Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine, Volume 11, Issue 1, Year 2020

PRI ORI T I E S , RE S OURCE S , ANDWORKI NGUNDE RT HE CURRE NTHE AVYPRE S S URE SF OL L OWI NGT HERI GHT PROT OCOL S .

S OL I DARI TYANDE MP AT HY

VOL UME11 I S S UE1 2020

Editorial: Priorities, Resources, and Working under the Current Heavy Pressures Following the Right Protocols. Solidarity and Empathy

In front of the new challenges at the global level because of the sudden occurrence of the COVID-19 outbreak (caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2) – which is profoundly influencing everyday life, socialization (adapting behavior to the new norms like social interaction with physical isolation, doing much more remotely), business, and communities in a new collaborative sense – we are witnessing the reshaping of the practice of management starting from the way of thinking in considering specific strategic choices founded on particular urgent situations, implied capacities, lessons learned, and the imperative diffusion and creation of knowledge, know-how and know-who. And these first expressed thoughts were just to start from actualizing what we underlined in December 2019.

The coronavirus outbreak appeared as the more prominent threat to the global economy (compared to all other threats to the global economy), being a top risk to growth in the next year, according to the McKinsey’s newest survey on economic conditions which was conducted during the first week of March this year. With regard to the changes to globalization strategies it is more likely (compared to December last year) that companies will include both diversifying supply chains across countries and sourcing more from regional supply chains, respondents also

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remaining more likely to expect customer demand to increase. (FitzGerald, Singer and Smit, 2020) In Romania, the Competition Authority informed very recently (within the framework of the joint statement of the competition authorities from the European Union), the closely monitoring of the companies’ behavior, pointing out that it will not hesitate to take action against abusive practices (such as excessive pricing) or cartel. The Romanian Competition Council underlined, for example, that retailers can coordinate both freight to ensure the supply of commodities in all areas and home deliveries for people who cannot leave their homes within the context of the current crisis situation caused by the coronavirus pandemic. On March 26, 2020 participating at the Romanian Government Cabinet Meeting, President of the Romanian Competition Council made reference, among other aspects, to the collaboration with the National Authority for Consumer Protection (ANPC), as Institutional Partner, with regard to the platform “Food Price Monitor” (A. Launched on October 14, 2019, and allowing the comparison of more than 30,000 products from over 1,700 stores; B. On July 1, 2019 it was launched the platform “Price Monitor for Fuels” - information about the tariffs practiced by the large gas station chains; Business Partners: (A) Carrefour, Cora – Romania Hypermarché, Kaufland, Lidl Discount, Mega Image, PENNY Market – REWE, Profi Rom Food, Selgros Cash&Carry; (B) KMG International, Lukoil România, MOL România Petroleum Products, NIS Petrol România, OMV Petrom, Socar Petroleum).

We are now seeing wonderful people on a daily basis: demonstrating professionalism and devotion, sharing a forthright sense; showing kindness, delivering grace and building mutual trust and respect, becoming this way unforgettable; (Bliss, 2020) recommending to be safe and smart, listen to the experts, and improve cautiously and intelligently the necessary preparedness.

(Bradford, 2020) Insights collected on March 19, 2020, for instance, by Luth Research (on the basis of a sample of N300 to N500 balanced to mirror the demographics of the U.S. online population) revealed significant aspects, for example, with regard to the question of what’s the single most significant change made in the life of an individual after the current coronavirus crisis there were answers such as follows: “Will keep things cleaner”; “Take nothing for granted, there will always be change”; “Be more social and go out on dates”; “Continue to show concern and care for other people’s needs”; “Be kinder to people. Try to have more in savings in case something happens again”; “Prepare for the unexpected”; “Put more money in my emergency fund”; “Being more grateful for what I have”. And this within the context in which the leading categories where is seen heavier consumer spending are grocery, health & personal care, and pet supplies.

Addressing recently to Marketing Community, Russ Klein, CEO of American Marketing Association (AMA) underlined among other aspects that: “… The fears and worries over both health and economic well-being are heavy… Demand will come back… But like all climates, the weather will change… Cool heads prevail and it will be our collective leadership that walks the world into its newly created future…” And as shown also recently by Kellogg Insight (the research & ideas magazine of Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University),

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Harry M. Kraemer, a former Chairman and CEO of the $12 billion global healthcare company Baxter International – currently being both a clinical Professor of Leadership at Kellogg, and an executive partner with the private equity firm Madison Dearborn – argued that in a crisis, like the current one, leaders need to act with calm, doing both the right thing, and the best they can do, one hand, and telling people what they know, what they don’t know, and when they’ll get back to them to discuss what they didn’t know before, on the other hand. (Kraemer, 2020) There is no doubt that we are living a cultural challenge, as recently highlighted by McKinsey’s experts, who pledge for creative pragmatic solutions implemented by companies as a COVID-19 crisis response with the help of an integrated nerve center (this approach of having a flexible structure for guiding the work being developed by McKinsey together with many leading companies) which concentrates both crucial leadership skills and organizational capabilities. (Mysore and Usher, 2020) Working under the current heavy pressures (such as: travel restrictions, border closings, supply-chain disruptions, and work stoppages across the globe) this integrated nerve center is designed to resolve four challenges (inadequate discovery, poor decision making, constrained solution design, delivery failure), being based on five crossfunctional teams (Nerve-center integration team: Senior C-suite leader, Epidemiological expert, Project coordinator, and Scenario-planning analyst; Workforce protection: Head of HR as team leader, HR full-time leader, Security, Legal, Employee communications, and Ombudsperson; Supply-chain stabilization: Head of procurement as team leader, Procurement manager, Supplychain analyst, Regional supply-chain managers, and Logistics manager; Customer engagement: Head of sales and marketing as team leader, Financial analyst, Customer communications managers, Incentives managers, and SKUs managers; Financials stress testing: CFO as team leader, Leader of strategy or business development, Leader of treasury, Legal representative, and one or more Financial analysts), an example of such a COVID-19-response agile structure (of a minimal viable nerve center necessary to get start quickly) being shown in the figure below:

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Figure no. 1: A minimal viable nerve center agile structure necessary to get start quickly Source: Mysore, M. and Usher, O. (2020). Responding to coronavirus: The minimum viable nerve center, McKinsey & Company, Risk Practice, March

As we can see, in order to avoid the needless complexity (considered a common pitfall in a nerve-center design), McKinsey’s experts suggested a minimal viable nerve center. And with regard to that they highlighted the need of putting in place right away four essential elements: nerve-center organization; operating cadence; issue identification; response plan; additional elements (such as: common operating pictures, KPI dashboards, and listening posts).

In a world fighting with this unwelcomed COVID-19 outbreak, and where the frontal approach to uncertainty is only “prospective”, (Purcarea, 2020) we need the right data putted into the current context so as to derive the necessary information… And while navigating this context and knowing, of course, that there is a way where there is a will, our attention was attracted by some words expressed by the President and Chief consultant at Willow Data Strategy: “No one gets to command unlimited resources, and every department has its own priorities. What

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analytics professionals must do is to figure out all kinds of limitations beyond the little world of analytics, and prioritize the work in terms of actionability”. (Yu, 2020) And yes, we really need actionability!

That is why we totally agree with the opinion expressed recently by McKinsey representatives that the current lockdown constraints (within anxiety and uncertainty about the health and safety, about the ability to live as usual, fear about the severe economic downturn) can be gradually released sooner rather than later, if we have both the right protocols in place, and people following these protocols, within the context in which the imperative of our time is to be able to control the virus, soften the inevitable economic crisis to sustainable levels, and safeguard our lives and livelihoods. (Smit et al., 2020) Let us finally go back in time, in 2015, and to remind ourselves of the wise words of the venerable Professor Vasile Stănescu, Honorary Member of the Romanian Academy: “Life is… a continuous oscillation between arrival and departure, between light and shadow… Years go by, memories stay in the dusty album we browse in the moments of escape from an unfriendly present… I want to hear the silence of things (Emil Cioran) and the music of spheres (Pitagora), because when you stop believing, in fact, you stop existing, you stop living history… Our world has entered a new temporality ... we are projected by events… waking up captives, in a continuous tension… Today’s world does not yet exercise common destiny of human beings wherever they are, of solidarity and empathy ... there are major imbalances ... The competition took a dramatic end, the fight being carried out between values and interests… We live in an ambivalence incapable of solving the idea of continuity… Endangered is the factor of cohesion and mobilization of society… the fragility and vulnerability of our planet’s projection are in an ambivalence that give us cold chills…”1 Theodor Valentin Purcărea Editor-in-Chief References Bliss, J. (2020). In this Time of Coronavirus…Let Goodness in Business Prevail. Human and Financial Prosperity Will Follow, CustomerThink, March 19. Retrieved from http://customerthink.com/in-this-time-of-coronavirusletgoodness-in-business-prevail-human-and-financial-prosperity-will-follow/?

Bradford, R. (2020). How to Leverage Coronavirus for Positive Change in GBS, The Shared Services & Outsourcing Network (SSON), 03/05/2020. Retrieved from https://www.ssonetwork.com/global-businessservices/columns/how-to-leverage-coronavirus-for-positive-change-in-gbs FitzGerald, A., Singer, V. and Smit, S. (2020). Economic Conditions Snapshot, March 2020: McKinsey Global Survey results, McKinsey & Company, Strategy & Corporate Finance Practice, March. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/economic-conditionssnapshot-march-2020-mckinsey-global-survey-results?

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Purcarea, T. (2015). Vasile STANESCU: Our world has entered a new temporality, Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine, Volume 6, Issue 4, 42-45

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Kraemer, K.M. (2020). Two Principles for Leading Your Organization Through the COVID-19 Crisis, Kellogg Insight, Mar 19. Retrieved from https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/two-principles-leading-organizationcovid-19-crisis?

Mysore, M. and Usher, O. (2020). Responding to coronavirus: The minimum viable nerve center, McKinsey & Company, Risk Practice, March. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/risk/ourinsights/responding-to-coronavirus-the-minimum-viable-nerve-center?

Purcarea, T. (2020).The Future of Marketing Management and Accurately Understanding the News Impacting the Business, Resetting our Guiding Values, Holistic Marketing Management, Volume 10, Issue 1, 2020, pp. 04-10 Purcarea, T. (2015). Vasile STANESCU: Our world has entered a new temporality, Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine, Volume 6, Issue 4, 42-45 Smit, S., Hirt, M., Buehler, K., Lund, S., Greenberg, E. and Govindarajan, A. (2020). Safeguarding our lives and our livelihoods: The imperative of our time, McKinsey & Company, March. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/safeguarding-our-livesand-our-livelihoods-the-imperative-of-our-time?

Yu, S.H. (2020). Data Analytics Projects Only Benefit Marketers When Properly Applied, Target Marketing (BIG DATA, SMALL DATA, CLEAN DATA, MESSY DATA), March 13. Retrieved from https://www.targetmarketingmag.com/post/data-analytics-projects-benefit-marketers-when-applied/#ne *** https://ec.europa.eu/competition/ecn/202003_joint-statement_ecn_corona-crisis.pdf *** The companies can act so that to avoid the shortage of essential products, Romanian Competition Council, 03/26/2020. Retrieved from http://www.consiliulconcurentei.ro/uploads/docs/items/bucket15/id15831/masuri_ce_mar_2020_english.pdf *** https://www.monitorulpreturilor.info/Home/Monitor *** COVID-19-Opinions-032020-final-1 *** Here for Our Marketing Community, COVID-19 Message, "Russ Klein, CEO | American Marketing Association" <reply@oneama.com> Mon, March 23, 2020 7:27 pm

The Magazine is the result of a true partnership, by bringing scientists and practitioners together proving the passionate pursuit of knowledge for wisdom, the real passion for acquiring and sharing this knowledge inviting the readers to maturing interdisciplinary dialogue and building a transparent culture network.

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Using the Information and Communications Technology Data Deluge from a Semantic Perspective of a Dynamic Challenge: What to Learn and What to Ignore?

-Part 3-

Prof.Eng.Ph.D. Victor GREU Abstract The paper analyses the Data Deluge premises and main approaches toward a dynamic and semantic search of balance between generating data and extracting knowledge, focusing on some semantic criteria of the search, using Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) context at the planetary scale, which could influence Earth environment and eventually humankind evolution with an unprecedented speed and impact. The main reasons for this kind of analyses come from the ICT generated global and exponential changes, which are more and more difficult to be controlled or at least estimated, regarding all their positive or negative consequences, just because of the complexity and speed of their vast penetration. The semantic analysis have to face a dynamic environment, because the relevant data/facts are fast changing (not from centuries or decades, but from months or even days), so we have to refine our search looking for new semantic terms or changing the old meaning (associated information/ knowledge) of the usual ones. It is emphasized that, although all technologies and ICT applications largely contribute to DD, lately, AI and its main branches, machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL) or cognitive learning (CL), are prominent in striving to extract information/knowledge from data, or even to compete with the human intelligence by cognitive features.

The work identified criteria of the search, which are linked with all (positive or negative) consequences of ICT on Information society (IS) toward Knowledge Based Society (KBS) and generally of World changes, just because of the complexity and speed of their vast proliferation, more visible by the dramatic climate changes, Earth resources fading, social imbalance or actually by the vulnerability of humankind to diseases spreading in the globalization context. Such consequences should be alarm signals and optimization criteria in our decision processes, as individuals, but mainly for the incumbents. These signals and the ICT impact on IS/KBS at planetary scale could indicate the main criteria for the mentioned semantic search in the ICT/AI/ML/DL/CL fast implementation processes, in order to meet Earth ecosystem needs and expectations for a sustainable progress.

An important paper conclusion is that the semantic approach of decision processes, based on the generated data and extracted information, is a complex optimization target which just could match and benefit from the dynamic ICT/DD/ML/DL/CL context, where the data signification, implications and consequences are fast appearing and changing, because of this context potential to produce changes, but we have to be sure which of them are positive and which negative, to what extent and time period. The most difficult and complex problem will be, every time, to understand and define criteria for what is positive and what negative, as all our Earth ecosystem and even humankind behaviour and evolution is changing, but also our criteria should! Such conclusions are sustained by some concrete examples of the massive expansion of ICT, like the case emergent 5G (among others), which could produce, besides positive, real and unprecedented benefits, new, but less desired effects. Here, the good news is that AI/ICT itself could compensate such negative effects, as it is revealed also by some concrete applications cases.

The second section of the paper completes the previous technical elements with other improvements of learning from the real-time complex processes of ICT/IS/KBS that could be observed just in the most prominent processes of learning at planetary scale, by â&#x20AC;ŚML/DL. Although we speak about how the machines are learning, these could reveal not only the state-of-the-art of ICT/AI/ML/DL/CL and their limits (for example, ML and Wolpert famous â&#x20AC;&#x153;no free lunchâ&#x20AC;?theorem), but indirectly shows the limits of humans that have the responsibility to design them, just considering the mentioned criteria.

Another conclusion is that all we see or perceive on these ICT/DD evolutions is not simply to understand nor to manage, but we have to timely analyse and try to optimize, as the price is so big. In fact, the complexity obliges us to also change the rules of learning we are used to practice, because the old rules could not be completely useful in the deep and ever-changing context, i.e., optimally and dynamically refine the criteria and the models of our thinking, in order to rapidly adapt to the new realities, which exceed the ICT/DD context, as we can see in these days, when the main challenges of our Earth ecosystem seem to come from other side (human and social health), but we also have to agree that any dramatic

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evolution at Earth scale have to be seen in the globalization context and we must use the power of ICT/DD/AI to optimally face the challenges (including the emotional impact on human life and behaviour, which ultimately could also induce, on short or long time, important changes, that we not really or completely perceive now).

The final conclusion is that, for learning to better learn, the emphasis must be secondary on the fact that the human contribution to ICT/AI/ML/DL/CL processes is needed for better results “against” the difficulty/complexity, but primary in order to be sure that the “desired outputs” are designed to match the priority criteria we have above mentioned as essential for a sustainable development of ICT/IS/KBS and humankind evolution on Earth. More than these, learning to better learn, for a systemic approach of refining knowledge, is necessary to be the goal of all responsible people, beginning with the incumbents, the specialists and teachers, as everybody has to adapt to changes (Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change - Stephen Hawking) and use new technologies with appropriate criteria of optimization, i.e. timely analyse what and how we should learn or ignore.

Keywords: Data Deluge, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, cognitive learning, semantic based retrieval, green ITC, 5G, information society, knowledge based society JEL Classification: L63; L86; M15; O31; O33

“In the age of technology there is constant access to vast amounts of information.

The basket overflows; people get overwhelmed; the eye of the storm is not so much what goes on in the world, it is the confusion of how to think, feel, digest, and react to what goes on.”

Criss Jami, Venus in Arms

1. A dynamic and semantic search of balance between generating data and extracting knowledge Sometimes, continuing to re-analyse a context could seem a relative time consuming, but always it depends on complexity and target. Recalling the evolution of information storage methods [3] would not be, generally, useful, unless we consider that it is important to deeply analyse current information before striving to acquire something new. We concluded that people “had to store data in their brains memory cells”, especially in the ancient times.

Now, when the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is the main driving factor of the progress of the Information Society (IS) toward Knowledge Based Society (KBS), we are facing the unprecedented challenges of storage and manage the increasing amount of data that ICT, in the actual phase of Data Deluge (DD), generates when involved at Earth scale in all humankind fields of activity.

Still, other authors also consider that today it is useful to review the time picture of this evolution of data storage and management [1]: “ONCE UPON A TIME, information was deposited only inside human brains, and ancient bards could spend hours retelling stories of conflicts and conquests. Then external data storage was invented. Small clay cylinders and tablets, invented in Sumer some 5,000 years ago, often contained just a dozen cuneiform characters, equivalent to a few hundred bytes (102 B). The Oresteia, a trilogy of Greek tragedies by Aeschylus (fifth century BCE), amounts to about 300,000 B….A radical shift came with Johannes Guttenberg’s printing press, using movable type. By 1500, less than half a century after printing’s introduction, European printers had released more than 11,000 new book editions…Then, in the 19th century, came photographs, sound recordings, and movies… during the 20th century came … new storage modes, notably magnetic tapes and long-playing records...Beginning in the 1960s, computers expanded the scope of digitization to medical imaging (a digital mammogram is 50 MB), animated movies (2–3 gigabytes), intercontinental financial

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transfers, and eventually the mass emailing of spam (more than 100 million messages sent every minute). Such digitally stored information rapidly surpassed all printed materials.

Shakespeare’s plays and poems amount to 5 MB, the equivalent of just a single highresolution photograph….Printed materials have thus been reduced to a marginal component of overall global information storage. By the year 2000, all books in the Library of Congress were on the order of 1013 B (more than 10 terabytes) but that was less than 1 percent of the total collection (1015 B, about 3 petabytes) once all photographs, maps, movie, and audio recordings were added …”

Coming back to our days, the mentioned evolution could help us to perceive the whole picture, in order to better manage its complex consequences: “And in the 21st century this information is being generated ever faster. In its latest survey of data generated per minute in 2018, Domo, a cloud service, listed more than 97,000 hours of video streamed by Netflix users, nearly 4.5 million videos watched on YouTube, just over 18 million forecast requests on the Weather Channel, and more than 3 quadrillion bytes (3.1 petabytes) of other Internet data used in the United States alone. By 2016, the annual global data-creation rate surpassed 16 ZB (a zettabyte is 1021 B), and by 2025, it is expected to rise by another order of magnitude—that is, to about 160 ZB or 1023 B. And according to Domo, by 2020 1.7 MB of data will be generated every second for every one of the world’s nearly 8 billion people.”

It is still important to observe, even preliminary, the extent and the features of the mentioned consequences, i.e. the ways these are involved in the ICT Data Deluge (DD), starting from the same amazing presented figures [1]: “These quantities lead to some obvious questions. Only a fraction of the data flood could be stored, but which part should that be? Challenges of storage are obvious even if less than 1 percent of this flow gets preserved. And for whatever we decide to store, the next question is how long should the data be preserved. No storage need last forever, but what is the optimal span? The highest prefix in the international system of units is yotta, Y = 1024.

We’ll have that many bytes within a decade.”

Noticing such facts, we consider them not only a realistic insight, but a comprehensive base to further continue our analysis toward a dynamic and semantic search of balance between generating data and extracting knowledge.

If the dynamic feature of the ICT/DD context is more than obvious, some semantic criteria of the search should better complete the image of these complex and huge processes, at the planetary scale, which influence Earth environment and eventually humankind evolution with an unprecedented speed and impact.

The main reasons for this kind of analyses come from the generated global and exponential changes, which are more and more difficult to be controlled or at least estimated, regarding all their positive or negative consequences, just because of the complexity and speed of their vast penetration.

In a simpler expression, the semantic analysis have to face a dynamic environment, because, as we could have seen above, the relevant data/facts are fast changing (not from centuries or decades, but from months or even days), so we have to refine our search looking for new semantic terms or changing the old meaning (associated information/ knowledge) of the usual ones.

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The road to our search aim is also obvious in the above approach [1] conclusions, as a reasonable rhetoric question: “And once we start creating more than 50 trillion bytes of information per person per year, will there be any real chance of making effective use of it? It is easier to find new prefixes for large databases than to decide how large is large enough. After all, there are fundamental differences between accumulated data, useful information, and insightful knowledge”.

Here we find the point of our previous approach [3], toward semantic signification of the plethora of applications and advances generated by the ITC/DD context, paving the “long and winding road” from data to information and eventually to knowledge.

We can see, all around and every day, the iceberg tips of ICT exponential development, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud, Big Data, 3D Printing, Robotic Process Automation, Hardware Robotics, Blockchain, Augmented/Virtual Reality etc.[13][14][15][22].

Although all these technologies and ICT applications largely contribute to DD, lately, AI and its main branches, machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL) or cognitive learning (CL), are prominent in striving to extract information/knowledge from data, or even to compete with the human intelligence (HI) by cognitive features [17][18][20][12].

We can start our semantic search with a metaphoric approach, very well expressed by [2]: “Miguel Street is a winding, narrow route through the Glen Park neighbourhood of San Francisco. Until a few years ago, only those living along the road travelled it, and they understood its challenges well. Now it's packed with cars that use it as a shortcut from congested Mission Street to heavily travelled Market Street. Residents must struggle to get to their homes, and accidents are a daily occurrence. • The problem began when smartphone apps like Waze, Apple Maps, and Google Maps came into widespread use, offering drivers real-time routing around traffic tie-ups. An estimated 1 billion drivers use such apps in the United States alone. • Today, traffic jams are popping up unexpectedly in previously quiet neighbourhoods around the country and the world. Along Adams Street, in the Boston neighbourhood of Dorchester, residents complain of speeding vehicles at rush hour, many with drivers who stare down at their phones to determine their next manoeuvre. London shortcuts, once a secret of black-cab drivers, are now overrun with app users. Israel was one of the first to feel the pain because Waze was founded there; it quickly caused such havoc that a resident of the Herzliya Bet neighbourhood sued the company.”

Our metaphor, laying from the “long and winding road” to the above traffic jams, is relevant not only for the complexity and difficulty of the search of balance between generating data and extracting knowledge, but more than this, for what we repeatedly claimed to be all (positive or negative) consequences of ICT/IS/KBS and generally of World changes, just because of the complexity and speed of their vast proliferation, more visible by the dramatic climate changes, Earth resources fading, social imbalance, or actually by the vulnerability of humankind to diseases spreading in the globalization context.

Without dramatizing, such consequences should be alarm signals and optimization criteria in our decision processes, as individuals, but mainly for the incumbents.

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Anyway, these signals and the above iceberg tips of ICT impact on IS/KBS at planetary scale, could indicate the main criteria for the mentioned semantic search in the ICT/AI/ML/DL/CL fast implementation processes, in order to meet Earth ecosystem needs and expectations for a sustainable progress.

An example of such semantic issues, appearing in one of the most prominent “tips” of ICT, as the emergent IoT is considered, is given by [4]: “IoT systems, such as smart homes, smart buildings, smart cities, smart planet, smart farms, smart agriculture, smart factory, smart manufacturing, smart industry, smart parking, smart transportation, smart grid, etc., have been steadily developed and deployed…Many IoT systems are data intensive and are for the purpose of monitoring for fault detection and diagnosis of critical systems. A large volume of data steadily come out of a large number of sensors in the monitoring system. Thus, we need to consider how to store and manage these data. Existing time series databases (TSDBs) can be used for monitoring data storage, but they do not have good models for describing the data streams stored in the database … we develop a semantic model for the specification of the monitoring data streams (time series data) in terms of which sensor generated the data stream, which metric of which entity the sensor is monitoring, what is the relation of the entity to other entities in the system, which measurement unit is used for the data stream, etc…”

Again we see a confirmation of our prior opinions [9][16] that, in this incredible advances of (ICT) technologies, for their optimal implementations, we mostly need better models matching them, along with refined criteria for decisions, based on … retrieving data for refined knowledge, as it is finally concluded: “Semantic based retrieval is especially important in a largescale integrated IoTEdge-Cloud system, because of its sheer quantity of data, its huge number of computing and IoT devices that may store the data, and the dynamics in data migration and evolution. With better data semantics, data streams can be more effectively tracked and flexibly retrieved to help with timely data analysis and control decision making anywhere and anytime.”

The above example (a largescale integrated IoT-Edge-Cloud system) is quite relevant, as an emergent huge part of the dynamic ITC/IS/KBS context, where the semantic analysis is necessary, but not simple, as it is supposed to investigate all available data processes by considering the dynamics in data migration and evolution, aiming to provide better, timely data analysis and control decision.

Although it is not very obvious, as a “long and winding road”, the semantic approach of decision processes, based on the generated data and extracted information, is a complex optimization target which just could match and benefit from the dynamic ICT/DD/ML/DL/CL context, where the data signification, implications and consequences are fast appearing and changing, because of this context potential to produce changes, but we have to be sure which of them are positive and which negative, to what extent and time period.

Perhaps the most difficult and complex problem will be, every time, to understand and define criteria for what is positive and what negative, as all our Earth ecosystem and even humankind behaviour and evolution is changing, but also our criteria should!

Another example will clearly express such complicate challenge for our decision processes, in the emergent and important context of green ITC [5]:

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“Energy costs for telecom operators around the world are already high: at the end of 2018, they accounted, on average, for around 5 percent of operating expenditures….This growing energy challenge is, in large measure, a result of the exponential growth in traffic that new 5G services are likely to deliver. Although the 5G-new-radio standard is more energy efficient per gigabyte than are the 4G standards, the proposed 5G use cases and new spectrum bands will require many more mobile sites, outstripping potential energy efficiencies. Each 5G site will need two to three times more power than the 4G-equivalent site, according to industry estimates. At the same time, as more services are provided at the edge, the number of data centres will need to rise. “ We observe this way that the massive expansion of ICT, by the emergent 5G (among others), will produce, besides positive, real and unprecedented benefits, new, but less desired effects. Here, the good news is that AI/ICT itself could compensate such negative effects: “Some savings lie in deploying artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT): some in structural and architectural transformations, and some in cheaper and more sustainable energy sourcing. …Nevertheless, our work suggests that many operators can reduce energy costs by at least 15 to 20 percent in the space of just one year—and more over a longer period...Artificial-intelligence-driven sleep and shutdown running systems that are not in constant use consumes significant amounts of energy. Typically, radio access network (RAN) accounts for about 60 percent of the power used at a mobile site. Data-traffic loads are intermittent, though, so that different parts of RAN can be put briefly into sleep mode, even during periods of peak traffic. …AI expands the potential for such energy-saving opportunities across the network.”

On the other side, it is important to notice that, as the ICT applications are more complex, which is the communications networks case, the control and optimal decisions are are more difficult, because they need to analyse huge amount of data (just a part of DD) in order to extract the useful information for efficacy: “The ability to analyse vast amounts of data relating to traffic patterns, real-time demand, and network-resource availability allows for quick, automated decisions on the parts of the system that can be put into sleep mode or shut down. For example, this could involve shutting down frequency carriers or shutting down a site momentarily in areas where there is overlapping coverage. We estimate that such energy-conserving AI tools can deliver 5 to 7 percent savings for some operators, in addition to savings that accrue from standalone, site-level efficiency measures. And the potential will surely rise further. As open and cloud native approaches to building RAN gain ground, additional AI solutions that not only save energy but also minimize related customer-experience issues, such as latency, are emerging. They can also be used on all networks, from 2G to 5G…The AI tools for managing energy efficiency in data centres (where the cloud RAN will be located) are considerably more mature. Google, for example, has reported 30 percent energy savings using AI at its data centres, illustrating just how high telecom operators could set their sights.”

More than these, the previous mentioned large scale integrated IoT-Edge-Cloud system finds here a natural confirmation that reflects the emergent reality of the ICT complex and eventually integrated (AI and IoT) subsystems: “…By placing sensors at various points to gauge grid-power input, fuel levels, the number of hours the generation set has been running, battery voltages, and consumption by

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different types of equipment and then analysing the data, operators could uncover potentially costly anomalies. What’s more, the IoT platform could provide real-time alerts when they occur. Like AI, the IoT also makes it much easier to optimize consumption—with air conditioners, for example. Many operators have already moved heat generating equipment outdoors to take advantage of natural convection cooling. Nevertheless, our analysis shows that, on average, about 20 percent of a telecom operator’s sites and other facilities still use air conditioning. On mobile sites where this is the set case, air conditioning accounts for 30 percent of energy consumption. Here, the installation of sensors would allow monitoring and remote adjustment of the site temperature. The sensors could even alert the operations centre if a door was left ajar or the maintenance crew altered the setting, forcing the air conditioning to work unnecessarily hard. The overall result could be a 1 to 3 percent reduction in a site’s energy consumption.”

Finally it is also confirmed our repeated opinion [12][16][19][21][23], that only a systemic approach, at Earth ecosystem scale, could provide the desired optimal solution that, in the globalized World, would bring benefits and sustainable (survival) progress for humankind: “…Costs are not the only concern, however. Telecom operators already account for 2 to 3 percent of total global energy demand, often making them some of the most energyintensive companies in their geographic markets. As operators’ energy consumption expands, so will their carbon footprint, hurting not just the environment but also their reputation and standing, particularly among the expanding class of socially responsible investors.”

We have to recall here that the global ICT carbon footprint could exceed all the contribution of all airplanes flights and for worst, Moore Law consequences could determine also a higher increasing rate when compared with airplanes [6][17][9][23].

This way, we have just arrived to a point where it is clear that the dynamic and semantic search for a sustainable balance between generating data and extracting knowledge, has in fact global implications in the ICT/IS/KBS context, as the above (mainly technical) elements only (partially) showed the complex mechanisms and soft/hard approaches that could lead to a balance, but a further analysis could reveal that … there is more to learn toward optimum.

2. Learning how to better learn … for wisdom progress and survival When generally speaking about learning, one could think about reading or arithmetic, other could imagine a foreign language and so on. All these are something difficult, to remember anyway, for every human age.

In the AI age of ICT, people could think to teach robots to learn human behaviour and still, perhaps here we are approaching something rarely we hear for humans: learn to learn.

Even so, we could remember that, sometimes, we are telling to our students (on communications engineering) that the faculty could not teach you everything, but rather we wish to teach you to learn, in this overwhelming and fast changing world of ICT! Along with an amazing and exponential expansion, we witness today how the complexity of ICT applications, systems, products and services are increasing with an

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unprecedented speed, spreading all over the World of things or beings, as another air, sometimes perfumed, sometimes strange or even almost difficult to breath.

With other words, in all we see, all we built, all we use and all we dream, the technology (mostly ICT) is present and influence our lives, our future and generally humankind and Earth evolution.

Such context is nearly natural, after centuries and lately decades of impressing progress, but the processes complexity, pace and consequences are more and more difficult to understand, to control and eventually to forecast in the available shorter and shorter time to react.

One could simply ask: Why ICT (and no other) is mostly worrying us and what this has to do with learning?

It is largely agreed that no other technological field has the induced power, penetration, speed and complexity on IS/KBS and human life, as it is also confirmed by [7]: <<“The scope of electrical engineering has been growing continuously through the years, but so too has the depth of complexity and required knowledge across this ever-larger landscape. There are many more highly trained engineers worldwide now than there were a few decades ago, so new applicable knowledge accumulates at a faster pace, while it seems that older, irrelevant knowledge leaves the field more slowly. There is more to know, and it is more demanding and complex. I took a cursory look, for example, at the mathematics in information theory or the physics in quantum computing or in electronic and optical devices, and I said to myself, “I could do this if I wanted, but I choose not to.” >> Perhaps one of the less discussed dimension/criteria of those ICT evolutions is the emotional impact on human life and behaviour, which ultimately could also induce, on short or long time, important changes, that we not really or completely perceive now: “I remember when engineering seemed much simpler. As I write this, I’m noticing across the room the little blinking node on my Wi-Fi mesh network. Not so long ago AM/FM radios and TVs were the ubiquitous home electronics exploiting the electromagnetic spectrum. Those were the days when radios were just simple devices whose only standardization was the frequency band and a fairly simple modulation scheme. Take a look, though, at the specification for the IEEE 802.11ac family of Wi-Fi transceivers. There are many, many pages of complicated minutiae needed to describe the protocols, controls, signal formats, and so forth. Then, if we dig down deeper, the math for multiuser MIMO (multipleinput, multiple-output) needs to be understood. The encryption is based on elliptic curve cryptography—try checking that out. Everywhere we look at increasing depth, the complication turns to turgid complexity. That is the world we live in now.”

This expressive introspection, in the world we live in now, is not only an answer to the above question, but also a bridge to the next, but more difficult, question we have to answer or least to think to, aiming criteria like wisdom progress and survival: “How is it that we can survive and indeed thrive in such a world? The obvious answers are specialization to narrow the field, and the layering of knowledge to reduce complexity to only that needed for a given purpose. In this latter pursuit we are aided by software that empowers the user while hiding the underlying complexity. I think that most engineers seldom will have the need, or the privilege, to examine the complex math and physics beneath so much of what we do…So, am I kidding myself that I could do this stuff if I

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chose to? I hope not, but I can’t be sure. The problems are time and motivation. I have the engineer’s curiosity and I want to know everything, and it bothers me when I don’t truly know how something works. But there is limited time and so very, very much to know. Sadly, I have to choose, and the choices are influenced by motivation. There are things that I have to know, and things that it would be nice to know. Often, the former overwhelm the latter. The way complexity is increasing, I imagine that in the future, computers will be writing papers for the IEEE societies’ Transactions, but those papers will be so complex that only other computers will be able to understand them. A lot of the fun will be gone.”

Well, our opinion, pointed in the section title, is that we have to learn how to better learn. Of course, one could say: Easier said than done!

We have repeatedly expressed [9][16][21] that all we see or perceive on these ICT/DD evolutions is not simply to understand nor to manage, but we have to timely analyse and try to optimize, as the price is so big.

Now, for having more chances to reach this goal, we can see that the complexity obliges us to also change the rules of learning we are used to practice, because the old rules could not be completely useful in the deep and ever-changing context.

It is not a paradox, as all the above proved, that, in spite of DD, it is more difficult or even impossible to use old models of extracting knowledge while the semantic search with new criteria is a good start, but … far from being all!

A first difficult issue is to optimally and dynamically refine the criteria and the models of our thinking, in order to rapidly adapt to the new realities.

In order to be fair, we must emphasize that the World realities exceed the ICT/DD context, as we can see in these days, when the main challenges of our Earth ecosystem seem to come from other side (human and social health), but we also have to agree that any dramatic evolution at Earth scale have to be seen in the globalization context and we must use the power of ICT/DD/AI to optimally face the challenges.

Here we may come back and try to better learn, we humans and our smart machines, from the dramatic changes reflected also in the ICT/DD potential.

When we start to better learn with the ICT/AI/DD help, we first have to analyse/perceive their features, limits and vulnerabilities, especially on estimating the complex context futures [8]: << “Twelve years ago, IEEE Fellow, Marconi Prize winner, and beloved Spectrum columnist Robert W. Lucky wrote about the difficulty of predicting the technological future. We’ve reprinted his wise words here…Why are we engineers so bad at making predictions? In countless panel discussions on the future of technology, I’m not sure I ever got anything right… How can something like Google feel so inevitable and yet be impossible to predict?

I’m filled with wonder at all that we engineers have accomplished, and I take great communal pride in how we’ve changed the world in so many ways. Decades ago I never dreamed we would have satellite navigation, computers in our pockets, the Internet, cellphones, or robots that would explore Mars. How did all this happen, and what are we doing for our next trick? The software pioneer Alan Kay has said that the best way to predict the future is to invent it, and that’s what we’ve been busy doing. The public understands that we’re creating the future, but they think that we know what we’re doing and that there’s a master plan in there somewhere. However, the world evolves haphazardly, bumbling along in

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unforeseen directions. Some seemingly great inventions just don’t take hold, while overlooked innovations proliferate, and still others are used in unpredicted ways.>> We also agree with these pertinent observations, which have the quality to express, from detailed arguments to common sense conclusions, the big picture of ICT evolution and challenges.

Concretely, this is a confirmation of our purpose necessity of analysing these huge processes, where world evolves haphazardly, in order to estimate/control their unforeseen directions, as eventually to avoid the actual undesired trends (great inventions just don’t take hold, while overlooked innovations proliferate, and still others are used in unpredicted ways) and leverage the long expected progress in areas/criteria like health, social imbalance and environment protection, also considering the climate changes and Earth resources fading.

Consequently, such conclusions must be used for the mentioned criteria of optimization, along with other improvements of learning from the real-time complex processes we face in ICT/IS/KBS. An interesting example for the challenges of striving to better learn from everything could be observed just in the most prominent processes of learning at planetary scale, by …ML/DL. Here we have to notice that, although we speak about how the machines are learning, this could reveal not only the state-of-the-art of ICT/AI/ML/DL/CL and their limits, but indirectly shows the limits of humans that have the responsibility to design them, just considering the above mentioned criteria.

A good example for this features and ICT/AI/ML models of working and learning from DD is given by [10]: “According to A Few Useful Things to Know about Machine Learning, while the discipline by itself is far from simple, it is based on a simple (but not simplistic) principle: LEARNING = REPRESENTATION + EVALUATION + OPTIMIZATION Where:  Representation means the use of a classifier element represented in a formal language that a computer can handle and interpret;  Evaluation consists of a function needed to distinguish or evaluate the good and bad classifiers; and  Optimization represents the method used to search among these classifiers within the language to find the highest scoring ones.”

Without entering the sophisticated details of ML/DL/CL algorithms, we have to observe, here transferred, the same method of optimizing the search, we also have approached in this paper, aiming the best classifiers/criteria.

Further, we can see how the most difficult issue of the process is solved, with human contribution (supervised strategy): “In this context, machine learning can be done by applying specific learning strategies, such as:  A supervised strategy to map the data inputs and model them against desired outputs, and  An unsupervised strategy, to map the inputs and model them to find new trends.

Derivative ones that combine these for a semi-supervised approach and others are also be used. This opens the door onto a multitude of applications for which machine learning can be

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used, in many areas, to describe, prescribe, and discover what is going on within large volumes of diverse data…Thanks to the success of the application of machine learning within certain disciplines such as speech recognition, computer vision, bio-surveillance, and robot control, the interest in and adoption of machine language technologies has grown, particularly over the last decade ... There are several scenarios where machine learning can have a key role: in those systems that are so complex that algorithms are very hard to design, or when an application requires the software to adapt to an operational environment, or with complex systems that need to work with extensive and complex data sets. In this way, machine learning methods play an increasing role not just in general in the field of computer science, but also in terms of enterprise software applications, especially for those types of applications that need in-depth data analysis and adaptability. These areas include analytics, business intelligence, and Big Data.”

From here we can observe not only the huge diversity of emergent applications of such methods of “learning”, but also the fact that their increasing complexity ask the human (supervised) contribution, as we must aim to “model them against desired outputs”.

If our above idea could seem not very clear, there are realistic and rigorous analyses that point just the deep implications of any error (see critical infrastructures) in the huge applications that ICT/AI/ML/DL/CL will spread over the World [11]: “First-timers are often surprised by how little time in a machine learning project is spent actually doing machine learning. But it makes sense if you consider how timeconsuming it is to gather data, integrate it, clean it and pre-process it, and how much trial and error can go into feature design...Generalization being the goal has another major consequence: data alone is not enough, no matter how much of it you have. Consider learning a Boolean function of (say) 100 variables from a million examples. There are 2100 − 106 examples whose classes you don’t know. How do you figure out what those classes are?

In the absence of further information, there is just no way to do this that beats flipping a coin.

This observation was first made (in somewhat different form) by the philosopher David Hume over 200 years ago, but even today many mistakes in machine learning stem from failing to appreciate it. Every learner must embody some knowledge or assumptions beyond the data it’s given in order to generalize beyond it. This was formalized by Wolpert in his famous “no free lunch”theorems, according to which no learner can beat random guessing over all possible functions to be learned…”

Our opinion is that, for learning to better learn, the emphasis must be secondary on the fact that the human contribution to ICT/AI/ML/DL/CL processes is needed for better results “against” the difficulty/complexity, but primary in order to be sure that the “desired outputs” are designed to match the priority criteria we have above mentioned as essential for a sustainable development of ICT/IS/KBS and humankind evolution on Earth.

More than these, learning to better learn, for a systemic approach of refining knowledge, is necessary to be the goal of all responsible people, beginning with the incumbents, the specialists and teachers, as everybody has to adapt to changes (Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change-Stephen Hawking) and use new technologies

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with appropriate criteria of optimization (mentioned above), i.e. timely analyse what and how we should learn or ignore.

3. Conclusions The paper analysed the DD/ICT/IS/KBS premises and main approaches toward a dynamic and semantic search of balance between generating data and extracting knowledge, focusing on some semantic criteria of the search, using ICT/DD context at the planetary scale, which could influence Earth environment and eventually humankind evolution with an unprecedented speed and impact. The main reasons for this kind of analyses come from the ICT generated global and exponential changes, which are more and more difficult to be controlled or at least estimated, regarding all their positive or negative consequences, just because of the complexity and speed of their vast penetration.

The semantic analysis have to face a dynamic environment, because the relevant data/facts are fast changing (not from centuries or decades, but from months or even days), so we have to refine our search looking for new semantic terms or changing the old meaning (associated information/ knowledge) of the usual ones.

On this line it is emphasized that, although all technologies and ICT applications largely contribute to DD, lately, AI and its main branches, machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL) or cognitive learning (CL), are prominent in striving to extract information/knowledge from data, or even to compete with the human intelligence by cognitive features The identified criteria of the search are linked with all (positive or negative) consequences of ICT/IS/KBS and generally of World changes, just because of the complexity and speed of their vast proliferation, more visible by the dramatic climate changes, Earth resources fading, social imbalance or actually by the vulnerability of humankind to diseases spreading in the globalization context. Such consequences should be alarm signals and optimization criteria in our decision processes, as individuals, but mainly for the incumbents. These signals and the ICT impact on IS/KBS at planetary scale could indicate the main criteria for the mentioned semantic search in the ICT/AI/ML/DL/CL fast implementation processes, in order to meet Earth ecosystem needs and expectations for a sustainable progress.

An important conclusion is that the semantic approach of decision processes, based on the generated data and extracted information, is a complex optimization target which just could match and benefit from the dynamic ICT/DD/ML/DL/CL context, where the data signification, implications and consequences are fast appearing and changing, because of this context potential to produce changes, but we have to be sure which of them are positive and which negative, to what extent and time period. The most difficult and complex problem will be, every time, to understand and define criteria for what is positive and what negative, as all our Earth ecosystem and even humankind behaviour and evolution is changing, but also our criteria should!

Such conclusions are sustained by some concrete examples of the massive expansion of ICT, like the case emergent 5G (among others), which could produce, besides positive, real and unprecedented benefits, new, but less desired effects. Here, the good news is that

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AI/ICT itself could compensate such negative effects, as it is revealed also by some concrete applications cases.

The second section of the paper completes the previous technical elements with other improvements of learning from the real-time complex processes of ICT/IS/KBS that could be observed just in the most prominent processes of learning at planetary scale, by …ML/DL. Although we speak about how the machines are learning, these could reveal not only the state-of-the-art of ICT/AI/ML/DL/CL and their limits (for example, ML and Wolpert famous “no free lunch”theorem), but indirectly shows the limits of humans that have the responsibility to design them, just considering the mentioned criteria.

Another conclusion is that all we see or perceive on these ICT/DD evolutions is not simply to understand nor to manage, but we have to timely analyse and try to optimize, as the price is so big. In fact, the complexity obliges us to also change the rules of learning we are used to practice, because the old rules could not be completely useful in the deep and everchanging context, i.e., optimally and dynamically refine the criteria and the models of our thinking, in order to rapidly adapt to the new realities, which exceed the ICT/DD context, as we can see in these days, when the main challenges of our Earth ecosystem seem to come from other side (human and social health), but we also have to agree that any dramatic evolution at Earth scale have to be seen in the globalization context and we must use the power of ICT/DD/AI to optimally face the challenges (including the emotional impact on human life and behaviour, which ultimately could also induce, on short or long time, important changes, that we not really or completely perceive now).

Finally, our conclusion is that, for learning to better learn, the emphasis must be secondary on the fact that the human contribution to ICT/AI/ML/DL/CL processes is needed for better results “against” the difficulty/complexity, but primary in order to be sure that the “desired outputs” are designed to match the priority criteria we have above mentioned as essential for a sustainable development of ICT/IS/KBS and humankind evolution on Earth. More than these, learning to better learn, for a systemic approach of refining knowledge, is necessary to be the goal of all responsible people, beginning with the incumbents, the specialists and teachers, as everybody has to adapt to changes (Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change-Stephen Hawking) and use new technologies with appropriate criteria of optimization, i.e. timely analyse what and how we should learn or ignore.

REFERENCES [1] Vaclav Smil, Data World:Racing Toward Yotta, IEEE Spectrum ( Volume: 56 , Issue: 7 , July 2019).

[2] J. Macfarlane, When apps rule the road: The proliferation of navigation apps is causing traffic chaos. It's time to restore order, IEEE Spectrum 56(10):22-27 · October 2019.

[3]Victor Greu, Using the information and communications technology data deluge from a semantic perspective of a dynamic challenge: What to learn and what to ignore?

– (Part 2), Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine, Volume 10, Issue 4, Year 2019.

[4]Shuai Zhang, Wenxi Zeng, I-Ling Yen, Farokh B. Bastani, Semantically Enhanced Time Series Databases in IoT‐Edge‐Cloud Infrastructure, 2019, https://arxiv.org › pdf

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[5]Richard Lee, Dickon Pinner, Ken Somers, and Sai Tunuguntla, The case for committing to greener telecom networks, February 2020, McKinsey&Company, Technology, Media & Telecommunications Practice.

[6]Victor Greu, Extending information and communications technologies’s impact on knowledge based society through artificial and collective intelligence –(Part 3), Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine, Volume 9, Issue 3, Year 2018.

[7]Robert W. Lucky, Deep Complexities in EE, IEEE Spectrum, May 2018.

[8]Robert W. Lucky, Back To The Elusive Future We looked back for inspiration on looking forward, IEEE Spectrum, Jan 2020.

[9]Victor Greu, The information and communications technology is driving artificial intelligence to leverage refined knowledge for the World sustainable development – (Part 2), Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine, Volume 10, Issue 1, Year 2019.

[10]Jorge Garcia, Machine Learning and Cognitive Systems: The Next Evolution of Enterprise Intelligence, 2014, https://www.wired.com/insights/2014/07/machine-learning-cognitive-systemsnext-evolution-enterprise-intelligence-part.

[11]Pedro Domingos, A Few Useful Things to Know about Machine Learning, https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~pedrod/papers/cacm12.pdf [12]Victor Greu et all, Human and artificial intelligence driven incentive-operation model and algorithms for a multi-purpose integrated crowdsensing-crowdsourcing scalable system - paper submitted to International Conference Communications 2018 (Politehnica University of Bucharest, Romania Military Technical Academy, IEEE Romania), June 2018.

[13]Bhupinder Kour, The Rise of Machine Learning and AI is Improving Lives in 2018, https://www.smartdatacollective.com/rise-of-machine-learning-ai-improving-lives/ [14]Seth Earley, There Is No AI Without IA, 2016, IEEE IT Professional (Volume: 18, Issue:3, May-June 2016) [15]Niko Mohr, Holger Hürtgen, Achieving business impact with data - A comprehensive perspective on the insights value chain, Digital McKinsey 04.2018 Copyright © McKinsey & Company www.mckinsey.com [16]Victor Greu, Searching the right tracks of new technologies in the earth race for a balance between progress and survival, Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine, Volume 3, Issue1, Year 2012.

[17]Mike Sirius, How artificial intelligence and innovation will interact, June 5, 2017, Idea Drop Ltd, http://ideadrop.co/artificial-intelligence-innovation/ [18]Rohit Akiwatka, Introduction to cognitive computing, may 2019, https://channels. theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/ introduction-to-cognitive-computing [19]Victor Greu, The Exponential Development of the Information and Communications Technologies – A Complex Process Which is Generating Progress Knowledge from People to People, Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine, Volume 4, Issue2, Year 2013 [20]*** , Transforming data into knowledge, Collective Learning group at the MIT Media Lab, 2017, https://www.media. mit.edu/ groups/collective-learning/overview/.

[21]Victor GREU, Information and Communications Technologies are Learning from Nature’s “Research” to Push the Performance Limits, Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine, Volume 5, Issue 1, Year 2014 [22]Mudassir Khan, Big data analytics emerging trends, technology and innovations for the future business in the global market, International Journal of Scientific Research and Review, Volume 8, Issue 2, 2019.

[23]Victor Greu, Information and communications technologies go greener beyond IOTbehind is all the earth-Part1, Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine, Volume 7, Issue 2, Year 2016.

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The Impact of Social Media Commerce Constructs on Social Trust and Customer Value Co-creation

by Cosmin Tănase

Abstract As one of the main privileges of Web 2.0 applications, social commerce is a new trend accelerated by the revaluation taking place over the social media marketing area. This has contributed several utilities such as it enhances customers’ ability to establish a product’s content, to provide social support, to share information, to rate and review customers’ opinions, and to recommend brands. Social commerce could be described as the main online commerce transactions that are empowered and conducted by the facilities of social media and Web 2.0 applications. The importance of this field comes as a result of the rapid growth in social commerce research in recent years.

Keywords: Commerce platforms, Online marketplace, Customer, Social Media JEL Classification: L81, M31

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As a result of the growing trends of internet usage and social media engagement, businesses have begun to readily embrace social media technology in order to promote their products and services via social media platforms. In relation to communication, it is widely acknowledged that social media facilitates and enhances communication between businesses and customers in ways that previous sets of Information technology (IT) could not afford.

Unlike traditional IT, social media affords organisations with visibility, persistence, editability and association of information.

For instance, the provision of real time information to stakeholders (employees, customers, supplier and shareholders) is an important functionality addressed by social media as it allows information to be shared (visible, editable, persistent and association) among stakeholders while removing possibilities of information asymmetry within organisations, consequently creating efficient and effective channels of information systems.

The capability of social media to address such functionalities distinguishes social media from traditional IT across a range of attributes such as how content is contributed, structured and organised and flows of interaction.

Given the popularity and uptake of social media, companies have realised the huge potentials of social media, which includes the role of customer knowledge in enhancing a company’s knowledge, which can result in potentially regarding outcomes for both. With respect to the business–customer relationship, the one thing that is common between social media activities is the ability to improve and exploit user relationships: evidence suggests that social media can increase relational outcomes such as online reputation and relationship strength.

The related issues of social commerce have been recently considered as one of the main trends worth researching due to its impact on the business and marketing implications due to its ability to combine business, people, technology, and information. The main reason behind building such social trust comes as a result of customers’ ability to trust more the content coming from the customers’ community rather than that coming from the organizational side. Customers find other customers’ content and posts more useful and beneficial to their purchasing and consuming process, as long as the level of social trust is high from the customer’s perspective. Accordingly, at this stage, users will have a kind of trust (i.e., social) that will enhance SNSs’ interaction between customers and the online enterprise as well as between customers themselves to co-create their personal values (e.g. utilitarian, hedonic, and social). Thus, customers with similar values are expected to get together at the same SNS (Social Networking Service).

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Social Commerce Constructs Social commerce is a sub-set of e-commerce that enables consumers to be actively engaged in a commercial exchange process in social media platforms and allows the creation of content that invites users to share their experiences over different social media platforms via sharing their information.

There are two types of social commerce taking place: (1) sites that are utilizing Web 2.0 tools (e.g., Amazon) and that facilitate customers’ content generation, although this type makes consumers’ interactions limited, due to the lack of customers’ ability to tag others and to send messages privately; (2) SNSs that utilize e-commerce features. Such social commerce platforms provide customers with channels to socially connect with others and make them more willing to initiate their value co-creation by sharing more experiences and information as well as creating their own content.)

Social commerce is a matter of commercial activities that take their own place over social media platforms. Similarly, social commerce is also defined as “forms of Internetbased social media that allow people to participate actively in the marketing and selling of products in online marketplaces and communities”. The social commerce construct consists of the three dimensions: ratings and reviews (regarding a particular brand or product over the social media platform which provides other customers with the needed information), recommendations and referrals (based on consumers’ experience), and forums and communities (which facilitate consumers’ social interactions regarding a particular brand).

Social Commerce Constructs and Social Trust Social trust relates to an individual trait which shapes a customer’s w orldview regarding the benevolence of other users within SNSs. Therefore, social trust could be deified as customers believe regarding other SNSs users trustworthiness. Within the context of social commerce, there have been discussions on the importance of social trust as a tool which provides SNSs with benefits such as reducing transaction costs, increasing the probability of customers shopping online, enhancing economic growth for the targeted countries, and reducing risks (regarding security and privacy and online behaviour) associated with buying brands over SNSs. All the above benefits come as a result of people buying within the SNSs not knowing each other. Therefore, social trust is considered as an important factor within this context.

Thus, social commerce using Web 2.0 facilitates customers’ interaction and in creases their social trust via their ratings and reviews over a particular SNS. Hence customers trust the

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information provided by other customers in comparison to the e-vendor. As a result of the social interactions (via consumers’ ratings and reviews and recommendations and referrals), customers allows themselves to exchange information and expediencies with other customers which enrich their knowledge, increase their trust of the brands, and impact th eir purchase decisions.

With respect to the business–customer relationship, the one thing that is common between social media activities is the ability to improve and exploit user relationships: evidence suggests that social media can increase relational outcomes such as online reputation and relationship strength. However, despite the huge promise, there remain challenges around the implementation of social media and measuring the returns of social media. The fact that organisations are said to be struggling to implement social med ia has subsequently resulted in an increasing body of literature looking at social media strategy and their formulation.

Social Commerce Constructs and Customer Value Co-creation Previous research on social commerce posits the positive relationship between social commerce constructs and customer value co-creation. Social media strengthens the interaction between online communities and thus enhances consumers’ brand-generated stories with other online community members. Other researchers demonstrated the positive relationship between some of the dimensions of social commerce constructs and customer value co-creation. Customers usually follow and like brands on social media platforms as a kind of expression about their intention to catch and be updated about a ll news and information regarding the targeted brands. For instance, with intention to share their experience and knowledge regarding a particular brand, a customer is more likely to be engaged in different activities and conversations on the brands posted in Facebook pages.

Consumers’ interaction with a particular brand, in the form of liking it on Facebook, is a tool that informs friends on Facebook about the brand and hence affects consumers’ social value.

Conclusion As communication and information through digital platforms travel faster and faster, sharing experiences becomes easier and easier. As a result, this influences how the world communicates, especially in view of the current obsession with social media platforms.

Exposure in social media has a profound effect on the reputation of a business. Therefore, with its growing importance, it should not be seen as a fad but instead implemented as a new marketing strategy.

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Within the service-dominant logic, trust is formulated as a result of the dialogue and customers’ interactions; therefore, co-creation is the expected result. For instance, in a relationship which is characterized by a high level of trust, customers are motivated to be involved in a social exchange. Accordingly, over the online community, a level of customers’ trust between themselves is highly requested to guarantee an extant le vel of value co-creation. In the context of SNSs, the interaction between customers and enterprise as well as customers resulted in getting more information regarding the brand or product category.

References [1] Foster, M. K., Francescucci, A., & West, B. C. (2010). Why users participate in online social networks. International Journal of e-Business Management, 4(1), 3.

[2] Gensler, S., Völckner, F., Liu-Thompkins, Y., & Wiertz, C. (2013). Managing brands in the social media environment. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 27(4), 242 –256.

[3] Kim, S., & Park, H. (2013). Effects of various characteristics of social commerce (s commerce) on consumers’ trust and trust performance. International Journal of Information Management, 33(2), 318–332.

[4] Manika, D., Papagiannidis, S., & Bourlakis, M. (2017). Understanding the effects of a social media service failure apology: A comparative study of customers vs. potential customers. International Journal of Information Management, 37(3), 214–228.

[5] Schau, H. J., Muñiz, A. M., Jr., & Arnould, E. J. (2009). How brand community practices create value. Journal of Marketing, 73(5), 30–51.

[6] Richard, J. E., & Guppy, S. (2014). Facebook: Investigating the influence on consumer purchase intention. Asian Journal of Business Research, 4(2), 1–10.

[7] Vargo, S. L., & Lusch, R. F. (2008). Service-dominant logic: Continuing the evolution.

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 36(1), 1–10.

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Retailers under Pressure of Faster Adaptation to the New Marketing Environment Theodor PURCĂREA

Abstract We are witnessing new trends in retail and shopping, health pressures, social distancing and self-isolation within the current pandemic challenge. Patience has new dimensions and retailers are challenged to ensure that consumers feel in control of their new CX. There is a real need of adequately communicating, avoiding misinformation, and living together as a society. The new marketing environment is putting consistent pressure on retailers to better understand the new risks and to take the necessary actions accordingly.

Keywords: New Trends in Retail and Shopping; Health Pressures; Pandemic Challenge; New CX; New Risks; Supply Chain JEL Classification: L81, L86, M31, Q55

New Trends in Retail and Shopping, Health Pressures, Social Distancing and Self-Isolation within the Current Pandemic Challenge We are all consumers, and our consumption behavior is in full change, especially within the context of the current COVID-19 outbreak (caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2) weighing on our lives, our businesses, our communities. Till the emergence of this most pressing current general situation, the new seven-part report of Valtech, known for providing clients with the tools and technologies which create value, build relationships, and grow revenue (from connected experiences to commerce platforms), revealed interesting key findings, such as: the majority of consumers want supply chain visibility requiring brands to be more transparent to justify consumer purchases (80%); long lines determined the abandoning of the shopping trips (70%); if an online retailer offered adequate incentives (like free returns, an immediate refund and didn’t require label printing) consumers are more likely to shop with such a retailer (56%).

Analyzing channel trends in Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) in Q4 2019, Information Resources Inc. (IRI, US) underlined, among other aspects, that: ▪ Store choice among consumers are continuing to be guided by convenience and value for the money, store selection process (total population) looking as follows: Lowest everyday prices (94%), Good sale prices (94%), Convenient store location (92%), Allowing to fill the basic needs at the lowest possible cost (92%), Quick and easy in-and-out (90%), Assortment that allows for one-stop shopping (86%), Strong loyalty card discount program (75%); ▪ Key drivers of online shopping remain time and cost saving, online shopping value perceptions (total population) looking as follows: buying grocery products online is a time saver (40%), trust that online grocery orders are fulfilled with care (37%), buying grocery products online saves money (32%). (Driggs, 2020) On March 19, 2020, the above mentioned IRI – in partnership with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Henderson Institute – released a new “COVID-19 Impact. Consumer Spending Tracker”, highlighting: how rapidly are changing not only consumers’ behaviors, but also those

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of governments and businesses, within the context of the acceleration of the COVID-19 outbreak in Europe and the United States (U.S.), this being reflected in consumer purchases in Italy, France, U.S., and UK; the dramatically spiking of the Paper Products, Home Care and OTC (over-the-counter drugs available without a prescription) Healthcare purchases across all markets as have Packaged Food; the significant stockpiling which began in U.S. in the week ending 1 March 2020; how the mentioned trends impacted most strongly the MULO (which includes: Grocery, Drug, Mass, Club - excluding Costco - Dollar and DeCA retailers) retailers, but also the convenience players in the U.S.; the particularly high spikes seen at certain sub-categories such as Home Care and OTC Healthcare.

Also this year, for instance, we have seen how the unfortunate association of Corona beer with the new coronavirus is already a case study for brand management experts, within the context in which the beer-drinking consumers either would not buy now this beer under any circumstances (38%) or were confused (16%) about whether there it has a connection between this beer and the current outbreak. The reputed Adweek also underlined the significant increasing of online searches.

An US pandemic planner and crisis management expert (founder of Emergency Management & Safety Solutions in San Francisco, Regina Phelps advises companies like Whole Foods, Nike and Starbucks on crisis management plans, including possible pandemics) recently told “CNBC Make It” that: “Right now, people are doing incredibly silly things”. What it is understandable but unnecessary and it can become expensive, in the expert’s opinion. (Scipioni, 2020) Given the uncertainty around this new coronavirus more consumers will likely turn to online shopping revealed a February Coresight Research which polled US internet users, as shown in the figure below: (Kats, 2020)

Figure no. 1: US Internet users who are currently avoiding vs. will avoid public places/travel if the Coronavirus outbreak worsens in the US, February 2020, Coresight Research Source: Kats, R. (2020). Coronavirus Is Changing How Consumers Shop, eMarketer, Mar 10 (work cited)

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Also in US, as underlined by eMarketer, other aspects were observed such as: limited delivery availability for household items and groceries from Amazon Prime; (on the basis of Nielsen data) the stocking up of unexpected CPG (like oat milk, rather than water), and the sales’ increasing of health-related CPG (household maintenance masks, medical masks, hand sanitizer, thermometers, aerosol disinfectants); (on the basis of meal-planning service eMeals data) weekover-week increases both in the orders’ number submitted to eMeals grocery partners (Amazon, Instacart, Kroger, Shipt, Walmart etc.), and of the purchases of specific products (like disinfecting wipes, ibuprofen, and chicken noodle soup).

On the other hand, on Mar 10, this year Business Insider informed that – according to CNBC – Amazon’s R&D group called “Amazon’s Grand Challenge” (which is part of the big tech firm’s cloud division “Amazon Web Services”) has been working (within a secret yearslong initiative “Project Gesundheit”, Gesundheit meanings Health in German) to develop a vaccine as a cure for the common cold (which is caused in about 75% of cases by a class of virus known as rhinovirus, being already identified by scientists 160 different strains of this rhinovirus). (Finley, 2020) In the opinion of Business Insider Amazon will continue leaning into its drug R&D efforts (which are spanning from pharmacy to care delivery to health insurance) further, a recent example being also the rolled out of its Amazon Care telehealth service to Seattle-based employees and the fact that its well-known Alexa (the voice-enabled virtual assistant) was updated so as to answer questions about a significant number (1,500) of the most widely prescribed drugs and their interactions. Let’s wish (as consumers) them good “Gesundheit” also on this way!

A few days later, Business Insider also informed that: • After Amazon began publicly offering to license the tech to third-party retailers, the first retailer which announced plans to deploy e-tailer giant’s autonomous checkout technology at some of its stores was OTG (beginning with one of its Cibo Express Gourmet Markets), a hospitality group focused on airports, and having 100 locations across 10 airports (these locations offering food, health, beauty products, and electronics); • According to The Wall Street Journal, Amazon is looking to bring Target and Walmart (which don’t intend to be in) into the fold/ open source organization called Dent (allowing the use of the downloaded Amazon’s software as they like without collaborating directly with Amazon) and formed last year (Dent having access to some of the technologies enabling to operate Amazon’s Go stores). (Keyes, 2020) Business Insider also presented a store concept square footage comparison: Walmart’s Supercenter – 179,000 square feet; Whole Foods – 43,000 square feet; 365 – 30,000 square feet (365 being the Whole Foods’ chain of budget grocery stores having a special focus on private labels and lower prices); Amazon Go grocery 20.400 square feet; Amazon Go Original: 1,800 square feet (170 m2).

And this within the context in which the ecommerce giant Amazon (which is known as having more than 150 million paid Prime members globally) opened recently in Seattle its first full-size cashier less grocery store (10,400 square feet; stocks roughly 5,000 items, including fresh produce, meats and alcohol, everything being priced singularly; there is also a self-service

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coffee bar), this Amazon Go grocery (Amazon work on it for five years, and it is in the Amazon corporate headquarters’ backyard) requiring no human interaction (only a couple dozen people help stocking shelves and answering shoppers’ questions if it is necessary), Amazon’s technology tracking shoppers picking up and bagging their own produce. (Thomas, 2020) CNBC also showed, among other aspects, that according to analysts Amazon’s rivals also moved very quickly and mimicked it: Walmart’s wholesale division tested cashier-free technology at Sam’s Club Now (a Walmart’s store in Dallas); also in Texas, in Irving, near its corporate headquarters, 7-Eleven opened a 700-square-foot cashier less store as a pilot test and only open to employees (7-Eleven has more than 11,000 convenience stores in North America); AiFi and Grabango (two tech start-ups) are working on autonomous systems for other Amazon’s competitors (big retailers).

Also according to eMarketer, Amazon is continuing ranking as the No. 1 US ecommerce retailer and gaining market share (from 37.3% in 2019 to 38.7% this year), extending its lead.

With regard to the four years period 2017-2021 Amazon’s 2020 US retail ecommerce sales are forecasted by eMarketer as rising higher than the expected overall growth rate for US retail ecommerce sales (see the figure below). And this within the context in which there is a significant difference between Amazon and the other competitors included in Top 10 US companies ranked by retail e-commerce sales share, 2020 (see the next figure below).

Figure no. 2: Amazon’s 2020 US Retail Ecommerce Sale, 2017-2021 Source: Amazon Remains the Undisputed No. 1, eMarketer Editors, Mar 11, 2020 (work cited)

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Figure no. 3: Top 10 US companies, ranked by retail e-commerce sales share, 2020 Source: Target Cracks Top 10 US Ecommerce Ranking, eMarketer Editors, Feb 28, 2020 (work cited)

A recent eBook from Repsly focused on maximizing the value of a store visit made by the sales representatives (field team) showed that: because one of a brand’s competitors provided a better in-store experience, customers (57%) have stopped buying from that brand; shoppers make their decisions based on a brand’s presence in the store (40%).

Commenting within a RetailWire’s discussion, Lisa Goller, Content Marketing Strategist at BrainTrust, underlined the massive demand for e-grocery options among consumers created by social distancing and self-isolation, essential to succeed in the new retail landscape being now convenience, variety and… BOPIS and home delivery as prompt service, what is very good for local stores (if they invest in speed and logistics partnerships so as to serve consumers both in their neighborhoods and at their doorsteps). Within the same framework her colleague Ken Morris, Retail industry thought leader, added that delivery and BOPIS will increase along with local fulfillment, and even after this current pandemic challenge ends the return to the old shopping habits will not be complete. (Ryan, 2020) Patience and retailers’ challenge to ensure that consumers feel in control of their CX There is no doubt that within the current pandemic challenge we must choose to better understand what is going on, adequately thinking about the problems we are facing, trying to make life less difficult for each other. Speaking about retail our thoughts go out to some wise

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words, such as: “The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people” (Tom Peters); “Don’t find fault. Find a remedy” (Henry Ford).

According to an analysis of lines and waiting times in an environment controlled by services firms made by Professors K. Douglas Hoffman and John E.G. Bateson (results revealed in a book published in 2016) it is possible to manage consumers’ perceptions of waits (while CX is unfolding) by having a profound understanding of the consumer behavior, and ensuring that consumers feel in control of their CX (understanding principles like: uncertain waits are longer than known, finite waits; unexplained waits are longer than explained wait; anxiety makes wait seem longer, and this because it expands consumers’ perceptions of time; preprocess waits feel longer than in-process waits because consumer is largely unoccupied, while post process waits feel longest of all because consumer is anxious to take control back; unfair waits are longer than equitable waits, because all unfair systems are attacking consumers’ feelings of predictability and control), also taking into account how the context in which time passes is influencing the perception of time. (Douglas Hoffman and Bateson, 2016) With regard to consumers’ anxiety (as we seen above it expands consumers’ perceptions of time, this perception being influenced at its turn by the context in which time passes), considering the current pandemic context, we made recently (while interpreting an approach of a reputed MECLABS Institute’s representative) reference to the fact that anxiety (a mental cost) is influencing the increasing of consumers’ purchasing, marketers being accordingly under the pressure of taking the necessary immediate and mid-term actions at the level of the different both supply chains (which in general are focused on increasing sales through a better understanding of how customers behave) and value chains (which in general are focused on generating and capturing value in the whole chain), also considering the applications of PEST analysis revealed in the specific sectors’ framework. (Purcarea, 2020) On the other hand, in November 2018, other researchers (from: Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, US; Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, Tsinghua University, China; Business School, National University of Singapore) demonstrated how customers’ in-queue abandonment behavior (becoming impatient when waiting in queues) can be rational (customers being more patient in slower shorter queues, than in faster longer queues) because of learning, but due to different factors (such as: limited experiences, variation in time, prior belief, experience with other systems etc.) they may never learn perfectly. (Veeraraghavan, Xiao and Zhang, 2018) In their approach of understanding customer impatience and abandonments from the perspective of information increasing and learning, these researchers considered linear waiting cost, starting from two components of the waiting cost (the alternative waiting cost, which are reflecting the actual value of time, being approximately linear; the psychological waiting cost, which are subjective feeling of impatience, being strictly convex).

Tensator Group Ltd., known for being a crowd control and queue management solutions specialist since 1881, analyzed the UK retail environment from the point of view of the psychology of queuing, its research results revealing interesting aspects such as: people aren’t prepared to wait more than 6 minutes in a supermarket queue (44% of respondents); when queuing in supermarkets people (over a quarter) have the least patience; the top frustration is the so-called “queue jumping” (92% considering this habit as “very annoying”). Lane regret, queue

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frustration, (with regard to the queue jumpers) first come, first served conflicts, and customer walkaways are considered common issues which are found in queues, but these issues can be minimized with the help of the queue management systems.

In Germany (as we find out thanks to the reputed EHI Retail Institute), a study conducted

by Reflexis Systems GmbH, Düsseldorf, revealed that: customers are unwilling to wait more than 5 minutes (78% of respondents), to become dissatisfied and consider leaving taking a little longer; it is usual for customers to getting their needs met immediately, and this because of the increasing blurring of the boundaries of stationary shops and online (for instance, the delivering of customers’ purchases to their doors within a few hours and enjoying the benefits of the Clickand-Collect service without waiting); customers still want however to be served from person to person (63%, their shopping satisfaction depending on well-trained, knowledgeable and friendly branch employees in the store; an important role here have the intelligent task management systems which can ensure the adequate deployment of the employees to the right place and at the right time, reducing this way waiting times without incurring additional personnel costs).

(EuroShop, 2020) The new CX – Sanitation, adequately communicating, avoiding misinformation, and living together as a society A recent RetailWire’s discussion on the topic of how US retailers ensure stores are coronavirus-safe brought to our attention significant experts’ opinions which revealed that: at times like this communication is vital, being necessary to do what everybody can with what everybody know/have, and continuing (Georganne Bender, Principal, KIZER & BENDER Speaking); as everyone has a responsibility to help ensure that the aggressive virus doesn’t spread and to manage the increase of the anxiety, retailers should make the same thing like all major corporations, being open and transparent with their preventative measures (Brandon Rael, Director, Alvarez & Marsal); retailers must show they have their customers’ safety in mind, communicating accordingly (Ricardo Belmar, Sr Director, Retail Transformation Specialist, Infovista); they have few available responses, such as visible wipe-downs, keep ill employees home, or lock the doors (James Tenser, Principal, VSN Strategies); as the new CX is Sanitation, in order to assure customers that retailers cares for both customers and personnel safety, in stores must be present visual reminders of sanitation oaths (Cynthia Holcomb, Founder and CEO, Prefeye - Preference Science Technologies Inc.); as sanitizing (cleaning regularly) all aspects of the store and communicating retailers’ efforts to protect their employees and customers are keys, if the fears continue and even escalate retailers must increase at the same time theirs online operations (Richard J. George, Ph.D, Professor of Food Marketing, Haub School of Business, Saint Joseph’s University); retailers can take a lead in helping society learn that we all depend on others to help keep us all safe, going beyond extra cleaning of stores, facing the reality’s dilemmas like how to balance things like re-usable cups (which are environmentally damaging) with the presence of this novel virus (which is life threatening), and how to treat each other better and focus living together as a society (Doug Garnett, President, Protonik). (Ryan, 2020)

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Of course, while communicating with their customers retailers need a better understanding of the fact that an essential part of a proper CX strategy is adequately charting their customers’ experiences on mobile, being well-known that convenience and speed are what customers are wanting by using mobiles, expecting positive experiences ensured by retailers’ mobile platforms (through a retailer’s mobile site or an app). (Balkhi, 2020) And speaking about mobile it is also useful to remind that as highlighted very recently by Business Insider consumer smartphone upgrade cycles in US, for instance, will be disrupted by the shutdown of the wellknown wireless carriers’ stores (AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint) within the context of the current coronavirus pandemic, many US consumers preferring to interact with devices in person and to ask sales representatives for guidance, being likely to not transitioning from in-store to online, and to give up buying new phones. (Chitkara, 2020) And as another recent RetailWire’s discussion confirmed: it is the right time to monitor and open new social media communication so as to support both workers and customers, getting creative (Michael Terpkosh, President, City Square Partners LLC); retailers can protect their employees from uncomfortable situations by also by posting purchase limits, information on when deliveries are expected, crowd control, limited hours etc. (Patricia Vekich Waldron, Contributing Editor, RetailWire; Founder and CEO, Vision First). (Anderson, 2020) This is very useful within the general context of facing misinformation on most social media platforms, as shown recently by eMarketer which underlined, among other aspects, the joint statement with regard to the banding together to fight COVID-19-related misinformation announced by the major social platforms Facebook, LinkedIn, reddit, Twitter and YouTube, along with Google and Microsoft. (Enberg, 2020) There is no doubt that in these uncertain times a critical role is played by the food retailers (which are the backbone of the food supply chain, and need to stay calm and execute rigorously their job of serving as reliable sources of both food and essential items for people across communities), McKinsey’s representatives recommended recently six actions (the first four being urgent, and the last two being more focused on the long term) these retailers should take to help their communities, employees, and business: protect both employees and customers (workplace and store safety; an environment fostering social distancing or isolation to protect the vulnerable; prepared for worst-case scenarios); secure business continuity; get a granular view of the local reality; simultaneously manage demand and supply; transform your business model to ensure that it is tech enabled and future proof (Stores, Supply chain, Merchandising, Ecommerce, Head office); boldly reshape retailer’s ecosystem, including through mergers and acquisitions. (Aull et al., 2020) It is interesting to note within this framework, that in US: ● As shown by a McKinsey’s March 2020 Survey looking at US consumer sentiment during the coronavirus crisis (on the basis of data collected in March 16-17, 2020): US consumers are optimistic but are already spending carefully and more less than before (1/3 of them already reporting reduced income), also expecting to spend more only on must-have category, and as the US shifts to consume news and media (according to the ranking there is an increase in: live

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news; movies or shows; reading news online; TV; texting, chatting, messaging; video content; social media; reading for personal interest; video games; online groceries; reading print news) behavior is changing; (Bhargava et al., 2020) ● As shown by Supply Chain Quarterly, on February 24, 2020 on the occasion of a Conference of the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) the Chairman of the Data and Analytics company Resilience360, David Shillingford, spoke (on the same day mentioned above) before supply chain professionals, advising them to be aware of: the significant potential global economic impact of this new coronavirus; the significant affectation of the demand patterns by it; the fact that uncertainty is one of the most challenging aspects to managing this coronavirus outbreak; the fact that how well an area is able to respond and recover from this coronavirus may be determined by other large socioeconomic factors; the need of adequate response measures (to talk to your procurement team with regard to what your suppliers are facing; to map your supply chain; to reach out to suppliers; to go beyond historical demand by seeking out and using adequate sources of demand data; to start embedding risk management practices in the supply chain operations; to wash your hands, taking care this way of yourself, your team, and your internal and external partners); the need to collaborate with both supply chain partners, and competitors.

Instead of Conclusions In our last issue from December 2019 we underlined the changing consumer behavior and retail revolution accordingly, retailers’ focus on rethinking CX within the new imperative for customer obsession, bridging the gap between customer expectations and CX strategies within digital transformation, new shopping behaviors and values, Omni experience, in-store personalization, and retail’s convergence. We showed that there is no doubt about the real need of caring for customers and inspiring their loyalty. (Purcarea, 2019) In the present uncertain times, as very recently highlighted in Adweek, retailers’ challenge in the coming months is to be well-equipped to manage a long-term disruption to their business, pivoting to ecommerce and alternative marketing solutions representing a possible approach within the measures taken by governments and companies to contain the coronavirus.

(Klara, 2020) On the other hand, as also very recently highlighted in eMarketer, the Vice President of eBusiness and ecommerce at agile agency Scrum50 argued that: “Those that have a strong ecommerce presence will do their best to shift as much foot traffic as possible to their website. It seems unrealistic to expect retailers to make up for all of their in-store revenue through ecommerce sales, so a lot of retailers will take a hit. How big of a hit will depend on how long the crisis lasts… Retailers can test and learn new ways to sell inventory and quickly meet new demands. It’s a forgiving time to take some risks”. (Kats, 2020) Usually, calculated decisions are taken on a daily basis, different personals factors (like the perception of a situation, past experience in similar situations, and person’s personality) determining a person’s risk-taking propensity (the balance between risk-avoiding and riskseeking). (Furnham, 2020) As also shown in European Financial Review, an internationally

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recognized strategist of the multipolar world and the founder of Difference Group attracted the attention that old risks (which are not yet fully contained) could resurface along with the new risks (which are evolving), and over time the human and economic costs will compound dramatically, if the containment measures will not be effective in the early phases of the virus outbreaks. (Steinbock, 2020) Facing the unknown both our daily lives and businesses have been affected by this new outbreak urging for a better understanding of the new risks and the necessary actions to be taken accordingly. Wanting or not wanting we are testing (some of us being tested…) how we react to the unknown… Are we really learning something?

References Anderson, G. (2020). Food retailers go on a hiring spree as coronavirus numbers grow, RetailWire, Mar 19. Retrieved from https://retailwire.com/discussion/food-retailers-go-on-a-hiring-spree-as-coronavirus-numbers-grow/ Aull, B., Kuijpers, D., Sawaya, A. and Vallöf, R. (2020).What food retailers should do during the coronavirus crisis, McKinsey & Company, March 19. Retrieved from What-food-retailers-should-do-during-the-coronavirus-crisis.pdf Balkhi, S. (2020). Do You Need An App To Boost customer experience? CustomerThink, March 11. Retrieved from http://customerthink.com/do-you-need-an-app-to-boost-customer-experience/?

Bhargava, S., Charm, T., Pflumm, S. and Robinson, K. (2020). Survey: US consumer sentiment during the coronavirus crisis, McKinsey & Company, March 2020. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/ourinsights/survey-us-consumer-sentiment-during-the-coronavirus-crisis?

Chitkara, H. (2020). The shutdown of US wireless carriers' stores amid the coronavirus pandemic will disrupt consumer smartphone upgrade cycles, Business Insider, March 20. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/wireless-carrier-retailstore-shutdowns-could-cause-pent-up-demand-2020-3?

Douglas Hoffman, K., Bateson, J.E.G. (2016). Services Marketing: Concepts, Strategies, & Cases, Cengage Learning, Boston, USA, pp. 275-278 Driggs, J. (2020). Consumer Connect Q4 2019, Channel trends in CPG today, Thought Leadership, January 2020, pp. 9, 21.

Retrieved from Q4-2019-Consumer-Connect-Channel-Migration-RetailWire.pdf Enberg, J. (2020). How COVID-19 Is Testing Social Media’s Ability to Fight Misinformation, eMarketer, Mar 18. Retrieved from https://www.emarketer.com/content/how-covid-19-is-testing-social-medias-ability-to-fight-misinformation?

Finley, D. (2020). Amazon has secretly been working on a cure for the common cold, Business Insider, Mar 10. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-secretly-working-on-cold-cure-2020-3?

Furnham, A. (2020). Assessing Risk, European Financial Review, March 23. Retrieved from https://www.europeanfinancialreview.com/assessing-risk/?

Kats, R. (2020). Coronavirus Is Changing How Consumers Shop, eMarketer, Mar 10. Retrieved from https://www.emarketer.com/content/coronavirus-is-changing-how-consumers-shop?

Kats, R. (2020). Will Retailers Bounce Back from the Coronavirus Pandemic? eMarketer, Mar 22. Retrieved from https://www.emarketer.com/content/will-retailers-bounce-back-from-the-coronavirus-pandemic?

Keyes, D. (2020). Amazon is looking to bring Target and Walmart into an open source technology group, Business Insider, Mar 17. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-recruiting-target-walmart-to-open-source-tech-group-2020-3?

Klara, R. (2020). What Can Brands Do If the Coronavirus Crisis Drags On for Months? Adweek, March 19. Retrieved from https://www.adweek.com/?p=1134507?utm_content=position_2&utm_source

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Purcarea, T. (2020). Marketing Differentiators and the Corollary Mindset Shifts within the New Marketing, Holistic Marketing Management, Volume 10, Issue 1, 2020, pp. 36-50 Purcarea, T. (2019). New Technologies, Shopping Evolution, and the Next Retail Revolution, Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine, December 2019, Volume 10, Issue 4, pp. 35-45 Ryan, T. (2020). Is Hy-Vee onto something as it moves online fulfillment from warehouses to stores? RetailWire, Mar 19.

Retrieved from https://retailwire.com/discussion/is-hy-vee-onto-something-as-it-moves-online-fulfillment-from-warehouses-tostores/ Ryan, T. (2020). Can retailers ensure stores are coronavirus-safe? RetailWire, Mar 09. Retrieved from https://retailwire.com/discussion/can-retailers-ensure-stores-are-coronavirus-safe/ Scipioni, J. (2020). Coronavirus stockpiling: Don’t waste your money on these items, according to a pandemic planner, CNBC, Mar 13. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/13/coronavirus-stockpiling-what-not-to-waste-money-on-pandemicplanner.html Steinbock, D. (2020). As COVID-19 Goes Global, New Risks Increase, European Financial Review, February 28. Retrieved from https://www.europeanfinancialreview.com/as-covid-19-goes-global-new-risks-increase/ Thomas, L. (2020). Amazon is opening its first full-size, cashier less grocery store. Here’s a first look inside, CNBC, Feb 25.

Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/24/amazon-opens-its-first-full-size-cashierless-grocery-store-in-seattle.html Veeraraghavan, S., Xiao, L., Zhang, H. (2018). Impatience and Learning in Queues, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, November 2018. Retrieved from https://faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/ImpatienceLearning-Queues.pdf *** https://www.valtech.com/whitepapers/the-future-of-retail/ *** The Future of Retail: A Study of Consumption Behaviour, Business 2 Community. Retrieved from https://business-2community.report.download/partner/valtech/the-future-of-retail-a-study-of-consumption-behaviour-497? *** COVID-19 Impact, Consumer spending tracker, March 19, 2020, p. 2. Retrieved from https://www.iriworldwide.com/IRI/media/Library/IRI-BCG-COVID-03-19-20.pdf *** Is Corona Beer Facing a Brand Crisis Because of Coronavirus? Honoring the Best of Retail, “Adweek First Things First” <email@email.adweek.com>, Mon, March 2, 2020 1:47 pm *** The first retailer to announce plans to use Amazon's Just Walk Out tech operates stores in airports, Business Insider, March 12, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/first-retailer-announces-plans-for-amazon-just-walk-out-tech-2020-3? *** Amazon Remains the Undisputed No. 1, eMarketer Editors, Mar 11, 2020 . Retrieved from https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-remains-the-undisputed-no-1? *** Target Cracks Top 10 US Ecommerce Ranking, eMarketer Editors, Feb 28, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.emarketer.com/content/target-cracks-top-10-us-ecommerce-ranking? *** 2020 Guide - How to maximize the value of a store visit, Jennifer Thompson <jen.thompson@repsly.com> March 19, 18:09, https://www.repsly.com/ebook-maximizing-the-value-of-a-store-visit? *** Psychology of queuing – What are customers thinking about whilst queuing? Tensator, 05 Dec, 2019. Retrieved from https://www.tensator.com/psychology-of-queuing/ *** Introducing the definitive guide to queue management, Tensator, 05 Jul, 2019. Retrieved from https://www.tensator.com/introducing-definitive-queue-management-guide/ *** 5 Minuten: Kleine Zahl mit großer Auswirkung, EuroShop – World’s No. 1 Retail Trade Fair, 01.02.2020. Retrieved from https://www.euroshop.de/de/.mag/5_Minuten_Kleine_Zahl_mit_gro%C3%9Fer_Auswirkung *** Covid-19: How can your supply chain respond? Supply Chain Quarterly Staff, February 24, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.supplychainquarterly.com/news/20200224-covid-19--how-can-your-supply-chain-respond-/?

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Emotions + Ratio, Retail Knowledge Consortium (RKC), Long-term Sights, Increasing Complexity, Innovation-Time-Lags, and Remembering SANABUNA Bernd HALLIER

Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier, President of the European Retail Academy (ERA: http://www.european-retailacademy.org/), an Honorary Member of the Romanian Distribution Committee, and distinguished Member of the Editorial Board of “Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine” attracted our attention on great events happening at the beginning of this year, and allowed us to present them. It is also worth remembering that: immediately after visiting Romania for the first time on the occasion of the 24 th International Congress of the International Association for the Distributive Trade (AIDA Brussels), Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier sent us, in May 1998, a memorable letter we have referred initially in the Journal of the Romanian Marketing Association (AROMAR), no. 5/1998, and also later, in 2010, in the first issue of the Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine; the Romanian-American University has awarded Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier a “Diploma of Special Academic Merit”; the “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Bucharest, has awarded Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier a “Diploma of Excellence”.

Emotions + Ratio According to Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier the world-leading exhibition for store-fitting and retail technology EuroShop proved in 2020 its unique competitiveness by an increase of its total

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exhibition area, by a record number of exhibitors and growing internationality on the level of exhibitors as well as on the level of visitors. Its USP are emotions kicked off by booth sizes never seen at other exhibitions and the transfer of emotions by lights and all other POS media.

Another root of its robust situation is the reliability of its long term scouting for technical innovation and the intertwining between products and applications. The next EuroShop will be organized in 2023 from February 26th to March 2nd.

The triannual EuroShop will be supported in 2021 and 2022 again by its segment EuroCIS as stand-alone exhibitions, which meanwhile demonstrates its European leadership. For Hallier this part of the exhibition is driving the innovation of retail by tools like the Internet of Things (IoT) and Automated Intelligence (AI). Traditional definitions of store-formats will decline versus the growing impact of processes along the total supply chain. Third Parties like logistics, IT-suppliers, market research will merge together with retailers in new forms of Retail Knowledge Consortiums (RKC).

Retail Knowledge Consortium (RKC) At a welcome for the Russian Post at the DHL Innovation Center near Cologne/Germany Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier explained the future of retail as a Consortium of Partners where the traditional retailers contribute their assortment-competence, while market-research or distribution could be headed by Third Parties. B2B and B2C will merge - and Cash & Carry could become just a platform depot; and also the size of the retail store will no longer dominate the academic definitions of store formats (discount, supermarket, hypermarkets).

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Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier pointed out that already now the digitalization is increasing the factor speed in competition: either concerning assortments on the in-store shelves or in delivery to the consumers. In Germany according to EHI-Research about 56 percent of food deliveries are organized on average within 24 hours - in Hongkong Foodpanda delivers already short-distance within 15 minutes!

Long-term Sights Already since his PhD-thesis Prof.Dr.Hallier is involved in Sector Analysis versus Macro-Economics (berndhallier.de). In 2011 he was honored by the VSE Prague/CZ for his research about the 25-years-cycles of trade since 1800.

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His latest observations focus on continents as global innovation hubs: Europe in the 19th century with the Commonwealth and Sea Ports, the USA in the 20th century with self-service and mass-data-mining and now in the 21st century Asia with grab-and-go cashless stores and the Internet of Things as a driver behind. More from Philippine Retailing: Link.

Increasing Complexity Town Planning has changed its focus in Europe all 25 years: after World War II the hot topic was New Homes, followed due to mobilization in the 70ies by Suburban Living/Shopping Centers; while in the end of the century City Marketing was searching for an update of downtown in balance with Regional Marketing. Now new technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) enable town-planners to create Smart Cities.

At www.european-retail-academy.org/AEUC a research-project accumulates international studies in a reader with the titel of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Smart Citiesâ&#x20AC;? - and in April in Aachen/Germany the reputated international congress of CORP is offering a broad range of new insights: see forecast of presentations (Here).

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Innovation-Time-Lags Taken a cartoon from the German Lebensmittel Zeitung about the EuroShop exhibition and Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier most viewers would confirm that it covers well EuroShop 2020 and its halls 3 - 7 with the topics of robotics, AI and IoT (Internet of Things).

But the fact is that this cartoon was published more than 25 years ago! “There is a timelag between the vision and the prototypes on the one hand and the transformation towards products applicable for use in the main-streams” Hallier explained in an interview. His thesis is that the 25 years-innovation-cycles in retail/wholesale show the mental disability of HR to change quicker due to traditional education and social habits. “For Universities, Universities of Applied Sciences as well as Vocational Training Institutes, Change Management should be the top priority!” he demanded.

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● Theodor Purcărea – His Excellency Alfred H. MOSES at the “Bucharest Diary.

Memories of an American Ambassador” Conference, February 20, 2020 Note from the Editor-in-Chief Believing in the spirit and harmony while being on our continual journey of learning and maturing, it is a great opportunity to better understand why behind great people there is always great effort and energy.

On the occasion of the “Bucharest Diary. Memories of an American Ambassador” Conference organized on February 20, 2020 at the Șuțu Palace by the Bucharest Municipality Museum (http://muzeulbucurestiului.ro/en/the-bucharest-municipality-museumpinacotheque/) and “Art” Publishing Press (https://www.editura-art.ro/), His Excellency Ambassador Alfred H. Moses confirmed from the very beginning the link between wisdom and humor, gratitude, spirituality, and hope, while reflecting on past, present, and future.

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Excelenţa Sa Alfred H. Moses la Conferinţa “Jurnal de Bucureşti.

Memoriile unui Ambasador American”

În semnificativa perioadă istorică în care Excelenţa Sa Domnul Ambasador Alfred H. Moses era reprezentantul SUA in Romania s-a desfăşurat şi o Campanie de conştientizare publică a Privatizării în România (U. S. Agency for International Development - USAID), context în care au fost distribuite în mod gratuit şi câteva cărti, prima carte menţionată în Raportul Final din 1995 fiind cartea de “Business Management” (autor Theodor Purcărea) apărută la Editura Expert (coordonată de Valeriu Ioan-Franc). Această carte a fost lansată în ziua de 18 iulie 1994 la Casa Academiei Române (Sala Luxemburg a Centrului de Informare si Documentare Economică condus de Valeriu Ioan-Franc, moderatorul evenimentului de lansare a cărţii), în prezenţa unor distinşi invitati, printre care Vicepreşedintele Camerei de Comerţ şi Industrie a României şi a Municipiului Bucureşti, Dr. Aurel Vainer, precum şi reputatii Profesori: Ovidiu Nicolescu (Academia de Studii Economice Bucureşti, Preşedintele C.N. I.P.M.M.), George Cojocaru (Universitatea Politehnică Bucureşti, Directorul I.P.I.U.), Mihai Dumitrescu (Directorul Institutului Român de Management), Gheorghe Zaman (Directorul Institutului de Economie Naţională), Horia Neamţu (Vicepreşedintele Curţii de Conturi a României), Nicolae Turcu (Vicepreşedintele Consiliului Legislativ). Acest fapt în legătură cu acţiunea USAID a fost menţionat cu ocazia Conferinţei “Jurnal de Bucureşti. Memoriile unui Ambasador American” organizată la Palatul Șuțu, pe data de 20 februarie 2020, prin colaborarea dintre Muzeul Municipal Bucureşti şi Editura “Art” (http://holisticmarketingmanagement.ro/his-excellency-alfred-h-moses-romania-progressingfrom-darkness-to-light/).

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Este cunoscut faptul că progresul civilizaţiei (cu al său corolar – dezvoltarea personalităţii umane) s-a bazat întotdeauna pe oameni distinşi care demonstrează înalte cunoștințe, întelepciune şi înţelegere, confirmând că numai păstrând, onorând şi preţuind memoria trecutului putem privi încrezători către viitor, făcând legătura între idee şi spirit, sentimente şi empatie.

Excelenţa Sa Alfred H. Moses a împărtășit audienţei amintiri valoroase, menținând permanent interesul ascultătorilor și deschizând calea unei dezbateri vii, permițând clarificarea unor întrebări și preocupări, generând, de asemenea, contribuții calitative ale participanților la dezbatere. Fost Ambasador al SUA în Romania (1994-1997), Preşedinte al prestigiosului “UN Watch” şi autor al mai multor cărţi (precum şi al unor articole pentru publicaţii prestigioase), Excelenţa Sa Alfred H. Moses a jucat un rol cheie în a ajuta România să savanseze pe calea democraţiei şi să-şi stabilească o economie de piaţă liberă. (https://www.sixthandi.org/event/former-u-s-ambassador-to-romania-alfred-h-moses/). Calităţile remarcabile ale Excelenţei Sale au fost evidentiate şi recent, în luna decembrie 2019, cu ocazia celei de-a 18-a aniversări ca Preşedinte al “UN Watch”, fiind relevante în acest sens cuvinte cheie ca: funcţionar public exemplar, lider inspirator (demonstrând angajare și pasiune în modul de a face față problemelor și stimulând acțiune în cel mai potrivit mod), expertiză, rol istoric, implicare comunitară (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__Jj4iGywko). După cum răspunsul Excelenţei Sale a confirmat de la bun început legătura fină între înţelepciune şi umor, gratitudine, spiritualitate, speranţă, pe fondul reflectării asupra trecutului, prezentului şi viitorului.

Se cuvine a menţiona, totodată, că exact în urmă cu trei ani, remarcile făcute de Excelenţa Sa Alfred H. Moses cu ocazia celei de-a 9-a Întâlniri la cel mai înalt nivel pentru Drepturile Omului şi Democraţie de la Geneva, 21 februarie 2017, au demonstrat, ca întotdeauna, aceleaşi înalte cunoștințe, înţelepciune şi înţelegere: “Istoria ne-a învățat că: o îmbinare iscusită dintre particular și universal nu este numai posibilă, ci şi de dorit ... absența libertății individuale conduce la degradarea puterii politice ... Este reconfortant și de multe ori mai convenabil să ne bucurăm în particularismul nostru decât să ne gândim la noțiuni abstracte de universalism și apoi să le punem în practică în viața noastră de zi cu zi. Dar fără a proteja cele patru libertăți (proclamate de Președintele Roosevelt) pentru toți, nimeni dintre noi nu va fi cu adevărat liber. Da, drepturile omului universale încă contează” (https://unwatch.org/humanrights-matter/).

Theodor Purcărea Profesor la Universitatea Româno-Americană Membru al Colegiului Consultativ al Consiliului Concurenţei Preşedintele Asociatiei ştiintifice Comitetul Român al Distribuţiei

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