Innlegget leses best på den opprinnelige studentbloggen
The interested semester finally began. This semester I chosed Digital Marketing. This subject includes 4 part and the first one belongs to Arne Krokan. Yet we have done the first lecture of Digital Marketing by Arne Krokan. In the first lecture, we went through study technique and digital economy. Study technique is quite interesting, but as a student of digitalization and economy, I spent more my focus on platform and platform economy. So what are those and their impact on economy ?
First I want to recommend you guys a book which I read in the last semester: The digital transformation playbook: rethink your business for the digital age, David L. Roger. I think this is a necessary book for those who begin the learn about digital economy.
DEFINITION:
What is platform ? David Roger wrote in his book:
”A platform is a business that creates value by facilitating direct interactions between two or more distinct types of customers.”
And according to Wikipedia: ”The platform economy is economic and social activity facilitated by platforms. “.
David Roger also mentioned many different types of platform business in his book such as:
-Taobao, Amazon, eBay as platform for retail (marketplace)
-Youtube, Forbes.com as platform for media
-PayPal, Kickstarter, Alipay as platform for finance
-Airbnb, TripAdvisor, booking.com as platform for hospitality
-Uber, Didi Kuaidi as platform for transportation
-Coursera, Udemy as platform for education
-Etc
As we can see in the digital age, platform is a very important part of the economy. Technology developed leads to the development of platform businesses.
THE IMPACT OF PLATFORM
Let me take AirBnB as an example. AirBnB is the very first platform business, it has changed the hospitality game for several years. In traditional way, when we want to look for a place for our vacation, we have to use google for searching hotels. By the development of technology, especially the popular of smartphone and its applications, everything we need are here. AirBnB app is a B2C and C2C platform, it allows business (hotel, resort) and private person ( those who have a room for rent) looking for customer who want to rent a place for their vacation or trip. In this app we have the filters to reach what we need for a room such as kitchen included, 2-3 beds in a room, etc.
Platform is not new for us, but now it is dominating the economy. It spreads a new wind for organizations to re-think and re-build their business.
Platform is a place where big data are used. Customer behavior, searching engine, algorithms are the characteristics of platform. By using big data, platform business can reach to the correct customer segment and provide the correct products which meet their needs. I am mentioning this because we as a digital marketer, Facebook ads and Google ads are our tools of choice, and big data is our resources. Without resources we cannot have any access to do anything and the same with platform, without tools, we cannot turn our resources into products. How do you think about this metaphor? Of course everything has it own darkside, customer’s information will be taken for searching engine, we will be showed a lot of advertisements which is absolutly correct with what we are thinking in our head. It sounds like witchcraft but it is how platform using big data and how searching engine functions.
Overall, platform makes the thing more simple and smarter than every traditional methods we have ever had. I have mentioned above algorithms and stuffs, stay tuned and follow my block, the next one may be about AI – the best product of humanity in my opinion.
How is your opinion, drop the comment below.
-Quang Duy Luu