Infographic Tuesday - The Startup Ecosystem

Source: Udemy Blog

Product Management/Product Marketing - The Nissan GTR35

I am going to post this as a part of "Supercar Sunday" for Farrst Developments - but there is so much good business material in this short movie I couldn't help but also put it here to for you all to see. Seems that Carlos Ghosn is a very smart man, and a very savvy business leader.

I have no doubt in my mind that he was very instrumental in getting the R35 out of drawing boards and into real life. I can understand why the Japanese people look up to him, and why Renault grabbed him when they did.

 Topics covered:
- Product Management,
- Product Marketing, - Marketing Management,
- Task Management,
- Competitive Markets
 .....Enjoy

Marketing in the Cellphone Industry - Stewart Farr (2001)

("I know this is a bit old now guys.........but makes for some interesting reading when you reflect on it - turns out I was right, and Apple cashed in on this concept" -Stew)

1.1       The purpose of marketing in the Cellphone industry.

The purpose of marketing cellphone's, is no longer to sell a simple piece of electronic equipment. It now sells an essential form of communication, in today’s mobile world.

The Cellphone is now sold as a cultural icon – symbolising a personality of the consumer. The advertising jumps out at you, no matter where you are – not only through the visual and verbal networks of advertising but also the subliminal peer pressure of today’s society.

1.2       Built for Humans

Items that are built for humans in mind are now the huge pulling forces in today’s markets. User-friendly products are now becoming major exploit due to the fact they can easily exploit any market. Ergonomics has become a multimillion-dollar industry – with most products being designed with the human in mind. Consumers like the security of mind by knowing that a Cellphone contains certain aspects that make their life easier or safer.

An example of a good user-friendly marketing campaign is Nokia’s. Their “Human Technology” campaign improved their share price from a low of less that $27 U.S, to an all time high of $30.25 US, which is still increasing. Consumers responded well to the campaign, increasing sales by over 25%.

All the phones now produced have some form of ‘hands free calling’. Motorola now are installing “BASS boosted, CLEAR response hands free speakers”, for less ‘mechanical’ distortion and more ‘human’ crisp, clear sound.

 1.3 Not just Communications

Mobile phones are developing to more that mobile communications. They now people phonebooks, email, Internet, arcade machine, timetable, organiser, alarm, pager, text editor, modem, fax and now contain more functions then a personal computer. It could be said that cellphone's are the personal computers of the future.

People now go out looking for which phone has got the most functions, and Cellphone companies take great advantage of this by glorifying the functions on their mobiles.

1.3       Additional Services provide by the Cellphone manufacturer

These greatly determine the Cellphone market. Alcatel a large communications company offers no support for their distributors and do not sell directly to the market, for this reason they sell very poorly in most countries. However in New Zealand, Vodafone’s largest selling mobile brand is Alcatel – Vodafone do most of the advertising and hire purchase for the Alcatel’s because they suit well to Vodafone’s pre-paid market (which accounts to 70% of Vodafone’s sales).

Nokia are at the other end of the spectrum, developing advertising, customer support and providing an expensive hire purchase scheme for the consumers – this in turn has made them the largest Cellphone manufacture in the world.

1.4       Effective Product Naming

The names of cellphone's are becoming abbreviated and cut to suit the style of the target audience. Simplicity is the key when naming a Cellphone, something that people remember – a letter, word, number or feeling works well as the consumer is not thrown into ‘manufacturing jargon’.

Good use of numbers is the Nokia Series, 252, 918, 5110, 5120, 6220, 8250 – each one is easily remembered as the short term memory can store up to 7 digits.

Good use of letters is demonstrated with the new Motorola series, L series and V series.

1.5       The use of brand loyalty

With a well-established company, it is easier for them to get their products noticed. They do this by placing their company logo in the background, in the corner, anywhere where is noticeable but not distracting, on their advertising. People recognise these symbols and instantly want to know more.

Alcatel and Motorola use this all the time, placing their logo in the background to posters, handouts, anything that gets them noticed.

1.6      Styling the product to the target market

There is no point is selling ice to Eskimos, the same rule applies to Cellphone marketing. Cellphone marketeers have only just trained to the US market – with their style to distinctive, making it hard for Cellphone manufactures to adapt to the market.

French cellphone's are more style then function – often containing fewer buttons and comfortable shape.

Asian cellphone's are more function and size – having enough electronics to scare a personal computer in the size of a few credit cards.

Bibliography

1)         Handouts –     Motorola:        Lseries+, WEB W/O WIRES

2)                                                         GSM V2288 FEATURE LIST

3)                                 Nokia: 5120, The smart phone with the smart key

4)                                                         8250, Walk on the Blue Side

5)                                                         5110, The smart phone with the smart key

6)                                                         6210, Be ready

7)                                                         8210, Live with Passion

8)                                 Alcatel:            One Touch 302

                                    And various Sagem, Ericsson & Philips

1)         Web sites -      www.motarola.com.au – For company profile

2)                                 www.nokia-asia.com – for company profile

3)                                 www.nokia.com – for customer support

4)                                 www.alcatel.com – for company profile

5)                                 www.sagem.com – for new phone web adverts

6)                                 www.sony.com – for new phone web adverts

7)                                 www.cnet.com – for market research on Nokia expected sales

8)                                                                  www.quicken.excite.com/tickersearch  - for market capital and annual revenue of Nokia and Motorola.

                   

Infographic Tuesday - Small business SINKING or SWIMMING?

Infographic Tuesday - Entreprenuers

I am not a huge fan of the term "Entrepreneur". As far as I am concerned these people are not the peak - they are simply the level that the rest of us should have achieved.

An entrepreneur could be a fantastic worker within a company. They only reason they go it alone is due to frustrations and inability to fix problems internally.

A failure of a company, not of them.

So rather than thinking about praising an entreprenuer..........turn it around,

Who was their previous employer?
What constraints did they have placed on them?
What went wrong?
How can I avoid this?

These are the keys to keeping these talented individuals inside a company - thus lifting the company to a new level.

Small beginnings and big bytes - an Apple story

Ok so it was my sons 1st birthday recently, and he got one of these from his grandma

But you see while I don't profess to be a big Apple fan. Fact of the matter is they are a big part of my life of who I am and how I have got to where I am.

I most likely would not have leaped into IT/IS or even business computing - except for the fact that when I was 5 - my father got me this.

This good ol' Apple II lasted me all the way though my Schooling years. It did nothing really practical, it had no printer, no word processor. It had a joystick, increase ram and a 4 colour display - so it was mainly used for games.
But it taught me some very basic things. How to type fast, how to think fast and most importantly how to be patient when it comes to loading. At the time if you wanted a personal computer and had money you got a Apple II, if you were cheap or had some fancy ERP tool you got IBM's 8086. It was a strange market. But basically the II changed the way people thought about computing. It created personal computing.
Then when at Middle school I got to use this:

The Mac classic. The perfect device with the worst execution. It had a lot going for it except good marketing. It was an all in one unit. It was light enough to carry. It HAD resolution. It was the first FANLESS computers - something unheard of in the electronics industry.
This computer should have captured the whole market. But it failed horribly and was eaten alive in the red market that had become the personal computer. Acer, IBM, Compaq, Tandy, HP, Atari............it was no longer a 2 horse game. And some of the competitors were cut throat pirates.
Apple was being cut and started to bleed. From recall this was when Jobs started to get young and reckless - the other owners of apple noticed  and cut him from the fray. Thankfully they still had a fan base.
Come to College I found myself using one of these...

The LC was not a bad machine, it just wasn't a good one. It was doing what everyone else was doing hardware wise, software wise it was completely propriety. This was the 90's and now Microsoft ruled the roost - not by selling computers, but by selling the operating system. The market had changed and people paid pennies less for the hardware, but more for all the software. The giants of the valley were now companies like Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia........ as they had the I.P. and most of the hardware was now being made out of China.
Jobs was rehired, and refocused. A massive cash injection came into Apple via Microsoft. And I then had to deal with this before I went to University.

The imac was everything the Mac Classic should have been, it was an all in one unit that had the marketing weight of a heavy weight boxer on crack. It forced the competition to rethink its game. To think about things like case design and ergonomics. To think about colours (beige cases and monitors were all the rage - not!).
However at this point the computers only had a cult following. They were expensive and next to useless to most people.

It was never that I disliked Apple...........I always appreciated them from an engineers perspective. It was that I could see their failures from a business perspective. But I was fortunate to own the computer that made Apple a great computer company. A world leader. Now my son can experience that with their iPAD.

Now you can understand why Apple's model had to change - there market was never computers. That was simply the first market they tried. They needed to think past that and find out what people were not doing. In the 1970's people were not making personal computers. In the 1990's people were not making MP3 players with lots of storage. In the 2000's people were not making useable, reliable tablets.

Turns out the Woz (the others guy who started Apple with Jobs in the 70's) knew this all along. Check out his Q&A below.

http://farrstdevelopments.blogspot.com/2012/06/listen-to-what-woz-has-to-say.html

Rubbish Suppliers and blast-from-the-past emails

Digging through some old emails, I found a fantastic one about a poorly performing supplier.
Names have been changed to protect all involved........have a read. Then you decide if you would deal with this supplier?

"Hope you holiday is going well. I thought it was best I gave you an update about the events of yesterday.

As you know Myself,*  had a meeting with *, as a basic training session for the * product in NZ.

Meeting * reminding myself of why I left Australia.  

Talking to the other staff who have dealt with him, needless to say his attitudes are in the wrong place.

But I will simply explain the events that transpired yesterday.

With everyone in the room, it was noticeable that * was not at ease with the people there. It became faily obvious that he was demanding a very high level of support (something that was starting to tire *)

He suggested that we introduce ourselves, to which * was first to volunteer. When * said he was the Automation sales rep, * immediately questioned why he did not have * in he portfolio. Stating - "I will have to have a talk to * later about this" He then continued to dominate the conversation not allowing * to finish speaking about what he hoped to achieve out of the training session. This was not only stupid (as we were all attending a "* Basics" training session) but also completely arrogant to assume that pushing his complaints to *  would some how fix the situation. Eventually I spoke up stating that "As of this point * is not a part of his portfolio, so you can not blame him", to which his reply was "clearly something is wrong if * is not there."

At this point * looked liked he wanted to throw something at *, however he bit his lip and remained quiet. The introductions continued around the table, ending with * introducing himself.

During his presentation, it became obvious that at-least 60% was to stroke his own ego. However when put on the spot about his own business issues, he did not have the substance to back it up. 

(I can elaborate on this more if you require).

If his ego could not be stroked during the presentation, he would then move to downgrade the people in the room or the products you sell. 

As * said best to me afterward "He always attempts to be right even when he is wrong". There were threats that "* are currently in a partner agreement", with emphasis on current.

Other bold claims were also made, one in particular was "That's bullshit, I came over 18 months ago and trained people here (*)"  to which I questioned "Who was trained?" to which I got no reply.

* was supposed to have known a Japanese protocol. Because according to Steve he should know because he was Asian. (He is Chinese).

He failed to accept our claims that we have to support more than one agency, and would attempt to subvert out existing agencies, often asking "Does anything else you have do this?".

By lunchtime both * looked like they could not be bothered continuing the meeting after lunch, and said thank you and attended emails.

I grabbed * and went to lunch - explaining to him that this is how some people are, and he was free to speak his mind. Needless to say he was not in a good mood and needed to vent.

* took over in the afternoon - which eased things somewhat. This also meant * did not need to attend - which was a good thing as it looked like * had painted a big target on his back.

I found that *'s attitude was not only negative, but wrong. Lord knows how he wants us to promote sales of this product after that episode.  

Very rarely have I had such rubbish in front of a supplier, and  
never have I had it FROM a supplier.

However I would like to congratulate everyone else in the room on the same not. They were polite, and keep their feelings to themselves, I know a lot of the people in the industry would have told * to f-off if they had been put in this position.

I just feel you should be aware about what happened, as I imagine there will be an email from * complaining about how we are not good enough."

Infographic Tuesday : The Music Industry

After a few emails I got about my previous market analysis I did for the music industry (found here).......I thought it was good to put other peoples views on the matter here.
So this info-graphic Tuesday it dedicated to the music industry. Read away.

Decay Growth in the music industry

Contents:                                                                                                                                              Page Number

1.0          Is the recorded music industry experiencing strategic decay?                                        2             

2.0          What are the key drivers of the decline?                                                                      4

                2.1          The day music became intangible asset                                                        5

3.0          What are the new sources of competition?                                                                  6

4.0          Are there way to revitalise the industry?                                                                      7

5.0          References                                                                                                                 8

Is the recorded music industry in strategic decay?

Figure 1: Supposed Strategic Decay of Music Industry

“For seven years running, sales of compact discs have fallen due to the seismic shift in the way consumers obtain their music. Though C.D.s still account for more than 85 per cent of all music sold, the sharp decline in their sales as a consequence of digital downloads has dramatically outweighed increases in C.D. revenues”

-          Smith (2007)

Ethan Smith was not incorrect in his statement about the music industry market according to the perspectives of the “big traditional” of the music industry. There was not a record company in the market that was not concerned about the electronic form that was taking over the industry. However the music industry was not suffering slump that was being perceived by large recording companies, contrary to popular belief – the music industry was booming.

Several young companies had gone from strength to strength, riding a wave of new artists, using a new medium.  Technology and Global Markets had finally caught up with the international music industry and the music market had been opened up to an established international customer base, as well as new customer base which could not be accessed through existing channels.

What are the key drivers of the decline?

As stated earlier – new technologies and more open global markets had left the music industry vulnerable to attack.

But it was through new mediums that dissolved the market – and that inflexibility of the market leaders to change to combat these new mediums that eroded their sales margins.

Figure 2: Decay vs. New Mediums

While Cassette tapes had been around since 1964, they were not considered a valid recording medium since the mid-1970. At this point Tapes themselves did not directly damage L.P. sales, and in many instances subtly promoted sales of L.P.’s.

Quite often songs were recorded off the radio on to tapes, to be played back later. This in turn promoted the sales of the L.P.’s which quite often contained songs not played on radio stations. This also promoted concerts of live bands as tapes were a valid medium that could be easily transported into personal players or vehicle based players, (portable L.P. players were often cumbersome and did not operate well without optimal conditions).

However with the advent of ‘Dubbing’ – the music industry suddenly had to compete with sales of blank medium, most of which could be purchased at a substantially lower price than the original items.

Dubbing used technology that was previously only available via industrial means and it placed recording technology into consumer based product. It was the blatant copying of one medium onto another (often copying of L.P.’s onto Cassette, or even Cassette onto Cassette). Unlike previous recording functions – it was completely autonomous, even changing the sides of the cassette automatically to clone the original completely.  However this also did not damage recording sales immediately – as often the ‘copy’ was inferior in quality in comparison to the original. This frustrated many customers who often purchase the original, after the copies failed.

However it still prompted a response from the recording industry who promoted slogans such as the one below:

Figure 3 – Anti-Dubbing Slogan (Courtesy of Wikipedia.com)

It was not until the advent of ‘High-Speed-Dubbing’ in the 1980’s, where tapes (which were the popular medium at the time) could be copied at many times the original speed – that music industry sales dropped off dramatically.  Thankfully at this time the music industry already had a replacement in mind, in 1982 – the first ‘Audio Compact Discs’ and their players hit the consumer markets. By the 1990’s C.D.’s had become the medium of choice of many consumers – offering superior quality sound and build, and a longer shelf life. While C.D.’s could be copied onto Tapes – many consumers opted to purchase C.D.’s then to copy them on to a tape.

While recordable C.D.’s were available in the early 1990’s. Piracy of C.D.’s was relatively limited until the late 1990’s; as it was too expensive to purchase the hardware required to copy (or dub) a C.D., and most of the time this equipment was computer based requiring a slightly higher skill level than the average music consumer.

There were however mass-markets of illegal C.D. copies being distributed throughout Asia, Europe and America.

However, as computers became more integrated into society, the prices for their component substantially dropped. This combined with the extra skill levels acquired in modern society meant that a larger number of consumers were able to create their own C.D. copies. This combined with an even more expanding and more open global market for music, opening a large market for cheap counterfeit C.D.’s.

This brought many of the music industry’s biggest players to their knees – and forced many survival mergers between previously rival companies.  Ironically the Pirate C.D. epidemic that plagued the music industry – suffered the same problem as the Pirate Tape industry. The quality of the pirate C.D. was often sub-standard; fading through repeated use, due to the operation of a C.D. using a laser. Also more often than not – the C.D. was scratched or poorly recorded making for a poor audio experience.

But the then “Big 5” of the music industry could not simply sit by to watch their market collapse. A plea was made out to the public, through the voices of the artists – that music piracy was directly affecting the pockets of the artists themselves. While this was not a lie – the music industry still continued to make money, even at the expense of artists who were losing money via label deals that paid commission via album sales and concert tours. This eventually lead to many artists dropping their label, and forming their own label – in many instances such as 7Brothers Recording Co were re-integrated into the ‘Big 5’ (in 7Brothers case  – Tower Records, http://www.tower.com/music-label/7-brothers-records) via contract re-negotiations. But some remained separated and became successful.

However the Pirated C.D. industry was just the beginning of the onslaught that was to hit the music market.

-          The Day Music became an Intangible Asset

Electronic mediums for had been in development since the 1950’s, however it was not until the age of the consumer computer had been reached, that software based music had even been considered an option.

By the mid-90’s not only had the data compression algorithms for sound at a realistic level, but the equipment and software to record, copy and play back the sounds on a PC were becoming cheaper by the day.  PC’s using operating systems no longer had to operate on their PC’s only hearing simple ‘midi-based’ sounds, and many operating systems had used this new hardware and software packages to make their product a more entertaining tool.

With computer based soundcards reaching levels suitable for home Hi-Fi. Consumers started looking for ways to put music on their PC’s. While ‘wave’ files were common on many operating systems – quality and compression was usually lacking, requiring large hard-drive space on PC’s (not cheap at the time).

Using a format used in the camera and image industry – JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group), a similar group was formed called Moving Picture Experts Group (Wikipedia: MPEG).

Formed by a group of members of the German organization – the Fraunhofer Society (Fraunhofer, 2010), they set about to make advanced, high quality, high compression, digital versions of film and sound. 

The final result for the audio codec was aptly named MPEG1, Layer 3……or MP3 for short.

MP3 was approved as an ISO/IEC standard in 1991 (Wikipedia: MP3) – but was still not sufficient in quality, compressing a file down to a very low 128kbs. This meant that nearly 600 mins of recording time could fit onto a C.D., substantially more than the usual 70 mins and audio C.D. offered. It also meant that a reasonable amount of songs could fit onto a home PC.

By 1996, the quality of the codec had improved, removing common frequencies and frequencies outside normal audible range. There were also a large number of free computer based players and copiers available on the market.  The software had got a lot easier – as with the trend towards windows based PC’s for home and office, the pirating software had become almost second nature to some users.

Ignoring the situation for many years, the music industry leaders became defiant that there was a problem – and failed to notice the new competitors entering the market, taking advantage of this new medium.

When they did respond to try and capture this new medium, they had already lost a very big chuck of the market share to these new competitors. They had also lost a very large percentage of the market due to social attitude changes towards music piracy.

As music was no longer something you had to go to the shop to buy – it was something you could simply download from another computer over the internet.

Technology had eroded the value of a product. Similar to how the encyclopaedia industry had experienced a little earlier. Going from Encyclopaedia Britannica, to Encarta (on a C.D. Rom at 1/10 the cost) to Wikipedia completely online (and free). (Evans, 1997)

What are the new sources of competition?

When MP3 was first released, it was only initially used by a very select group of people. It was not until late 1990’s that a substantial amount of the population understood what MP3 files were, and how they could benefit from them.

From 1997 onwards there were multiple vendors offering MP3 players and rippers (ripping = dubbing a C.D. to mp3).  Winamp and Windows Media Player competed for this new market, attempting to outperform each other with improved features and more fantastic graphics packages. Windows Media Player had an automatic following due to being the default media player in Microsoft windows.

Whereas Winamp had accumulated a strong following as being one of the first vendors to market to have compatibility with the MP3 format.

Winamp was seen as a good medium for new artists to get themselves noticed, and also had created a global community of music through a global universal product that could be adapted to suit any country and be customized to suit any consumer. Soon many international forums around the world gained #mp3 or #winamp chat rooms where members could swap songs and winamp applications and skins. www.winamp.com became a shopping ground for new music and new music player applications.

Seeing an open door for an international market distributing music, many sites started operating ‘peer-to-peer’ sharing sites, catering for music fans. This escaped legal loop holes, mitigating legal risks involved in these vendors hosting the files themselves. Peer-to-peer vendors such as MIRC and Kazaa became overnight multimillion dollar business due to showing advertising to an international market to members who used their global software for free. The music cost nothing – therefore held no value, completely undercutting the price of music internationally. The music industry started to notice this market gaining momentum, but concentrated more on attempting to develop its new DVD-based format further to suit the customers.

Portable music players existed that could play MP3’s, but most were cumbersome, had very little storage for music – meaning that traditional portable music players were still the more viable option. However a lot of the time this gave no solace to the music industry as the tape/C.D.’s in these players was becoming increasingly pirated.

2000 saw the immergence of fully functional, portable MP3 players – MP3 had then become at this point the second most popular audio medium in the world, displacing tape. C.D. sales still continued – but were not gaining any market share. Many in the music industry attempted to develop protection systems for their Music C.D.’s, DVD music had become an expensive failure as DVD players were still quite expensive to buy.

Creative and Sony had created a new range of devices to suit this market and many of the large music companies had become integrated with movie manufacturers and hardware companies to ensure a guaranteed market for paid music.

In 2001, Apple Inc, a computer company that was having issues competing against Microsoft based PC market, released the iPod. An expensive MP3 player that had advance technology. (Ipodhistory, 2001). Aiming at a style savvy target group, and despite not working on PC based machines, the iPod was a huge success. Within a year Apple Inc had set up its own music store, iTunes – which was gaining huge popularity due to being one of the largest legal ways to buy mp3 music.

Fearful of losing this new market completely, “In June 2002, three of the five major music labels – Universal, Sony and Warner Music – announced that they would make thousands of songs available for download over the internet at the discount price of 99 cents each.” (Walker, 2009, p92)

By 2006, iTunes, had sold more than 1 billion downloads. (Walker, 2009, p267) – And online bookseller had changed their catalogue not only stock normal C.D. based music, but also downloadable MP3’s.

Many free MP3 websites had spawned, where funding was found through other means (site advertising etc) and artist could host their songs free of charge. Some even paid the artists for every download the song achieved.

By 2007, thanks to stores like cafe press (www.cafepress.com) and YouTube (www.youtube.com) artist could completely manage themselves and promote their own work. The music industry was not only losing its customer – but its suppliers also.

Are there ways to revitalise the industry?

As far as the consumer is concerned, the industry is fine. It is only from the supplier’s side that it is slightly in jeopardy. In previous attempts to destabilize the music industry, the major players would attack the counterfeiters head on – using a new medium that was far superior. With MP3 being an intangible, heavily used medium, the music industry cannot combat this head on, and minor attempts to stop counterfeiting (via encryption) have only frustrated the customer based, and have not hampered this new mediums growth. There needs to be a change of thinking from the heads of the music industry. They need to reanalyse what business they are in.

“It’s not all about the music”

-          Ann Powers (January 31, 2010)

New ways of thinking have to be introduced, the sale of C.D.s/DVD’s does not seem to be dead just yet – but it needs to be acknowledged it has lost a very large market share of the recorded music industry.  However the remaining segment could be maintained and generate better revenues simply by up selling or cross-selling. If the music has no value due to being available for free very easily – chances are the purchaser of a C.D. /DVD is buying it due to superior quality or perceived value. This can be increased and sold at a higher price by adding perceived value to the product. Limited editions, signed albums or even interesting collectors cases could add an additional intangible value.

There is also the option to take this to the mp3 versions as well with “Limited collector’s edition band theme” MP3 players with preinstalled albums.

Also music can generate revenue via other means:

-          Using brand sponsorship or product placement in Music Videos

-          Getting band members to promote products

-          Using music in advertising and promotions (under leased licenses)

-          Using music in movies and events (under leased licenses)

-          Licensed products and apparel

-          Live concert ticket sales

-          Band interviews/stories

-          Website advertising

-          Leased music to public areas (Gyms, pubs, clubs)

-          Concert sales

-          Music Tourism

Even the negative concept of music piracy has positive sides, as positive ratings can be generated for an album pre-release creating support for an album before it is available.

There needs to be a shift in concept from moving music off shelves. The music industry is not just about the music. Due to MP3 being a heavily counterfeit market – music medium has lost value overnight, but additional value can be created complimenting the ‘new’ music industry.
References

Smith, E,. (2007)  For the Music World, the Tunes Gets Sadder

                Wall Street Journal European Edition,  March 22, 2007,  p. 16

Evens, P. and Wurster, T. “Strategy and the New Economics of Information”,

                Harvard Business Review, Sept/Oct 1997.

Walker, O, Gountas, J, Mavondo, F, Mullins, J. (2009). Marketing Strategy: A Decision-Focused Approach

N.S.W. Australia: McGraw-Hill

Ann Powers on the Grammy Awards,

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2010/01/ann-powers-on-the-2010-grammy-awards.html

Checked 11:00am, 1/04/10

Music bosses promise to consult over fee riseshttp://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10634141Checked 11:30am, 1/04/10

Wikipedia: Compact Cassette (tape), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Cassette

Checked 11:00am, 2/04/10

Wikipedia: Compact Disc (C.D.), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.D.

Checked 11:30am, 2/04/10

Wikipedia: MPEG1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3

Checked 11:30am, 1/04/10

Wikipedia: Fraunhofer Society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunhofer_Society

Checked 11:30am, 1/04/10

Fraunhofer Society Website, http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/

Checked 11:30am, 1/04/10

The complete history of the iPod, http://www.ipodhistory.com/

Checked 11:30am, 1/04/10

Background Image From:

http://telefunker.wordpress.com/