Dinesh Kumar

Traditional marketing faces challenges as never before. The way that people interact with each other and with companies is changing completely in today’s era of 24/7 connectivity. This book explores tectonic changes in buyer behavior and how businesses are responding to those changes. It describes how data is used to track and analyze customers in almost everything they do, and how marketing communications are delivered with precision to individual mobile devices. The connected customer is blurring the line between online and offline sales resulting in an entirely new purchase cycle.The ""always on"" consumer has ushered in an era of customer engagement. In developed countries, online commerce offers limitless ease and variety for customers, while in developing countries e-commerce and e-finance provides access for millions of people to formal banking channels and also to empower them.Companies are merging their online and offline business models. While data is being used to analyze and track customers, at the same time it raises a worrying question—does this constant peering into customers’ lives has limits? Will it result in a consumer utopia or a privacy nightmare?This book helps understand how consumers and companies are changing, leading to profound changes in marketing.

The development and application of assistive technology can help those with reduced abilities improve their quality of life and reduce their dependence on others. Written in layman’s terms, Devices for Mobility and Manipulation for People with Reduced Abilities provides research and information on assistive technologies for non-technical people. While it highlights various mobility and manipulative technologies, with the exception of specific examples within the text, it keeps technical terminology, equations, and software details to a minimum. It presents technical material in a digestible way for people with reduced abilities as well as for their caregivers.Each chapter covers a specific technology, and starts with a general introduction of that technology, followed by the technical details and an assessment from the user’s viewpoint. This includes the user benefits and suitability, cost, reliability, and required infrastructure. The chapter also provides illustrations or photographs of the devices, and identifies shortcomings, current research related to the technology, and possible development opportunities. Each chapter provides the range of specifications for the equipment and includes a list of manufacturers.Discusses user advantages and conditionsExamines technologies for robotic wheelchairs and prosthesesHelps a clinician or user understand the different devices that support people with disabilitiesThis book provides clinicians, users, and engineers with the details of different technologies, and also includes a guide to the technology that underpins each of these devices, making it easier for people to understand the devices. References are also included for scientists, designers, and other tech-savvy professionals interested in further information.