would be difficult as majority if their customer are only form the Muslim community and thus their reach is confined to countries which have sizeable Muslim population.

• Size of bank


It has already been discussed that the reach of the Islamic banks and the financial institutions is very limited and their clientele list is also majority Muslims only, so the size of the bank always remain small compare to its global peers. As their size is small, it is very difficult for them to even compete against the bigger normal banks like HSBC, Citibank, Standard chartered. Even if these banks try to grow they remain just a fraction of what the global banks are in size, quantity of money handled and no of customers worldwide. The size of the operations of the global bank is also huge when compared to these banks.

• Non-uniformity of operations


The Islamic banks and institutions worldwide function in a different way. Basically the Islamic banks and institutions work on the Sharia law, which is an adaption of understanding of what is written in the Quran. Now each one has its own understanding of the laws and thus there are different versions of what is acceptable and what is unacceptable by Sharia. As a result there is incoherence in the operations of the Islamic banks and institution in different countries. An Islamic bank working in Iran works on rules and regulation which are quite different from the rules and regulation accepted by an Islamic bank working in Malaysia. This non uniformity in the operation creates confusion and limits the operations of a particular bank to a particular geographical area.

• Human resources and Technology cost


The Islamic banks and financial institution work differently in each country of operations. It is observed that an Islamic bank which is operating in Pakistan has different set of rules that it adheres to and thus have designed its products accordingly to its customers there when compared to an institution working in Malaysia, which has its own understanding of the Sharia laws and thus has quite different sets of trade laws when compared to the bank operation in Pakistan. Now if the bank has to install software and wants to get technologically advanced, it become very costly for the bank because in needs to customize its entire range of offering on the website and have to develop the software accordingly which is a difficult task. Islamic banks and institutions when compared to the banks which are truly global do not have such robust system in place and thus cannot leverage on the technological benefits. On the contrary the global banks have wonderful software which are universally accepted and have a common software and data base which is less expensive in day to day operations and thus brings down the operating cost of the bank.

Similarly the cost of human resources is also very high for such banks because apart from the banking professionals these banks also need Islamic jurists, legal advisers and economists. These increase the cost of providing banking and financial services to the common public at large. Since the law are very unique and could be understood and interpreted by different person in different ways it is utmost necessary that there are scholars of high pedigree who could provide guidance in designing the products and understanding the legal nature of all the services offered to the customers. And finding and hiring such scholars cost the bank and institutions. So we can gauge that Islamic bank and institutions need to spend higher when compared to their global peers to provide the same service to their customers.

• Regulatory environment


Islamic bank and financial institution since are not regulated as strictly as the other global banks and thus due to laxity in the regulatory environment each bank has its own financial statements and other accounting information. The entire financial information is not standardized and due to which when the financial statement on the bank are to be interpreted by someone form the other country, he has to get it converted into a statement which could be understood. Sometime the documents also need to be translated from one language to another. It all happens because there is no proper regulation on the banks and financial institutions.
Due to lack of regulations the cross border transaction are not proper documented and many a time confusion happens because of this.

• Excess liquidity and less return


As per Sharia, the sacred laws, Islam prohibits manufacturing, distributing and consuming many things. Thus there are various businesses which could not be pursued by these banks irrespective of the fact that they could be profitable and generate more revenues for the investor. Thus this severely restricts the n scope of the operations of the Islamic banks and institutions when compared to the global peers which do not have such restrictions
.
Also, charging interest, or investing money in speculative venture is also not allowed and thus the monetary flow could not be properly controlled by such banks when compare to the global peers which trades in derivatives, swaps, and futures.
This effectively creates a situation where the cash is lying idle in the bank which generated no or low return when compared to money generated by the global bank.

• Taxation and legal issues


Many of the financial products of the Islamic banks and financial institution are taxed more than one time by the government because in such product in one transaction the asset/product which is brought once could be sold more than one time. This issue has been solved in UK and Bahrain but the problem still persists in many other western countries. Since these product are complex and there in not enough regulation on all these products coupled with double taxation these products lose sheen when compared to the product offered by the global banks.

Also as per Sharia, it is mandatory for the Islamic banks and institution to part away a part of their profit after a certain level of income (zakt), which in a way decrease the profitability of the banks when compare to the global peers, these products become less exotic when compared to global products.

Social Media Advertising Assignment

Social media is a good way to increase company’s trustworthiness and goodwill among the youngsters who are highly accustomed to the social networking sites now-a-days. Facebook which is one of the strongest social media platforms is being used by billions of youngsters on daily basis. Social media helps a company to understand what these youngsters like and what they don’t. Using this information companies can make effective advertisements and promotional campaigns. A marketer first need to know the taste, life style, behavior, likes and dislikes and accordingly he find out the product characteristics which can be used to sell the product. It will help in positioning the product also and hence will increase its acceptance in the target customer group. He can get all this information through social media like Facebook, Twitter, My Space etc. At these platforms youngsters, who have become highly computer –savvy, shares their personal information, their likes and lifestyle details. They also share which products they use and what good they found in them. When this information is shared between the friends, the other person makes his mind about the product. Social media gives a chance to a marketer to know the good and bad qualities perceived by the customers and he can reinforce the brand accordingly.


Lead Generation:



Social media also generates leads as a company gets information about the friend’s circle of an existing customer and hence it can approach them and give example of the existing customer as a person who has already used the product . Social media will give a chance to a company to directly engage with its customers which is very important today to make the customer associated with the company for a larger time (customer loyalty) and to sell other products of the company (or supplement products)  to the same customer. The company can also approach this customer base for pilot study of a product. Klososky has given a five element formula of Social marketing which helps a marketer to formulate an effective marketing strategy. These five elements are building productive websites, providing social technologies, using mobile tools to enable youngsters check the social media at random times, driving online traffic and measurement systems. He also focuses social media as an important platform for digital marketing which is highly effective, cheaper and full of information for a marketer. We-advertising is one of the most effective advertising mediums for companies and Social media helps in increasing the traffic on the website. Social media empowers a youngster to directly interact with the company can give his feedback about the product which is important for a marketer to improve the next version of the product especially electronic gadgets. Social Media is also a good platform for a marketer to advertise any event (exhibition, conference or customer-care campaigns) it is going to start shortly. As youngsters are less interested to read conventional newspapers rather they are more active at the social media, companies need to advertise these events at these places so that it can increase visibility of such events. The marketer will also get an idea about the number of people who are going to attend the given event.


Hence, Social media advertising is the best way for brands to communicate with the young adults. It is the best way to discover the customer’s preferences, to get his feedback, to position the brand, to change the attitude and to directly interact with the youngsters in the most cost-effective manner which is highly efficient, effective and widely accepted as well.