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Digitalization of Commercial Activity of Russian Companies as a Factor of Their Competitiveness

Study of the impact of modern technologies and, in particular, digitalization, on the transformation and future development of industries, as well as changes in economic and marketing models within industries and their impact on business competitiveness is one of the new areas of research in the economic sciences. The purpose of this study is to apply the latest digital trends to modern commercial systems (B2B and B2B2C) of Russian companies to improve their competitiveness in an open digital economy. This work includes the authors’ own developments and field studies of digitalization of commercial functions, with a comparative analysis of the launches of B2B and B2B2C digital CRM systems in 2017 and 2020. The authors analyze materials on economic history and economic development impacted by technological progress, as well as recent researches in the field of digital technologies. This comparison reveals an understanding of the development of digital technologies in business aiming to increase its competitiveness in an open digital economy and to reveal the perception of these technologies by consumers and business partners of companies in Russia. Among the major digital trends that companies are rapidly adopting into their current business processes, including sales and marketing, the authors highlight the growing use of AI, voice search, 5G, AR technologies, chatbots, programmatic advertising, predictive analytics, omnichannel marketing, digital video marketing, blockchain. The field study revealed some progress in the level of digitalization and its perception in the country, starting with the dissemination of modern equipment to the increase in the computer literacy of the population and its openness to work with digital tools, both at the end-user level and at the level of business partners. That confirms the prospect of digitalizing the fieldwork for companies and leveraging the personalization component of marketing to improve the competitiveness of companies in an open digital economy. Read more...

Advertising Agency: the Specific Features of Working in a Competitive Digital Environment

The article is devoted to changes in the advertising market in the field of relationships between its main subjects. The author systematizes the problems that have intensified in connection with sanctions, restrictions and the global crisis caused by the global course of the pandemic 2020–2021. The research focuses on the advertising agency, its new role and functionality. Particular attention is paid to the agency’s work in the most dynamic segment of the advertising market – digital, and new tools, formats and technologies used in agency work. The study reveals a set of problems that arise in the digital environment and are associated, on the one hand, with man-made causes and features of information technologies 3.0, which are not so easy to adapt to solve marketing problems, and on the other hand, with the problems of communication management and updated agency functionality. Such a characteristic feature as transparency, which initially, at the dawn of the digital communication era, was a serious competitive advantage compared to classic advertising media, has now almost disappeared. This limits the possibilities for cooperation between advertisers, advertising distributors, and advertising producers. The movement towards transparency should be supported both at the macro-level of the industry and at the micro-scale of the individual agency, in order to help the agency business maintain its key role in the advertiser’s business and not push it to directly cooperate with advertising carriers, which will lead to a loss of content quality and media placement. In digital communications, the differentiation between the tasks of consistently strengthening the brand value and the tactics of quick advertising for immediate purchase is very serious, since these tasks are solved by completely different – not overlapping-tools. The authors consider integrated marketing in the digital environment as the implementation of the agency’s functions of planning, selecting promotion channels in accordance with the tasks set, budgeting, monitoring efficiency and building work with the subjects of the communication market. Read more...

Features of Teaching Entrepreneurship in Non-core Areas in the Bachelor’s Degree

The article deals with the formation of entrepreneurial competencies by students in various educational programs, where entrepreneurial disciplines are not core. Under non-core areas in the framework of this article, we will agree to understand educational programs for undergraduate programs that are aimed at forming specialists in professions other than entrepreneurs, for example, the profiles of “Project Management”, “Finance and Credit”, “Sports Management”, “Event Management”, “Management in the hotel and Restaurant Business”, “Marketing”, “Civil law”, “Economic security” and others. This is a preparation for a specialty other than entrepreneurship, so the entrepreneurship competencies for these programs is a general professional one. Entrepreneurial education seems to be relevant for students in various areas and profiles of undergraduate studies. Entrepreneurship competencies is a general professional competencies for non-core areas, while it is possible to integrate it into the main educational program as a professional one. Students can open their own business in small and medium-sized businesses, initiate intra-company entrepreneurship. For systematic training, it is advisable to introduce a practice module for running your own startup with a connection to the infrastructure for entrepreneurship. This article is devoted to the solution of this problem – building a system for teaching entrepreneurship in non-core areas of bachelor’s degree, focused on the following goals: а) identify and describe competencies in the field of entrepreneurship for students of managerial, economic, in the future and other profiles of higher education; b) present a system of teaching entrepreneurship through a module of adapted academic disciplines from a proven set of courses in entrepreneurial education; c) identify the main topics of the courses included in the module, and the types of necessary training sessions that will allow you to achieve the required level of development of the proposed competencies. In this article, a team of authors who teach courses on entrepreneurship as core disciplines at Synergy University presents a vision and a general outline for building this direction and basic courses for non-core students, which will also be detailed in subsequent publications. Read more...

Competitive Comparison of Advertising Channels under Influence of External Economic Factors

External economic factors have a significant impact on the competitiveness of the companies. The Russian advertising market, which has gone through several periods of crisis and has not fully reached the stage of equilibrium, is becoming one of the most affected industries in the modern history of Russia. The purpose of the study is to analyze the advertising market in Russia in the context of the dynamics of competitiveness and forecast its development in 2022. The authors of the article provide an analysis of the main steps of the marketing strategy of companies in a competitive market, such as situational analysis, work with market dynamics and segment selection, including Porter’s main factors of competition, planning, organization and budgeting, marketing plan implementation and evaluation of its effectiveness, with a focus on the marketing communications tools that are most in demand on the Russian market, as well as analyze the situation of the spring of 2022, the impact of events on the competitive situation in the advertising market and present their forecast for its recovery and development. As part of this work, the authors conducted a small field study among representatives of manufacturing companies and advertising agencies to identify the actual changes in the advertising market. The main hypothesis of the authors: the suspension of marketing activities by 50 percent or more, was largely confirmed, under the influence of several global companies quitting the Russian market or the decision of brands to suspend activities in Russia until the situation stabilizes. Read more...