WAYS TO INCREASE COMPLIANCE AND ADVERTISING SALES

PROBLEM
This study was designed to analyse the factors affecting the decreasing of compliance and
advertising sales and find the solutions or ways to solve this problem for Gutenberg Media.

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Gutenberg Media is a company that involve in printing community calendar and distributes it
to customers. Every year, this company will print and distributes it to over 10,000 residential
homes and businesses. The advertisers that compliance with Gutenberg Media are the same
for every year. Historically, Gutenberg Media will contacted the previous advertising
businesses in early of September. The advertising business will be given three week
deadline to give feedback to Gutenberg Media. If did not received any feedback or respond
within two weeks, one of the associations of Gutenberg Media will directly contact the
company through phone or meet in person. Usually, by the end of three week deadline,
most of the advertising companies will give respond.

However, for the past 7 years, the compliance with the three week has dramatically
drops and the number of returning clients seems to be decrease as well. Three years ago, to
increase the efficiency, Gutenberg Media used online system for renewing advertising spots
for calendar. Contact through phone or meet in person had completely change to sending a
series of reminders through emails. After seeing the trend of compliance and advertising
sales, Gutenberg Media want to discuss the calendar process again to gain back compliance
and advertising sales.

BODY CONTENT:
Factors affecting the declining of compliance and advertising sales
1. Management:
Management is important to make a company successful for the long-term growth
and profitability of firms. This is because having a poor management of company can
lead to decline in workers morale, which may affect the quality of customer service
in a bad way and cause workers turnover. Besides that, firms also may suffer from
taking the wrong expansion plans. For example, Gutenberg Media makes a sale to
the other department which can cause the company to face a big problem.

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2. Relative costs:
Monitoring companys relative costs is vital because the increase in costs will cause
the profits to decrease. A relative cost of a company includes labor costs, raw
material costs and cost of rent. A devaluation of the exchange rate would increase
cost of imports therefore companies who act as the importer would face an increase
in costs. For example, if the Gutenberg Media increase their costs of productions to
make a good sale, the companys profit may decrease because they need to spend
more on production costs in order to maintain the same level of sales.

3. The strength of demand:

Besides, demand from customers can affect the profit of a company. Demand of
products will increase if the products are good in quality, meets customers current
requirement and the pricing is affordable. For example, Gutenberg Media Company
was profitable during the period of rising growth and high demand in market. This
shows that the higher demand of product leads to increasing companys profit. If the
demand of products decreases, company needs to increase the price of products in
order to earn profits. When prices of products increases, company might lose some
customers and it will lower companys profits.

4. Communication:
To promote or advertise a product to customers, communication skills are important
to make sure that customers understand the message and get the idea regarding the
product. Besides that, communication skills among employees in a company are
important to ensure that they can communicate fluently with each other. This is to
avoid misunderstanding and improve their productivity during working. Moreover,
without good communication skills, employees might be facing the problem to
receive information clearly and unable to voice out their own point of view. For
example, Gutenberg Media failed to deliver information regarding the products to
their customers because the employees do not have the confident level to do the
talk.

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Ways to Increase Compliance and Advertising Sales

Utilize Social Media

Nowadays, the use of social media is increasing swiftly as new technology becomes
available. The area of social medias usage is enlarging from time to time. Social media has
slowly replaced traditional media since late 90s and changed the way people connect and
communicate with each other. Schindler (2011) stated that social media works the same,
being combined with variety of tools and it enables everything from communications to
politics, to evolve. Social media can be defined as an instrument used for communication.
Jacka and Scott (2011) stated that social media is the set of Web-based broadcast
technologies that enable the democratization of content, giving people the ability to emerge
from consumers of content to publishers. Social media technologies enable people to
connect among each other to produce or value through online conversation and
collaboration.

Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) stated that social media is a group of Internet-based
applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that
allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content. Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) had
categorized various types of social media namely collaborative projects, blogs, content
communities, social networking sites, virtual game worlds and virtual social world.
Collaborative projects such as Wikipedia allow participants to work together on the same
project and they are able to edit the content of the project to make it complete. Participants
can add, remove or change information to improve the content of the project. The second
type of social media is blogs which are known as the earlier social media site. Examples of
blogs are Wordpress.com and Blogger.com. Through these media, people can visit others
site and leave their comments or point of view. The next type of social media is content
communities. The main function of content communities is sharing media contents such as
pictures, audios and video clips among users. The easiest way for users to share media
contents is by sharing link with other users. For social networking site, the most common
examples are Facebook and Twitter. These sites enable people to create own profile, access
others profile and participate in discussion forum. Virtual game worlds are platforms that
allow users to participate in games virtually and the last category of social media is virtual
social world which enable users to create their own avatar and meet other users in the
virtual world.

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 The Oxford Dictionary (2011) has defined social media as websites and applications
used for social networking and also as the use for dedicated websites and applications to
communicate with other users, or to find people with similar interests to ones own. This
shows that social media gives people the opportunities to communicate and exchange their
opinions virtually. It is easier for two-sided to discuss virtually and get immediate respond,
especially people who came from different countries. Social media such as Viber and Skype
allow people to communicate virtually through video call. This is similar as meeting in person
and this helps them a lot in saving their time. Dave Evans (2010) explained that consumers
were no longer satisfied with advertising and promotional information as the only source of
information about a new products and services. This means that people wants more than an
advertisement as their source of information. Social media such as Twitter and Facebook
help to provide information about new products and services in an attractive ways. These
social media allow people to share information with others in a short period of time and it is
easier for them to voice out their questions and responds in the comment sections.

There are various advantages resulted from the utilization of social media. Fully
utilized social network will help the company to gain benefits and increase the sales of a
company. One of the main advantages is sharing of ideas. With a proper usage of social
media, users are able to share their ideas and interest among themselves. Social media such
as Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram make it possible for people to connect across
political, economic and geographic borders. Social media acts as a marketing tool. Social
media is well-known as a medium used by most organizations to promote their new
products and services. The Facebook co-founder, Mark Zukerberg stated that advertising is
fast changing and businesses need to understand the internet technologies to remain
relevant. Organizations are able to ask for customers feedback instantly regarding existing
products in order to improve the quality and redesign the products in the next productions.
According to statistic by Digital Buzz (2012), there are more than 800 million active
Facebook users and over 250 million of them logging in every day. There are over 3.5 billion
pieces of contents will be uploaded in social network. All the social network and internet
allow everyone to connect with one another all around the world. By this, an information
share by any company in social network are able to let people around the world to see and
discuss about it. This make the promotion or promoting activities become easy.Porter (2001)
also support that internet can help to boost sales and opportunities to create new products
or services.

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 In a study done by Zontanos and Anderson (2004), cited by Ambrose Jagongo and
Catherine Kinyua (2013), its stated that social networking can help to access to resources,
help the development of a firms worthiness, increase the customer and supplier contacts,
promote innovation and help in cultivation of strategic partnerships. Mangold and Faulds
(2009) reveal that social media might help to connect existing and new customers and
engage with them. A website that is full with information can help a company or business to
develop relationships with customers by providing more effective marketing. This can help
the business to shorten its marketing or promotion time and give online technical support to
customers. Social network are able to create group and let the customers to share their
thoughts, comments or useful feedbacks that might help the business to improve their
products to suit the need of a customers and will directly affect the companys sales in a
good way. The Growing Importance of Social Media in Business Marketing by Pavel Ciprian
(2010) claims that one of the advantages of using social media is enables direct customer
interaction, which is marketers or businesses used social media as a two way conversation
and engagement tools. Through social media, businesses can attract customers by engaging
them with interactive methods, such as questions and answers, polls and other methods. In
this study also stated that social media can help to generate sales. This can be prove by the
survey done by the Socialmediatoday. Socialmediatoday revealed that 71% of users of social
media are like to purchase product online.

The research Impact Analysis on Free Online Marketing Using Social Network
Facebook done in 2011 (cited by Farooq& Jan, 2012) shows that the small and medium
sized enterprises in Indonesia have used social network to promote their products to
increase sales. This results also support by the research done by Ogunnaike and Kehinde
(2013) and Nyambu (2013). Both research claims that marketing in Social networking will
influence the performance of a business and will give great impact to the business. Bhanot
(2013) in his research proved that there is a significant relationship between the used of
social media and increase in sales, which is the companies that used social media to
promote their products can increase their sales and will get higher return. A research about
wine in US by Thach & Lease (2014) revealed that the sales or revenue of wine in US
market are slightly affected by the social media. The Influence of Social Networking on E-
Business by Obiedat, Harfoushi, Alfawwaz&Nawafleh (2013) stated that the correlation
between online sales through E-Business is high and the relationships between Social Media
Marketing and Online Sales through E-Business also high. This means that if the social
media marketing increase, the business through online will be increase too. When a

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business use effective marketing techniques, the business through online will be very
effective and will rose up the sales. However, the respondents in Needles & Thompson
(2013) shows that the main goal for using social media is to give better relationships rather
than increase the revenues. The respondents were uncertain about the use of social media
will bring additional revenues.

Collect More Data

According to qualitative researcher McLeod (2001), definition of data is as an array of
information, such as data set and data bank. While in the quantitative context, it is stated
that data information is a direct reflection of the thing is about and is independent of those
who gathered it. In the other hand, for qualitative data is not identical to the experience as
described, whether it is in oral or written discourse. Donald E. Polkinghorne (2005) found
that in qualitative research, data collection is used to provide evidence for the experience as
it is investigating. The evidence is in the form of accounts people have given based on their
experiences. In order to describe the experience properly, the researcher will analyze the
data. While in the process of constructing a research report, researcher will draws the
excerpt from data collected to show the readers how findings were derived. Data is
originally generated through interviews of ideas and thoughts which is expressed by the
participants and transferred into written forms. There are three major sources of qualitative
data according to McLeod (2001) which are interviews, observations and documents, and
these three forms are not simply collected.

Potter (1996) has stated that interviewing can be defined as a technique of

gathering data from humans by asking questions and getting them to react verbally. The
main aim of interviewing is to gather a full details from the participant of the experience
under research. This statement is also supported by Kvale (1996).Interviews are particularly
useful for getting the story behind a participants experiences. The interviewer can pursue
in-depth information around the topic. Interviews may be useful as follow-up to certain
respondents to questionnaires. For example, to further investigate their responses
(McNamara, 1999). The case studies show that, rather than receiving a phone call or a
personal visit, the company sent a series of emails as a reminder. Another set of data
collected has shown that the calendar still remains as an effective way to advertise and gain
customers. However, the results in the table show that, compliance with the three-week has
decreased dramatically over the past three years. Therefore, using the interview method is
generally more convenient for the business advertising, especially if what is sought is the

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opinion or impression. Interviews can be structured, unstructured or semi-structure
(Bauman, 1992). So that, Gutenberg Media can identifies questions that might need to be
refined to improve the sale of their calendar.

A research done by Angrosino and Mays de Perez (2000) found that observations
are the primary data source in sociological community studies and anthropological field
studies. It is also used to supplement and clarify data derived from participant interviews.
Skills, training and competence of the evaluator are important as the quality of observational
data is depends on it according to studies by Patton (1987). A skilled observer is able to
identify and describe observations that will contribute to a clarified description. Observation
is a systematic data collection approach. Researchers use all of their senses to examine
people in natural settings or naturally occurring situations (Adler, 1987). According to the
schedule shown in the case study, the three weeks of compliance has dropped dramatically
in the last three years. Furthermore, the number of customers back as though in decline as
well. Through this method, information is easily obtained directly by the researchers. To use
this observation method, Gutenberg Media can observe the samples of the study with more
details, clear, and precise and this will contribute to their products. In fact, the information
obtained from observation whether expected or may not be important in the study of
reference materials. While, observation methods are useful to researchers in a variety of
ways. They provide researchers with ways to check for nonverbal expression of feelings,
determine who interacts with whom, grasp how participants communicate with each other,
and check for how much time is spent on various activities (Schmuck, 1997).

Moreover, based on Hodder (1994) and Prior (2004), for documentary data, it
consists of written, oral, visual or cultural artifacts. Instead of interviewing participants,
previous researcher Stevick (1971) asked them to write essays about their experience in
order to collect data. However, although it is less time-consuming than conducting
interviews with the participants, written data do not provide the kind of data that is possible
through the interview exploration through the layers of experience. However, there is
another way to collect more data besides using interviews, observations and documents,
which is through questionnaires. Based on the given case study showed, the company had
contacted The Gutenberg Media previous ads business in early September, giving them a
deadline of three weeks to respond. But, The Gutenberg Media should contact the
advertising business to feedback from those who do not get response within three weeks.
Thus it is clear that, Gutenberg Media had lost communication with the advertising business.

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The data needed for this case study was collected through the use of primary and secondary
sources. A well designed questionnaire was used. (Hawkes, 2008) Found that most studies
using semi-structured questionnaires lacked specific information on question wording and
phrasing. So, the Gutenberg will be able to incorporate valuable consumer feedback into
your advertisement. Therefore, it can offer feedback to the manufacture so that they can
improve the product (Maria O'Conor, 2007).

The data produced from the various sources are assembled into a single text for the
final analytic work. Researchers need to be persistent in their judgments that the data
presents the perspective of participants. The trustworthiness of the data depends on the
integrity and honesty of the research. In addition to maintain the confidentiality of
participants, researchers need to proceed with sensitivity and concern for their needs and
desires.

Need to Update Process

First of all, what is processes? Process is a sequence of activities which is adds some value
by producing required outputs from a variety of inputs. Basically all of organizations use
processes ordering material, making products and selling services. A process also is how to
identify the Key Processes, build a Process Model of the organization, manage and review
processes and measure it is explained. The input will generally be the outputs of other
processes. During the transformation, grade or value is added and resources consumed.
Data, information, decision and object may be the output.

The client can be internal or external of organization. There are four basic questions
for each process step which who are the suppliers, who are the customers, what are the
performance indicators that describe how well the process is performing and are the right
control loops in place. The best organizations have clear statement of vision, objectives and
values that allow them to set strategies and plans for achieving their mission. Critical
Success Factors (CSFs) are statements that define what the management team must
accomplish for the organization to achieve its mission. These strategies and plans set out
the organizations objectives and targets and it is the organizations key processes that will
deliver those organizational goals and CSFs (EFQM, 2012).

Function of manager are really important in an organization. An organization will be

fully glorious if they know to make a business process change such as how they analyze,

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redesign, and improve the business processes. Usually the company that have corporate
business process architecture and a business process management (BPM) to consider all
possible process change initiatives, to feature interventions and to coordinate efforts and to
document result. (Harmon, 26 Apr 2014) There have a software organization like have spent
quite a bit of time thinking about the software development process. Departments of
Defense funded a major effort to determine how the software development process could be
improved in the year 1990s.

By the late 90s, organizations had also discovered, as they did with prior fads that
these also werent easy solutions and certainly not just about technology. Organizations
have issues such as knowledge management arent centred on information technology (IT).
He also reminded them that their focus must be on their business processes and the
changes required of people such as changes in beliefs, behavior, encouragement, roles,
labor, culture and structure. Next, new or emergent ideas such as ERP, customer
relationship management (CRM), business-to-customer (B2C) e-business, and business-to-
business (B2B) e-business all demanded complete end-to-end process design and
management to be effective. Besides that, technologies can help navigate entire processes
are available to support Gutenberg media. Embedding the businesss rules and its human
knowledge into the organizations executable processing software may change your way of
working.

To start the automated process flow, triggering evens must be sensed. Office
workers have long been able to launch a workflow through their desktop computers Enter
keys or mouse clicks. The order process agent might take in a lot of information, but until
the agent conform the order, the bulk of the order process isnt start. Technologies that
support person-to-person, team-to-team collaboration include email and messaging, group
calendars and scheduling, electronic meeting system, desktop video and real-time data
conferencing, group document handling and groupware services to support collaboration
(Burlton, 2001). In order to update the process, each organizations sales team will have a
unique defined sales process that it leans on in order prospect, nurture, and close deals
successfully. But what happens when that process is broken or so out of date that it isnt in
sync with the way people buy today? Your sales reps will have difficulty gaining business,
sales will suffer, and so will profits. Other than that, poor connection rate. If your sales
people are still sending out cold emails to their leads, they probably have a very poor
connection rate. Their emails are quickly deleted without even being opened. Why? Because

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the leads dont know who they are. This poor connection rate is a big sign of a broken piece
of the process.

Besides, update to utilize mobility, adept action plans now, not later. Even today,
many enterprise continue to depend on static emergency plans, that are both difficult to
deliver to an entire workforce and easily fall apart when trouble hits due to various
spontaneous impacts driven by the fog of war. This means that if an enterprises action
plans arent being supported by easily updated mechanisms, a business is prone to miss
critical elements that could threaten life or property while failing to account for unexpected
costs. Update to apply mobility, adept action plans that include universal communication. In
many legacy digital platforms, an inability to provide universal emergency information in real
time leaves critical workforce participants in the dark, just at the moment when actionable
elements are most needed. Consequently, updating processes to include the integration of
systems that support omnibus communications on demand is central to creating the most
flexible, efficient, and prudent way to go for any enterprise.

The cost of updating is also important to update the process. Like everything else
associated with todays business climate, the cost of safety is a concern for enterprise
managers. Typically, when an emergency appears, costs tend to spike unless an enterprise
understands and maximizes its emergency processes/systems to ensure that everything is
optimized from the outset. That said, how does one know what optimal really is.
Particularly when it comes to action plan operations? Heres a bit an overarching guide to
help managers figure that out. Firstly, test and measure the physical time it takes for a
workforce to locate and active its enterprise emergency plan. Second, test, measure and
remove any operational logjams beginning from the initiation of a workforce alert to an
emergency all-clear announcement. Third, test, define, or update any intrinsic system
information constraints, meaning the business time difference between action plan
operations based on static legacy data platforms versus mobile device utilization. Lastly,
define, prepare, and store necessary reputation-based or public facing media templates
before, not during, or after a crisis.

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Analyse Table

Year Compliance by Compliance by # of Returning

Week 2 Week 3 Advertiser by
Printing
2013 7 7 9/16
2012 5 6 8/16
2011 6 8 10/16
2010 9 14 15/16
2009 8 12 14/16
2008 9 13 14/16
2007 10 15 15/16

Based on the table, the data shows a decreasing trend from 2007 to 2013 except for year
2010. We can see that the data was higher in 2007. This is because the data compliance by
week 2 is 10 and week 3 is 15 and the number of returning advertiser by printing is
93.75%. This happen probably is because of Gutenberg Media has contacted previous
advertising business in early.

For 2008 the data was decreasing from 10 to 9 in compliance by week 2. Other than
that, the compliance by week 3 also decrease from 15 in 2007 to 13 in 2008. The number of
returning advertiser by printing also decrease 6.25%. The company must find a good way to
increase a profit like make promotion end of the year.

From the table above, the sales for 2009 also decreasing from 2008 to 2009. Besides
that, the number of returning advertiser by printing still the same 14/16. However, the
compliance by week 2 and 3 decrease 1 from 2008, which is from 9 to 8 in week 2 and 13
to 12 in week 3. In 2010, the sales was increasing because Gutenberg Media have a good
stability for their company. The number on retuning advertiser by printing same with 2007
(93.75%). From this changing, the compliance by week 3 is higher than week 2 because
week 2 is 9 and week 3 is 14.

Based on year 2011, the sales was decrease from 93.75% to 62.5%. This is because
in year 2011 the demand of returning advertiser by printing for week 2 is 6 and week 3 is 8
only. At the year 2012, the sales continued to decline from 2011 to 2012 from 10/16 to 8/16

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number of returning advertiser by printing. The sales in 2010 shows an increase trend
compared to previous year. The number of returning advertiser for is 15/16. The compliance
by week 2 is 5 and week 3 only 6. This happen probably is because the company unable to
attract customers to buy their sale. Finally, for year 2013, the amount of sale is better than
2012 because it increase from 8/16 to 9/16. The sales increase 6.25%. The amount of
compliance by week 2 and 3 are same, which is 7.

CONCLUSION
The decreasing sales of Gutenberg Media is mainly due to the factors such as poor
management of company, high relative costs which could lead to lower profit, strength of
demand from customers and communication skills. However, there are few ways to increase
the compliance and advertising sales of Gutenberg Media. The company should utilize social
media to promote their products, collect more data to monitor and maintain company sales
and also update the process of productions. With this, Gutenberg Media can improve their
sales without having to spend more money on the cost of productions.

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