Firms and companies around the world today utilize their best resources and manpower to explore the benefits of conducting business and carrying out economic transactions in the virtual world also. The conventional patterns of marketing products by giving the targeted customers ‘a touch and feel of the products’ have been done away with by introducing them to online ads, promotions, reviews and critiques that lures customers to buying or investing in the product (Ashley & Tuten, 2015).
The term ‘e business’ is popularly used which refers to electronic business. Electronic business can be defined as a business that is run via the means of internet. Such businesses carry out their activities of exchange of goods and services and economic and financial transactions through the use of information communication technology or ICT (Khan et al., 2015). The e businesses also cater to solving the problems of the customers related to the product or service by providing networks of customer care and assistance centers.
The e businesses too like other businesses plans and carries forward its activities of revenue generation but it just does it through a different channel which is the internet. Here, the direct face to face interaction or mode of communication of employees of businesses with the customers is replaced by communication via the means of the internet (Keen, 2015).
The concept of e business was introduced in 1996 by International Business Machines Corporation or IBM’s team of marketing. The multinational company revived and used all its resources to build up a strong network of information technology infrastructure to help the company sustain survive with the emergence of internet. It was then; the company along with the advertising genius David Ogilvy started the campaign to launch an ‘e business’ to transform the business and operations of the brand into a highly integrated format. This also rekindled the position of the company and positioned it as a technology giant promoting innovations through its manner of operations (Tsimonis & Dimitriadis, 2014).
The terms e business and e commerce are used interchangeably but, there is a lot of difference between the two. E-Business includes all activities and functions in a business from production to selling of the products. The e-commerce transactions come under the purview of management of an e business. While, e commerce involves only the financial and commerce related activities of a particular business which are both operating physically in the buildings and establishments as well as in the online platforms. E businesses are therefore more complex and involve a number of functions.
The Gulf countries of the Arab region comprise of the countries of United Arab Emirates or UAE, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait.
The countries lie in the Persian Gulf region of western Asia and hence they are popularly known as Gulf countries too. These nations are also the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council or GCC, a regional body of intergovernmental operations to carry out political, economic, social and cultural activities of the member states. All of these countries have monarchical form of government in both constitutional and federal structures (Benmamoun et al., 2016).
The Arab countries of the gulf region are extremely rich in minerals, crude oil and gas production. Gulf nations are known for the transformation brought to their economies by the discovery of crude oil reserves. These nations are rich in natural resources but they have to rely heavily on imported goods to fulfill the requirements of their populations. The plans for development of the infrastructure, transport and communication, industries call for high demand for investment, supply of resources and technology (Sahouly, 2015). This demand has let the countries to enter into bilateral and international trade relations with other countries of the world and carry out import and export of goods.
The gulf countries have adopted e business to boost the economic productivities of their economies. The countries have adopted modern usages of ICT to yield profitable returns for their companies. UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait have shown good results in using e commerce in their e businesses. Oman and Bahrain have also tried to incorporate e businesses in their systems of business operations. Some of these countries have also adopted e governance policies (Omari, 2013).
Japan is an island country situated off the eastern coast of the Asian continent. The island nation surrounded by the Pacific Ocean. An archipelago of 6852 islands the country’s main islands are- Honshu Hokkaido, Shikoku and Kyushu. The country has a constitutional monarchy form of government and is known for its economic development. The country is the fourth largest economy in the world in terms of purchasing power and in the Global Competitiveness Report Japan is ranked in the eighth position (World Economic Forum, 2016).
Japan is an industrially developed country and its export and import constitutes a very important part of its economic activities. The country has an excellent infrastructure and the companies and firms are known for sophistication. The research, development and innovation of the manufacturing companies coupled with the geniuses of a number of scientists has also been a source of development for the island nation (World Economic Forum, 2016).
Japan is an industrially developed country but the country lacks natural resources which are necessary for continuation of its technological processes and industrial development. Currently the country is the second largest importer of coal and the third largest importer of crude oil and oil products in the world. While, the Arab Gulf countries primarily depend on energy exports in financing their economic development. For this reason, the trade relations between the Gulf nations and Japan have increased substantially. Gradually the trade relations have also developed into participation of Japanese firms and companies in the infrastructural development of the Gulf nations. Therefore, it can be concluded that the countries are involved in a dyadic relationship of conducting trade and business to ensure their economic prosperities respectively (Mofa.go.jp., 2014).
First, the country wants to secure its supply of crude oil from the Gulf nations.
Secondly, Japan wants to secure its shipping routes from the Strait of Hormuz to the Japanese ports via the Strait of Malacca.
The political and economic conflicts in the Middle East have made the gulf nations to survive in an atmosphere of unrest. In such situations too, Japan has been cooperating and helping the nations to stabilize their economies. Japan has been the largest contributor and donor to the Gulf countries after USA and France. Japan imports 34% of its crude oil from Saudi Arabia, 24% from the UAE, 11% from Qatar and 7% from Kuwait (Calder, 2015).
In the same way, Japanese companies in Qatar are engaged in the construction and development of infrastructure projects for organizing the 2022 Fifa World Cup. In UAE, Japan is among the top five sources for foreign direct investment Japan imports crude oil, gas, metals, aluminum, chemicals and precious stones from UAE, while UAE imports heavy machineries, vehicles, electrical goods, electronic appliances, textiles, rubber and iron and steel from it. Many Japanese companies generally use Dubai and Abu Dhabi as hubs for conducting their activities across the region. Around 400 Japanese firms are present in the UAE and about 280 in Dubai. Electronics manufacturing brands like Panasonic, Sony, Sharp and Toshiba are operational I the region. Hitachi’s unit was also involved in the construction of popular landmarks such as the Burj Khalifa and the Dubai Metro in Dubai (Dr. Al-Tamimi, 2015).
The existing trade relations between the two regions have a great scope of expansion in the near future considering the fact that years of mutual trust and cooperation have strengthened their multilateral ties. Apart from being dependant on the crude oil reserves and technological development in return, the two regions can also focus on the following aspects too:
Goods that can be imported from Gulf countries to Japan: Dry fruits like dates, Coffee, Musical instruments, accessories and artwork.
Goods that can be imported from Japan to Gulf countries: Handicrafts and hand-made goods, green tea, snacks and cultural and entertainment products like anime.
The Arab Gulf nations and Japan, both are situated in different geopolitical locations. Both the regions are also located at strategic positions of the globe where ocean route is the most viable means of transportation for carrying out import and export trade. Therefore in order to maintain the cost effectiveness of the businesses and to achieve the trading goals, the strategy of e business can be used by the two regions (Omari, 2013).
Social media refers to all those forms of channels of information sharing networks which are connected to each other through the world wide web or Web 2.0. These platforms operate using the web based technologies through the computer and telecommunication networks and create interactive virtual networks for exchange of ideas, communication and information among communities, groups and individuals (Rodrigues, Sarabdeen & Balasubramanian, 2016). Examples of social media are- Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Google+, Wechat, Youtube, Whatsapp and Viber.
The benefits of social media for businesses can be explained in the following manner:
Gain valuable customer insights: The social media platforms are very helpful to understand the customers, whom a business caters ultimately. Social media provides a valuable storehouse of information specifically, because the data illustrates the feedback the current customers are sharing among each other and also with the potential customers. The information also explains which aspect of a product or service they are talking about or what is the product they are taking about as well as the channel through which they are communicating (Hajli, 2014).
Increase brand awareness and loyalty: Social media marketing can help create awareness and improve brand presence. This will lead to the growth of business as well as strengthen customer relationships. Such strong customer relationships result in the customers having a loyalty towards the brand.
Run targeted ads with real-time results: targeted ads refer to advertisements targeted to a specific target customer base which have the greatest possibility of buying the products. Real-time advertising with its high efficiency, target setting and real time bidding and auctions have contributed greatly to the effectiveness of online advertisements. The ad publishers get the best price, and advertisers get the best advertising space resulting in profits (Silvertouchtech.co.uk., 2016).
Generate higher converting leads: The process of marketing to stimulate and capture interest in a product so that a pipeline for sales is developed in the future is known as lead generation.
Provide rich customer experiences: The process will also help in providing good customer experiences that will help in retaining customers for the business to thrive.
Increase website traffic and search ranking: Increasing traffic to the website of the e businesses through maximization of search engine will lead to profitable returns for the business. The process involves designing, writing, and coding the e business website in a way that it increases the number of hits or entry to the website. The higher the number of hits the website gets, the higher is the rate if its visibility to the customers (Keen, 2015).
Information about competitors: It is very important to keep a regular watch on the activities of the competing websites and the flow of traffic to them.
Share content faster and easier: Use of the most efficient technologies and the appropriate keywords will help sharing of information faster and quicker for the businesses. This will also lead to cutting down costs for the company that needs to be spent on additional labor force.
Geotargeting: Targeting the customer base on the basis of their geographical location, keeping in mind the customer preferences will help e businesses cater to the specific demands of the customers. This will also help in understanding the different customer bases spread over the virtual networks (Constantinides, 2014).
Build relationships: By understanding who its customers are and what is the content they are looking for the e businesses can run their operations to suit the customer demands. They can strategize their functioning in providing the best product and delivering the best service to the customers thereby landing into a relationship that lasts for longer period of time.
These benefits of social media have the potential to expand the reach of e businesses amongst the customers. Therefore the social media channels should be incorporated in the marketing campaign of companies to increase their businesses.
A channel that reviews products in the social media like YouTube can be improved in the following manner:
The profile look: The visibility of the most important features like the brand name, logo, product type, company name is very necessary to increase the traffic flow to the channel. The look of the channel also represents the look of the business hence, it is very important that it is prominent, bold and error free.
Smart videos: Smart and interesting videos, graphics and animation with additional links will be very attractive. Use of tools like Goanimate and Wevideo can help in creating interesting animation and short motion pictures.
Annotations: Use of annotations can help to enable viewers to call for action. Such annotations can direct to the product website giving the customer a more detailed information.
Express your view: The viewers have clicked on the YouTube channel to find out what the reviewer says about the product. Hence such view and opinion should be the most prominent aspect.
Planning: The first and most important stage is to plan the script and video to be used in the channel. The exact keywords, the most important or quality of the product that needs to be discussed and the call for action like-‘subscribe to channel for a more detailed view or clink on link for details’ should be planned accordingly. The script should be entertaining as well as unique and not imitating another channel.
Engaging videos: The videos that have the highest possibility of drawing attention should be uploaded to keep the viewers engaged in the channel. There should also be a mixture of ‘burst videos’ and ‘evergreen videos’. Burst videos will be instantly popular and give high hit rates but, will also fade gradually while; evergreen videos will have the scope of increasing the archived channels list (Kaur, 2016).
Regular uploads: Viewers generally only like to subscribe channels which are regular in uploading content. Hence the channel should have frequent and regular new uploads with crisp precise keywords in the title and Google adwords to increase search results.
Customization: YouTube allows its customers to make the channel customized in the highest possible way and hence the channel should be customized using backgrounds, thumbnails, design element from blogs. The YouTube channel bio and custom URL should be used in the end by putting additional link to the product website’s URL in the video description.
Social media plays a very important role in marketing strategies by new opportunities for customers to involve in social interaction. An effective use of social media platforms and online communities will help in increasing the brand recognition as well as the reliability of the channel too. Social media networks are a storehouse of customer information which can be utilized to build strong relationships.
Social media provides different values to companies like enhanced brand popularity, facilitates word-of-mouth information, increase of sales and sharing information in a business context (DeMers, 2014). Moreover, online communities and social networking sites (SNSs) can be termed as an effective web technology for social interactions and sharing information. Additionally, the individuals connected in virtual networks through social media provide shared values, leading to a positive impact on trust of the brand and firm. Trust is at the heart of developing a e business. It is therefore very important to evaluate the trust of the customers in the e business in its transactional operations. Social media helps in building this trust so that more and more customers use the products to give profitable returns. This involves in value co-creation with customers instead of value creation for consumers (Constantinides, 2014).
This also makes the organization understand what needs to be done to increase the quality of their websites, social media accounts, quality of content and feedback responding that needs attention to increase views. This also gives an understanding as to which social media platform is the most appropriate to market the product, which social media helped generating highest customer attention and all such analysis.
Instagram: Instagram is a social media platform that allows the users to share photographs and videos. It was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and launched in 2010 and was acquired by Facebook in 2012. It allows users to use ‘hashtags’ or ‘#’,‘geotags’ and different filters to be applied in the photos and videos. In order to do Instagram marketing, the trend of followers should be steady and consistent because this will increase the reach of the business posts. Every time a new review is posted like ‘#productquality#newarabcoffee# review’, the more reach it will have the more will it impact the business. The use of options like ‘Insight’ will give access to the user in engagement information about the product. Creativity and promotion of interaction with followers will also help in increasing growth. For example a simple way of tagging three other brands of similar nature or regular business associates of friends will help. The instagram posts can also be shared in cross networks like Facebook also to increase views.
Snapchat: Snapchat is a social media platform that allows sharing of image and multimedia messages. It was launched in 2011 primarily used for creating multimedia messages referred to as ‘snaps’. Such snaps can be a photo or a short video and can be edited with filters, effects, text captions, and drawings. Ephemeral messages, geofilters, snapcodes are its other features. Snapchat-exclusive promotions will help to grow Snapchat following. Use of occasional discounts and promotional codes will also help advertise more. The easiest way can be to post a series of snaps telling the story of the brand and then asking the viewers to post their snaps and thereafter exchanging with them the code. Publicizing important business events related to the brand or using the hashtag to relate or connect to a review about some other product will also garner more audience views.
The concept of physical store means the conventional way of visiting a shop or store that sells products and then buying it after physically examining the product. while in the online stores customers just browse on the internet, check about the product details reading through the information and then decide whether to buy it or not. In order to promote trade relations between the Arab Gulf countries and Japan creation of physical stores will be of great help. Stores can be opened in different Gulf countries that can sell Japanese products and in Japan in different locations to sell products from the Gulf countries.
Selection of location: The first important stage of setting up such stores is to find out where is the nucleus of customers that will give the store the maximum sales. The legal implications, licensing, different business policies in the different countries are also to be taken care of.
Feasibility issues: It is also very important to understand and examine how feasible it is to open a store for the business keeping in mind the fact that it has to maintain connectivity with countries which is spread in opposite directions. The economic and political conditions of the countries are to be taken into consideration (Campaignlive.co.uk., 2017).
Infrastructure and inventory issues: Setting up of a shop would mean a complete infrastructure along with warehouses and inventories. Therefore, it is important to analyze the pros and cons as well.
Employees: In order to run the stores properly, employees well trained and skilled to carry out the day to day activities are important. The employees should be well trained with product knowledge and trained with modern technology so that they can integrate the stores activities with the e business platform. The diversity in language, culture, values, mind set and temperament of the diverse regions are to be taken into consideration too (El-Gohary, Selim & Eid, 2016).
Conclusion
E businesses are very helpful in carrying out trade and commerce between different countries, business houses and individuals. The development of internet and technology evolved out of the computers, desktops and mobiles have added new marketing approaches to advertise and create awareness about products The Arab Gulf countries and Japan are distinct representatives of countries with economic development characterized by development attained due to the presence of their own potential resources. The grade and commerce between the two regions have been there and has strengthened with time. With the use of social media in marketing its is possible to reach a widely dispersed audience providing higher visibility for products. Therefore social media should be integrated with physically existing business set ups to increase market reach and gain profits for firms and companies
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