Category: Business

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Stealth Marketing

Stealth Marketing is based on the fact that word of mouth remains the most effective form of promotion. As such, the article Stealth Marketing: How to reach consumers surreptitously (PDF) is giving an insight look in this new marketing trend considered to be a viable alternative to conventional advertising because it is perceived as softer and more personal than traditional advertising.

Here are some tactics and examples mentioned in the paper:

  • Viral Marketing: word of mouth via digital platform.
  • Brand pushers: hired actors who approach people in real-life situations to slip them a commercial message.
  • Celebrity marketing: paying celebrities or famous people money to covertly or overtly promote products.
  • Bait-and-tease marketing: getting people interested in something which is revealed later to be something quite different.
  • Marketing in video games: embedding brands and logos in electronic games, sometimes called “advergaming”.
  • Marketing in pop and rap music: embedding commercial messages in popular music.
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Romanian Telecom Market

Considering the fact that after EU integration in 2007 metropolitan aerial fiber optics networks will not be allowed anymore, the Parliament is working on a major project for setting up metropolitan underground networks. It will definetly be a hard blow for the actual providers (and especially for the cvasi-monopolistics cable network operators) that are doing more or less whatever they want with the market at the moment in most of the cities across the country.

Designed to be accessible to all local authorities, companies, and especially to telecoms (phone, ISPs, CATV), the new metropolitan infrastructure will basically open the market and allow final users to choose amog various communications services providers. For Bucharest only the investment is estimated to USD 2 bn.

(Source, romanian only: Cotidianul)

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2005 Index of Economic Freedom

The 11th edition of the Index of Economic Freedom published by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal measures 161 countries against a list of 50 independent variables divided into 10 broad factors of economic freedom. These 50 variables are grouped into the following categories:

  • Trade policy,
  • Fiscal burden of government,
  • Government intervention in the economy,
  • Monetary policy,
  • Capital flows and foreign investment,
  • Banking and finance,
  • Wages and prices,
  • Property rights,
  • Regulation
  • Informal market activity.

Surprinsingly (or not) US for the first time no longer ranks among the top 10 free nations of the world. Surprisingly (or not) Romania is placed the 125th way behind countries as Rwanda or Lebanon.

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E-commerce in Romania

The main players on the e-commerce market are expecting a boom in business next year, but the fireworks may fizzle out in 2006. The market is now estimated at some EUR 2.5 million. According to the BusinessRomania.com article, E-commerce boom and bust? the sector expects to see a growth of at least 200-250 percent in 2005.

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Selling Time

Most salespeople spend only 10 percent of their available time actually selling, according to a study made by Proudfoot Consulting, cited by Business Opportunities Weblog.

According to the study, sales representatives spend their time as follows:

  • Active selling – 10%
  • Prospecting – 10%
  • Problem Solving – 14%
  • Downtime (e.g., personal phone calls and e-mails) – 17%
  • Travel time – 18%
  • Administration – 31%

Also, the biggest barriers to sales people’s effectiveness were found to be:

  • Lack of manager feedback or help for sales teams
  • Poor sales call quality and inadequate monitoring
  • Weak or cumbersome sales reporting systems
  • Training that was seldom reinforced or properly coached in the field
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Who Rules the Business

They Rule is a Flash application that can be used to create maps of the overlap between the boards of directors of major companies in US in 2004.

They Rule aims to provide a glimpse of some of the relationships of the ‘US ruling class’. It takes as its focus the boards of some of the 500 most powerful U.S. companies, which share many of the same directors. You can also search the direct connections between two organization.

A user can save a map of connections complete with their annotations and email links to these maps to others.

Thanks Business Romania