Technology and life

Technology is a part of our life. If we think a day without using any electronic devices or any technology, how will it be? If we think a day of ours from morning to evening, what all things we use? Among all those devices and technologies, one device is always with us like our shadow. Yes, the mobile phone is too attached to our life. Let us see some facts from surveys before discussing further on this.

An Indian smart phone user spends around three hours a day on the handset mostly in entertainments apps in mobile. According to a Nielsen-Informate Mobile Intelligence survey, Indian smart phone user spends 72 per cent of the time on activities such as gaming, entertainment, applications (apps) and internet related content.

The same survey states that the Indian young mobile users prefer texting (sms) and chatting than the vice calls. From the survey, it is understood that the young generation, age group 15 – 24, uses mobile phone more than three hours a day compared to an average two hours a day of usage of the people in the age group of over 31 years. The younger generation spends around 45 minutes in chatting and SMS compared to around 15 minutes for the age group more than 31 years. It also found that 68 per cent of the 15-24 year olds used a chat app last month as compared to 42 per cent for the 31 year old and above category. So many other facts are also there in the survey results.

The above survey reveals the difference in behavior of mobile users of different age groups. There is an important point to be noted by the marketers, the younger generation uses mobile phone more frequently. It is a part of their life style. They use texting to communicate with friends. The usage of internet in mobile phone is increasing among young generation. This gives a huge opportunity for the marketers to reach a person personally through his/her mobile. Marketers can use the help of mobile operators to get data about the usage pattern of mobile users. From that data we can generate lot of useful information about our target market and their interests.

Huge amount of data is generated by the use of mobile phones. Lot of behavioral patterns! This opens up a business opportunity for the mobile companies. They can sell the data to other companies or they can appoint business analysts to generate useful information from the data they capture. The mobile companies can use specialists for specific industries to scan the happening in that industry and can provide tailor-made solutions to that industry. Information is power; the mobile companies can generate lot of information from the data they have.  The business model can be similar to financial analysts. Specific advisers to each industry, this will be the trend in future.

Generating useful information from the data with mobile companies will be another area of interest for the business people. This gives opportunities to software product development companies to develop products for data analysis for marketing. This will be another billion dollar highly competitive market. We know that the companies like Walmart survive in the market place because of the data analysis capability of that company. They generate lot of information from the data they generate at their own showrooms. But here the situation is different. The companies have to generate information for their industry or for that particular company from the data captured by a third party. This is a tricky situation for the companies. The software application developers can leverage on this situation and can make products that suit different companies. This kind of an evolution happened in ERP products. The companies can start with specific products for specific companies. Since we are referring a company which is different from the telecom service and from the company which gets the fruits of the product, the third company can later give a vanilla product that will fit for multiple companies in that industry.  Then that company can provide custom made products to specific companies from the vanilla product and even suggest companies to go in a particular line.  That is a great opportunity they have.

Personalized advertisement is another great opportunity that the marketers have from the behavior change in youngsters. The surveys say that the youngsters spend most of the time in mobile for browsing the net. Mobiles are personal assets of people. This is why we can use this opportunity to send personal messages to people. Companies like Google are using this concept of personalized advertisement in their products like Gmail. When we sign in to Gmail, Google will show advertisements related to the message content at side. The same concept is used in Google ads in Google search engine. Now because of the increased mobile usage among the young generation, other companies can also venture into such personalized advertisements. For this to happen, companies should have an in depth understanding of their customers. Even otherwise, in order to succeed in the market place companies have to understand the costumers. The companies should understand the behavior changes in their target customers. The increased usage of mobile among the population makes this task easy for the companies. By analyzing the data, the companies can generate lot of insights and based on that the companies can advertise effectively. Though this companies can improve the reach of companies among the customers.

It will be a great experience if we get advertisements on the products we search in net. If we are planning to buy a laptop, we will certainly search in internet for the latest models available and the specifications etc. We search the offers available for the product. When we fix n a product we will start searching for the best offers available for that in online market and the nearest shops. So during such a search, we of course will use mobile phones either to call the shops or to brows internet. During such a search process, suppose we get offers in our mobile related to the product we search and related to the availability of that product in nearest shops etc. what will be the impact that will create in us? Enormous, isn’t it?  Such an advertisement is possible with mobile phones. We can gather so many data about the mobile phone users including the details about the area of living, usage pattern etc. So the companies can realize the dream explained in this paragraph. To do this, continuous monitoring of the user is required. This is a new opportunity created by the technology advancement. The customers will get the advertisements they want to choose.

Technology brought lot of changes to the life of people. I refer the people around me. I see lot of changes around me. I try to list a few here

• ·         Communication
• ·         Internet: Dial-up to broadband
• ·         Mobile phones : 1G, 2G, 3G …
• ·         ADSL land line
• ·         Wireless connectivity
• ·         PCs, laptops, palmtops etc
• ·         Transport
• ·         Infrastructure
• ·         Media: Lot of television channels
• ·         Print media to e-media
• ·         Online stores
• ·         Television

The above is a small list but lot to say about this. Communication is an area where we witnessed a lot of changes. So the changes in communication changed the behaviour of people so heavily. The changes in communication reduced the time taken to communicate between two faraway places. This gave lot of flexibility in business. People are exposed these technology changes and they are the users of it. The changes we can see in the buying behaviour in people are extraordinary. People started ordering items through phone. People can call for a taxi, for food or even book and fix a consultancy time with a doctor etc. Previously all these were done by personally going at point of service and get that done.

People started extensively using internet and started buying things through internet. This is a major change in behaviour we see in the young consumers as well as in some tech savvy old people. Today we can buy s many things through internet. We call this as e-commerce. People buy stamps, train tickets flight tickets, books, T-shirts, watches, electronic equipments, what else and what not through internet.             

Even though, these technology innovations create lot of opportunity for the marketers and business people. It raises lot of security and privacy issues. Since we are connected to a big network which is monitoring us, the technology reduces our private space. We are exposed to a large brilliant network through a set of latest technologies. Every day new new innovations are coming to the technical world. All those will be implemented by the business world to improve their profitability, it that technology helps the business. Some privacy concerns are raised by both western and eastern world. Because of such issues Google maps had to reduce some of their operations in London. The technology and security, these two are too related. Technology advancement improves the security at the same time it provides more options to hack it also. It is double edged sword. The positive side of life and negative side of life, both are advancing at same pace with improvements in technology.

The technology is a blessing as well as a curse!!!