Georgia Durham

It’s funny to study how the digital world has changed aspects of business in the way that this module has shown. I’ve spent my entire conscious life in the throes of the internet, and I barely remember life even pre-smartphone let alone before the time of the Dotcom bubble. However what’s interesting is the speed of the effects the internet has had, the rate of innovation and invention is snowballing - it took a lot longer to create the smartphone after the invention of the computer, but the time between the smartphone and the smartwatch was only a few years. I think that this shows that as people have begun to rely on the internet for more and more things, we can see ways that it will fit into our lives much clearer and easier. We assume, now, that the internet can do everything for us and if we find a niche area that it can’t, that’s when people innovate. The fact that, generationally, most people born since the invention of the internet are Digital Natives means tha...

Argos is a household name and a regular high street centrepiece. The Argos business model has always been closer to IKEA than that of normal retail stores, with its rows of catalogs which allow customers to write down ID numbers of items and receive a ticket on purchase which tells you when your order is ready for ‘collection’. Despite the unique layout of the store its wide variety of goods make it comparable to Wilko’s, Woolworths and Amazon. The latter has caused a fierce level of competition for Argos, despite not having a physical presence, Amazon’s digital business model was able to excel in the 4th industrial revolution. However back in 2012 Argos decided to implement a forward-thinking 5 year digital strategy, aiming to reinvent itself as a leading digital retailer using an omnichannel approach. Argos developed a number of ways to digitise itself using concept stores while keeping the core components of what customers liked about them. ‘Welcome walls...

I am intrigued by WeWork as a concept because technology is enabling people to work nomadically and separately but maintain the illusion of close physicality by connecting us instantaneously with each other. Social platforms, WiFi and businesses such as Skype, GoToWebinar, Viber and WhatsApp are just some of the ways technology has increased our availability which enables us to work in our own terms, but if more people are trying to be Digital Nomads, shouldn’t WeWork not have worked?Why open static offices? WeWork’s founder answers this question (Turk, 2018), saying WeWork products are “community driven” and “attached to the physical world”. WeWork use digital to improve physical access to others instead of replacing it. The community factor is a strong area for WeWork; they have found that enticing enterprises through the door for a month often means they will stay for life (Turk, 2018). WeWork are not valued as a real estate company, but rather as a technology company. ...

My scores were much the same on the digital literary test except for ‘Participating in online communities’ and ‘Managing online privacy and security’. I believe the reason for this is because the unit has grown my knowledge and understanding of these areas. Especially the breadth of online communities and the severity of online security which we saw in the Cambridge Analytica case study in week 4. My main takeaway from this module will be based around following the changing space of regulation in digital marketing and the internet in general. The fact that Cambridge Analytica were not punished for what they did - just how they did it proves the comment that Bright made on my first blog post , the sluggishness of regulation change/implementation has made it obsolete.  The data-heavy era we currently reside in has and continues to progress faster than regulation can be written to control it, meaning that scandals such as Cambridge Analytica are destined to continue until...

It is no secret that in marketing today, video content is king. According to HubSpot, 1/3 of all time spent online is dedicated to watching videos, which has meant that embedding videos in landing pages can increase conversion rates by up to 80% and 90% of consumers say that product videos aid them with purchasing decisions (Kolowich, 2017). Facebook has even responded by rewarding video content creation with financial incentives and increased exposure by prioritising video content on newsfeeds (Moses, 2016). From the infographic we can see just how popular video content is, especially on Facebook with 32 billion views daily across the platform. It is interesting however, that 85% of videos are watched with the sound off.  Interestingly from this infographic, we can see that when video content hasn’t got subtitles, only 66% of viewers will tune in to completion, compared with 91% when subtitles are present. However, subtitles also increase the soc...

The recent EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the gold standard of data protection laws which came into effect in May this year with the aim of protecting data for all EU citizens similar to a doctor protecting patient information – on a need to know basis. Ultimately, what GDPR does is protect information relating to an identifiable living person including their name, photographs, IP addresses etc (European Data Protection Supervisor, 2016). The introduction of GDPR has caused increased awareness in how personal data is used and shared by businesses. This has heightened since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, who grossly misused Facebook data to influence voter decisions in the Brexit referendum and the American Presidential election (Granville, 2018). So what can be deduced from the introduction of the most stringent data protection laws to date? Should we be worried by recent examples of personal data exploitation? What we know is that personal data can ...