The Life Explorer

Worldwide, the market of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems is increasing as more companies acknowledge its importance. It is expected to reach $36.5B by 2017 from $31.7B in 2016 (Columbus, 2013). Despite the growing number of the market, there are many businesses prefer to use traditional systems. This blog post discusses CRM and its differences to traditional systems. This blog post also overviews requirements toward successful CRM.     CRM versus Traditional Systems   CRM is “a set of software programs that support management activities performed to obtain, enhance relationships with, and retain customers” (Pearlson and Saunders, 2013, p.153). It allows the business to have a more comprehensive understanding of customers’ profiles which are pulled from all electronic touch points such as website/the internet, e-mail, call centre, KIOSKS, in real-time (Chen and Popovich, 2003). Based on the profiles (i.e. demography, geography, and consumer behaviour, etc.), th

Trust, plays a crucial role in online business which is characterised as virtual (Yoon, 2002) and has higher degree of uncertainty of transactions (Roca, García and de la Vega, 2009), as compared to traditional ones. This blog post critically analyses the relationship between trust and security in an online business. Security threats and trade-off experienced by the online business are also discussed. Finally, this blog post recommends both enterprises and consumers to transfer the risks of online payment to the third party.   Trusts and Security in Online Business   Perceived trusts, usefulness, and ease of use determine consumers’ intention in the online business (Roca, García and de la Vega, 2009). According to Sutanonpaiboon and Abuhamdieh (2008) the dimension of trust is not only trusting in another party (competence, benevolence, and integrity), but also trusting in the medium of the transaction which consists of physical (internet connectivity) and the virtual component

Khan Academy website ( https://www.khanacademy.org/ ) was developed by Sal Khan in 2005. It claims to be providing the world-class education for anyone in the world. This post identifies the website’s E-Business Model as well as analyses the elements of Value Proposition, Revenue Model, Market Opportunity, and Competitive Environment. This post also provides a recommendation for the website improvement in its existing market. E-Business Model   Khan Academy is categorised as a content provider website as it distributes information on subjects such as Math , Science, Computing , Arts & Humanities , and Economic & Finance as well as test preparations and college admissions . Value Proposition   Ultimately, Khan Academy puts inclusiveness at the central of its activities. First, all its contents are completely free. Second, it provides 4 languages option for the platform and even more ( around 27 languages ) for dubbed videos and translated transcripts. These a

This blog post discusses marketing of SMEs in the digital era and its challenges, by using AliExpress as the object of analysis. Eventually, this blog post recommends SMEs to participate in online market platforms and to improve knowledge and skills in digital marketing.     Marketing of SMEs in the Digital Era   Many studies show that companies’ marketing capabilities (including creativity, innovativeness, customer connection, etc.) have the positive relationship with their performance outcomes (Morgan, Vorhies and Mason, 2009; Cacciolatti and Lee, 2016). The same relationship is also experienced by SMEs (Merrilees, Rundle-Thiele and Lye, 2011), although the degree of influence is not as strong as it is in large companies (Walsh and Lipinski, 2009). The digital era has also significantly affected SMEs marketing capabilities as well as impacted their businesses. The employment of digital medias provides SMEs with low cost of communication and transaction with customers