Principles Of Digital Communication Coding -Myassignmenthelp.Com

Question: Discuss About The Principles Of Digital Communication Coding? Answer: Introduction Business Communication can be defined as information sharing between the organisation and the people outside and within that need to be performed for the commercial benefit of the organisation (Turker and Altuntas 2014). Business communication can encompass brand management, marketing, customer behaviour, public relation, advertising and reputation. Effective business communication can be performed through using of face-to-face communication, e-mail, telephonic, social media and online. However, it is very important for an organisation to choose the effective communication media so that they can use these to reach the desired customers. In writing the communication for the proposed audiences, it deals with planning, drafting and revising the content. In order to conduct the study, Zara, fashion organisation has been chosen. The aim of the report is to identify the challenges in business communication used by Zara and proposing solutions to Zaras management. Communication models of Zara Zara is a clothing accessories retailer and it was founded in the year 1974. Headquarter of the organisation is at Galicia in Spain and it is worlds largest apparel retailer. It serves worldwide and it has its stores in more than 2170 locations. The revenue of the organisation was US$16 billion in 2016 and parent organisation of Zara s Inditex (Zara.com 2017). Zara is immensely popular among the young generation; however, they do not display their logo or brand name much. Zara uses unique marketing tools or models that are a Horizontal model and Pyramid model. Horizontal Model The horizontal model starts the communication from the executive level and the Board of Directors of Zara is mainly responsible for the communication message that reaches all levels. Zara takes the stakeholders' approach to spreading the communication to clients, suppliers, mass media, distributors, communities, customers, employees, public administration and wholesalers (Zara.com 2017). The horizontal approach provides the knowledge inside the firm to spread the valuable information to stakeholders. Pyramid Model Pyramid model gives a one-way flow of idea and communication as communication cannot be presented at managerial level in the same way that is presented in director's message (Viterbi and Omura 2013). In Zara, the managerial team provides the objectives of communication and each leader of various departments have to listen to the communication. The opinion of subordinates is not taken into consideration as an internal process of Zara is not strong. Business communication took by Zara to reach customers Zara spreads a common concept of fast fashion and Zara is going parallel to follow the market trends. Zara mainly uses the continuous and efficient communication systems that have changed the street of marketing. Zara mainly targets the young customers who buy the fashion clothing and Zara provides the fashion trend in the edge that provides them with competitive advantage. Zara mainly uses the strategy of short-term needs of the customers and communicate to the customers through various communication media (Kim et al. 2014). Zara uses the business process and information in market analysis rather than concentrate on the marketing types. Traditional communication Young generation large use the digital platform and Zara can easily target the young generation through using the digital platform (Xu et al. 2014). Zara has been using traditional media as well in reaching the customers effectively. Zara uses Television advertising and it helps the brand to reach large audiences, however, television advertising is costly. Young customers do not like to watch television now and they prefer online medium, however, through television advertising, the brand can communicate a greater number of customers irrespective all ages. In addition, print media are helpful for the brand as the fashion clothing advertisement can be published with colour in fashion magazines, newspapers and leaflet. Additional charges of the print media have to incur by the management and digital media is helpful for the brand (Kaul 2014). Zara uses out-of-home advertisement as the medium of communication; however, it is costly to provide the advertisements in billboards and on hoard ings on the roadside. Online communication Zara has made an online platform to sell their products in various global parts and online platform gives the organisation a boost to gain the popularity. Zara uses the website in order to sell their fashion garments and they generally do the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) technique and it increases the online traffic of the organisation. Once the customers search the products of Zara using their internet and the same products will automatically come over and over gain on their internet pages, this technique increases the brand image of the organisation (Moshiri and Cardon 2014). The main marketing function of Zara is selecting the location of the business and it operates more than 92% of the stores by themselves rather than other retail that provides better control on the operation. Management of Zara also uses Pay-Per-Click advertising in an online platform to direct traffic to website and advertiser has to pay the publisher when a user clicks on the advertisement. Zara's target is the youth generation and they are fond of the online platform and today Zara has 26 online markets in different parts of the world (Mai and Hoffmann 2014). E-mail communication Zara also does e-mail marketing and the brand sends the customers e-mail by offering n new products or arriving the newest collection of the brand. Sometimes, Zaras PR team sends the personalised discounts to customer and them also wishes the customers on their birthdays and other special occasions. Zara opened a new store in Hawaii and it became their 7000th stores worldwide in 2016 (Bargiela-Chiappini and Nickerson 2014). In the year 2015, the organisation opened more than 360 stores in 55 different market and communication needed to make the brand popular. Social networking communication Zara has been using the Facebook in a regular basis to post the images, discounts, links, offers and videos, it has more than 26,000,000 likes on Facebook and more than 45,00,000 people are talking about the brand on Facebook. In 2017, third quarter shows that Facebook has more than 2.07 billion active users; therefore, it has rich potential for Zara to reach global customers (DiSanza and Legge 2016). On Twitter, the brand has more than 1.28M followers and @ZARA posted 19.3k posts on Twitter. It is a proof that Zaras PR team try to engage the customers on social media and social media is cost-effective media to use. In addition, Zara is using Instagram and there they have 23 million followers. Zara has posted 1680 posts and it highlights the fashion sense of the customers of various regions. Zara gets the advantages of social media communication as they are easy connectivity from every place on earth and the customers can use the online platform from various gadgets and devices. Soci al networking communication provides a long-term competitive advantage with cost-effective. Sponsorship Finally, Zara uses sponsor activities in many events and in many of the sports events. In addition, Zara also provides sponsorship to Television programmes and online web series. In Royal Melbourne Hospital, Zara organises the breast cancer awareness to promote the business of the hospital (Theguardian.com.uk 2017). This social awareness acts as Corporate Social Responsibility and in this event, Zara provides a free check up to the women. Challenges faced in business communication Zara is a global organisation and it has been an issue for the organisation to communicate perfectly across the globes as they have stores in more than 88 markets. Headquarter faces issue to communicate well in other countries where they have stores and all the stakeholders may not have the information about the changes and recent news of the organisational changes (Bovee et al. 2016). Technology is another issue in Zara, however, the organisation has been serving globally, and however, the technical specification to communicate with all stakeholders is not well. The PR team has limited technologies to communicate with the customers and emotion of the customers needs to solve the PR team through e-mail, social media and voice calls. The customers can post any grievance on social media with an image; this image can go viral in no time. In this situation, the crisis communication is very important for the organisation before the flame turns into a disaster. In the year 2015, Zara launched black and white striped shirts with a yellow star on this, the social media outraged with the fashion sense as this type of dress is worn by the Jewish prisoners in concentration camps (Theguardian.com.uk 2017). The image of the shirt got viral and PR team tries to control the condition, however, this led to no result. Zara belongs to the high street fashion clothing organisation and offers the clothing that can afford only by the rich and upper-middle class customers. The business communication of Zara should attract middle-class customers too with the discounted prices in developing countries. Zara is trying to expand in the market like India and other South Asian countries with fashion clothing that can attract the customers. However, in expanding the business in this section, they face issue from perfect competition in these markets. Zara is taking the reactive strategy as this strategy is the preparation to proper management of any situation when an issue arises (Chaney and Martin 2013). Recommendations for improvement of business communication Zara has been facing the issue of making a communication to other offices that are farfetched from headquarter. In this scenario, they can use intranet software to communicate with the employees in any part of the world. This will provide extra benefit to communicate with the stakeholders. The intranet will provide the statistics of employees' share and consumer information. Most importantly, intranet software provides internal collaborative culture as collaboration is the key to global business. Social media analytics Information Communication Technologies can be a perfect use in Zara in order to amalgamate all the social media sources. Social media analytics help the organisation to understand the performance of communication to the users on social media. Social media analysis plan and collected data in social media help Zara to understand their performance and activities. Socialbakers, Google analytics and Zoho are some of the social media analytics that helps to communicate with the users. Culture of customer co-creation In developing countries, Zara's communication does not reach to the young customers and the brand falls under the category of the costly organisation. In these markets, Zara can take the strategy of co-creation of value and it is an economic strategy to bring the different agents together in order to produce mutually valued results. Zara's management needs to communicate with the customers and ask their needs and desires in order to co-create the values. Conclusion It has been observed that Zara targets to the young generation and Zaras unusual fashion clothing attract the youngsters. 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