Fernald Business Association

Archive for the ‘Retail’ Category

Dubai is a reputable trading jurisdiction worth an estimated US$ 80 billion (up over 100% from 2005) that has made strides in all aspects of the countries infrastructure. Much of what is in place now was built around, and funded, through the gas and oil industry. However, while still producing around 240,000 barrels daily, the oil and gas industry now only accounts for 6% of Dubai’s total economy. The shift from dependence on the emirates natural gas and oil reserves has seen heavy development and promotion of other industries such as tourism.

The UAE has been ranked 30th, and 31st respectively for the Corruption Perceptions Index and UN Human Development Index, the latter being a measure of a country’s standard of living. Both are testaments to the country’s reputation as an effective and developed jurisdiction, economically, and socially.

There are many engineering milestones in Dubai, and many more in planning. For instance the Burj, the most expensive hotel in the world, and until recently the tallest, built wholly on reclaimed land.

In an effort to promote the service industry a variety of incentives and supportive corporate structures have been devised. These include low cost energy and world-class communications infrastructure. Various Dubai free zones have been developed to provide services relevant for entrepreneurs, and hence encourage incorporation in Dubai.

Dubai is part of a collection of Emirates in the Middle East, collectively making the country of the United Arab Emirates, or the UAE. They are unified in many aspects, but each Emirate has their own tax decree, slightly differing from Emirate to Emirate.

As per the Dubai Income Tax Decree 1969, tax shall be imposed on every chargeable person. A “chargeable person” is a corporate body, regardless of whether it is a resident corporation so long as it has a permanent establishment in the Emirate of Dubai, unless under agreement with the ruler to exemption from taxation. Although these are the current taxation laws, they are not practiced. The UAE imposes none of the following taxes:

One great way to avoid having to pay commissions for placing machines is to associate your vending business to a charity. It’s easier to convince a decision maker to forego a commission when you can honestly say that your vending machines benefit a charity. This will also allow you a higher profit than if you were obligated to pay a commission and you will be doing some good for your community as well. Contributing some proceeds to charity doesn’t mean you can’t make a profit. You are a business, after all. The key to placing machines in the name of charity is to imply to the decision maker that by allowing your machine on their premises they will really be making a difference to the cause, even though the money you give to the charity will not be a large amount per machine. Everyone wins with this model but the trick is to let the decision maker feel as if they are doing a great deal when they are actually doing just a little.

Register with a charity first so that everything is official. It’s easy to find a charity that would like a small part of the profit of your vending machine business and many of them will be happy to be represented by you. Some charities will let you represent them for only a few dollars a month per machine but other more well known causes will expect more. Make sure, at all times that you are not deceiving people. If asked about your role in the charity, explain that you are not an employee of the organization but are only working with them.

Bring your official charity authorization with you at all times and wear any badges or other insignia they provide. When marketing your machines you should include information about the charity. Some vendors even incorporate the charity into their business name. Be sure to pick a charity that you would support anyway. If you’re not interested in the charity, it will come across in your conversation and drive away potential decision makers. If possible, choose a local community charity or local branch of a national charity that is directly tied to benefiting your community.

Sometimes you’ll be asked directly how much of your profits go to charity. Some vendors give a percentage while some pay a fixed monthly donation per machine. Rather than tell them the exact percentage or amount per machine, which may seem miserly, you could state that you raised over $3000 last year in total. If you’re a new business, state a goal, perhaps $6000 in the next year and emphasize that to achieve that number you have to place a certain number of machines. In other words let them know what your business contributes in total rather than their individual contribution or they may feel like their efforts will not make a difference. Emphasize that the decision maker’s machine, combined with all your others, will help you make your goal. If you let them do a mental calculation of profits vs. contributions and they realise that their location won’t be contributing much at all they may press for a commission on a non-charity machine. Be sure to put the charity’s brand on your machines so that people know they are helping out a good cause.

Conducting business through social media is a big departure from the traditional way of doing business, and in so many ways this departure is also a perfect opportunity for small businesses to carve their niche and grow their business in a revolutionary manner.

A paradigm shift of sorts, social media for small business is gaining slow yet steady acceptance. Many businesses are still skeptical, but many more are already reaping the rewards of fishing the untested waters of social media for small business.

Social media redefines the way businesses deal with their customers because social media has changed the customers itself. Social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook make it possible for users to conduct social activities online, such as posting and receiving social messages, establishing social networks, all the while transcending time zones and geographical locations. Users’ socialization behavior and expectations changed as a result.

Using social media for small business must therefore take into account this change in customers, in order for the business to adapt agilely to the change. Below are some ways that business should transform, in order to stay relevant.

Establishing two-way relationships with customers

Social media for small business discards the old school method of a top-down marketing deployment, wherein a handful of key business people plan a campaign, talk to the advertising people, and use traditional media channels to launch it. This kind of campaign is often one-way, and leaves little room for customer engagement.

Clients using social media expect communication to come from many directions and allow them the freedom to air their praises, complaints and questions about the company and its products.

Transforming Marketing Departments into Marketing Powerhouses

The role of marketing is constantly changing. As budgets shrink and demands grow, departments across the country are being carefully scrutinized for their effectiveness. Top executives are holding marketers more accountable, which effectuation they must not only deliver results, but also find structure to measure the actual bottom-line impact of their marketing initiatives.

Previously, the success of an initiative was primarily judged on the tangible deliverables the marketing team produced, such as media coverage at an event. However, those days are daylong gone. As the develop of marketing evolves, practitioners are becoming far more sophisticated in terms of their ability to deliver measurable results and a solid return on investment (ROI).In addition, advancements in technology also support elevate marketing to a more exact science by replacing campaign-by-campaign news with the ability to establish meaningful metrics at the beginning of a mar-comm program, at key points throughout its execution, and at the program’s conclusion. Such technology allows marketing teams to look at campaign performance in real-time, evaluate the success or failure of a particular initiative, and attain changes accordingly.

As the trend toward merging marketing \”creativity\” with \”science\” continues, more companies are expanding their marketing departments to include a marketing operations management (M.O.M.) function, which directly links its marketing programs to concrete business results. Adding marketing operations management to a company’s marketing mix enables it to run its marketing division as a viable, accountable business unit within the organization where people, processes and technology are fully leveraged to support attain marketing outcomes more predictable.

The Benefits of Marketing Operations Management (M.O.M)

Marketing operations management is an emerging develop that is growing both in popularity and in practice as more companies struggle with structure to optimally leverage their department’s shrinking resources. As more organizations are discovering, implementing mar-comm operations management into a company’s infrastructure can support transform a division into a powerhouse.