Ged Carroll

Category: business | 商業 | 상업 | ビジネス

My interest in business or commercial activity first started when a work friend of my Mum visited our family. She brought a book on commerce which is what business studies would have been called decades earlier. I read the book and that piqued my interest.

At the end of your third year in secondary school you are allowed to pick optional classes that you will take exams in. this is supposed to be something that you’re free to chose.

I was interested in business studies (partly because my friend Joe was doing it). But the school decided that they wanted me to do physics and chemistry instead and they did the same for my advanced level exams because I had done well in the normal level ones. School had a lot to answer for, but fortunately I managed to get back on track with college.

Eventually I finally managed to do pass a foundational course at night school whilst working in industry. I used that to then help me go and study for a degree in marketing.

I work in advertising now. And had previously worked in petrochemicals, plastics and optical fibre manfacture. All of which revolve around business. That’s why you find a business section here on my blog.

Business tends to cover a wide range of sectors that catch my eye over time. Business usually covers sectors that I don’t write about that much, but that have an outside impact on wider economics. So real estate would have been on my radar during the 2008 recession.

  • Competition in logistics + more

    Failure of competition in logistics market – The EU thinks this website is the key to fixing its weak e-commerce market — Quartz – surely there is some arbitrage play for ‘trumpeting’ deliveries in and out to take advantage of lowest cost parcel routing? Given the amount of parcel carriers why is there a failure of market competition in logistics. I suspect that gathering data on this by the EU is the first step; in a similar way to what happened on mobile roaming rates. More Europe-related posts here

    WeChat failed to go global | Techinasia – the thing I took away from this foreign campaigns was how similar they were to what I would have expected a foreign company to do in China. I suspect that they weren’t localised enough and Tencent didn’t think about a compelling hook

    Housing crisis in China’s ‘Silicon Valley’: Huawei, other hi-tech giants head for cheaper cities as rising costs deter talents – also provides opportunities for start-ups to take up staff that don’t want to make the move

    Nokia could cut up to 15,000 jobs | Telecom Asia – not surprising there would have been a lot of overlap between them

    Adidas to Return Mass Shoe Production to Germany in 2017 | Business of Fashion – isn’t likely to be traditional adidas models like the Gazelle or Superstar as designs are adapted for the robot production line that Adidas intends to use

    Why Huawei is suing Samsung over cellphone patents – Recode –  the amount of redactions in this document is interesting. The optics of the court case are trying to position Huawei as an innovator. Huawei will win in the Chinese court filling. The US one could be more interesting. If Huawei is considered to be abusing its position it could find itself in an EU court case though

    A new study shows how government-collected “anonymous” data can be used to profile you — Quartz

    Even Apple is acknowledging that the “iPads in education” fad is coming to an end | Quartz – which has to be worrisome for tablets in business surely?

    Why Big Apps Aren’t Moving to Swift (Yet)

  • Consumer Packaged Goods innovation

    Consumer packaged goods innovation – CB Insights put together an interesting presentation on the changing landscape of the consumer packaged goods sector.

    The key takeouts for me were:

    • The similarity to the technology sector in terms of startups developing a brand and selling out to a bigger firm
    • A key part of what they are buying is brand building – an activity that the likes of P&G and Unilever have excelled at in the past. Historically new product launches in CPG has a low success rate. Many brands have been going for decades. The startup acquisitions allow the Unilevers of the world to buy successes and change their portfolios faster
    • Start-ups and partnerships focused on process improvements across all business functions from supply chain management to the final interface between customer and product prior to purchase. Success and institutional heritage have baked processes and infrastructure in existing businesses that might hold them back looking at new channels. When I worked on an assignment at Unilever there were best practice guides for everything. These guides were smart and well written with lots of good heuristics in them. But you also had to complete an eight page form to get a search run on a social listening platform
    • Premium is defined around consumer values towards the environment rather than ‘luxury’. In this respect the CPG market kind of feels like the early 1990s in laundry products. Ecover started to get prominent place in UK supermarkets. You saw a good deal of product innovation from P&G and Unilever. You had liquid laundry dispensers that went in the tub and were supposed to reduce the amount of water used in the wash. However, pragmatism overran environmental concerns during the recession and supermarket’s own washing powder started to take off. Major brands were accused of brand washing

  • The New Nokia

    The New Nokia can rise from the ashes of the old. Microsoft finally let go of its licence for the Nokia brand license on May 19, 2016.
    Slide03
    There is a lot of logic to this move:

    • Microsoft has already written down the full value of the business acquisition
    • It has got the most valuable technical savvy out of the team and moved it into the Surface business
    • It removes problematic factories and legacy products

    For the businesses that have acquired the rights to use the Nokia name and the factories the upsides are harder to see.

    The factories may be of use, however there is over supply in the Shenzhen eco-system and bottlenecks aren’t usually at final manufacture, but in the component supply chain.

    There is still some brand equity left in the Nokia phone brand. I analysed Nokia along with a number of other international Greater China smartphone eco-system brands using Google Trend data.
    Slide06
    There has been a decline in brand interest over the past 12 months for Nokia of 37%
    Slide07
    Nokia still has comparable brand equity to other legacy mobile brands such as BlackBerry and Motorola
    Slide08
    The brand equity is comparable to other value mobile brands. Honor; Huawei’s value brand has had a lot of money and effort pumped into it to achieve its current position.
    Slide09
    But it’s brand equity doesn’t stack up well against premium handset brands from Greater China. The reason for this is that smartphone marketing and fast moving consumer goods marketing now have similar dynamics – both are in mature little differentiated markets. Brands need to have deep pockets  and invest in regular advertising to remain top-of-mind across as large an audience as possible. Reach and frequency are more important than social media metrics like engagement.

    In addition to advertising spend needs to be put into training and incentivising channel partners including carriers.

    They are entering a hyper-competitive market and it isn’t clear what their point of advantage will be. Given the lock down that Google puts on Android and commoditised version of handset manufacture, the best option would be to look for manufacturing and supply chain efficiencies  – like Dell did in the PC industry. But that’s easier said than done.

    Garnering the kind of investment required to seriously support an international phone brand is a hard sell to the finance director or potential external investors.

    Slide13
    Growth is tapering out.
    Slide14
    The average selling price is in steady decline
    Slide16
    This is partly because the emerging markets are making the majority new phone purchases.
    Slide15
    Consumers in developed markets are likely holding on to the their phones for longer due to a mix economic conditions and a lack of compelling reason to upgrade.
    Slide12
    All of the consumers that likely want and can afford a phone in developed markets have one. Sales are likely to be on a replacement cycle as they wear out. Manufacturers have done a lot to improve quality and reliability of devices.

    Even the old household insurance fraud standby of dropping a phone that the consumer was bored with down the toilet doesn’t work on the latest premium Android handsets due to water-proofing.
    Slide20

    More information

    The answer to the question you’ve all been asking | Nokia – Nokia’s official announcement
    Gartner highlights a more challenging smartphone sector for Nokia than when it “quit” in 2013 | TelecomTV
    Nokia is coming back to phones and tablets | The Verge
    So the Nokia brand returns.. with a Vengeance | Communities Dominate Brands

    Supporting data slides in full

  • Monster internet surveillance + more

    Britain to pay billions for monster internet surveillance network | DuncanCampbell.org – lets park the moral dilemma this represents for a moment, would other countries come to the UK for expertise in terms of how to implement this locally? What countries would they be? What would the optics be on it? Who are the contractors that are likely to benefit from this work in the UK? More on security related issues here.

    I think it will be pretty hard to make lemonade out of these lemons. The business opportunity probably won’t scale to get a ‘space race’ type benefit, the likely client countries may pose problems in terms of optics. After Snowden, you can count out the EU territories. An obvious contractor to benefit would likely be Huawei (mix of telecoms and enterprise tech, fast growing player in enterprise storage) – who wouldn’t need British expertise to sell this monster internet surveillance solution abroad

    Let’s Talk About Amazon Reviews: How We Spot the Fakes | The Wirecutter – Although many reviews on Amazon are legitimate, more and more sketchy companies are turning to compensated Amazon reviews to inflate star ratings and to drum up purchases

    jenny odell • living a designed life – interesting essay on the rendered spaces used by developers in their sales pitches

    Samsung 837 – JWT Intelligence – really interesting retail space

    Italian Crime Series Gomorrah Kills Pornhub Traffic – Pornhub Insights – the power of mainstream media played out online, I am sure there would be a similar dip for something like Game of Thrones or the FA Cup Final in the US and UK respectively

    WPP Mobile New technology service from Maxus makes marketing as easy as Pie – gives WPP a bigger arbitrage opportunity but if you were a large client wouldn’t you be demanding similar implementation times?

    MSN Ceases Chinese Operations | ChnaTechNews – and that’s the last of the western portals when went there leaving the market

    CK Hutchison mulls legal challenge as EC thwarts its UK ambitions | TotalTele.com – not terribly surprising. UK Government’s big mistake was allowing BT to acquire a cellular operator again

    Misused English Words and Expressions in EU Publications – European Court of Auditors – Secretariat General Translation Directorate – fascinating document that explains why English speakers may feel exasperated at times with their EU counterparts

    Xiaomi faces existential crisis | Techinasia – if it loses the Chinese middle classes, it loses the opportunity to sell its eco-system of smart home products to them

  • Google design

    Google design has had a transformative effect on the world. It reminds me of Dieter Rams on the concept of design had said something to the effect of good design being invisible – once you see the product you couldn’t imagine things exist any other way.

    That’s a really good description of the web with Google design. In the markets where it operates (with the exceptions of Czech Republic, South Korea, Japan and Russia) it’s a monopoly. Different regulatory authorities are investigating them for leveraging their monopoly into market domination in other categories.
    urban dictionary on Google SERP
    With SERP (Search Engine Results Page) like this one above, I am not surprised that antitrust authorities are gaining an upper hand. This Urban Dictionary integration seems to cross the boundary from being useful to feature bundling. It deprives Urban Dictionary of an opportunity to put ad inventory in front of its audience. Urban Dictionary makes it’s money from retargeted banner ads and its own customisable merchandise. You can get any phrase in Urban Dictionary with its definition on a coffee mug, coaster set or tote bag.
    urban dictionary SERP
    It would be interesting to see if Google got into some sort of content agreement with Urban Dictionary. However I suspect that they have just gone ahead and done this? More about Google here.