Social media is infiltrating the business world, not only a tool used for personal interaction in the online medium, but also a powerful marketing resource that companies can use, at very low costs, to increase their visibility and improve their customer relations.
A recent report prepared by Stacombe Research and Planning on behalf of Optus Small and Medium Businesses provides a new and interesting perspective on how small to medium businesses view and use social media.
The European Brand Institute, Europe’s leading research institute for intangible assets, based in Vienna, Austria, has released the 2010 results for its annual brand valuation study, ‘eurobrand’. The study provides a ranking of Europe’s most valuable brands, both individual and brand corporations, as well as detailed brand analyses from country and industry perspectives. More than 3.000 brand corporations in 24 countries and 16 industries are examined (European Brand Institute, 2010a).
A recent International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) & The World Bank report, Doing Business 2011: Making a difference for entrepreneurs, presents a series of quantitative indicators on business regulation and the protection of property rights in 183 economies, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. This year’s edition is the eighth in a series of annual reports benchmarking the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it.
In the context of managing and improving marketing performance, the concept of marketing audit should play an important role as a comprehensive process of diagnosing and improving the marketing systems, processes, tools and principles an organization has currently in place.