BUS101: Analysis and Report on Virtual Marketing Teams - Semester 1

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of virtual marketing teams, focusing on their structure, advantages, and disadvantages within the context of modern business. It explores the evolution of virtual teams, emphasizing their role in cost reduction, access to global talent, and enhanced productivity. The report discusses the stages of team development, communication challenges, and the importance of selecting the right team members. It highlights the shift from traditional command-and-control leadership to a more democratic and coaching style. The report includes figures illustrating the creation and effects of virtual marketing teams, concluding with recommendations for ensuring their success, including managerial perspective changes and adequate training. The report references key academic sources to support its arguments, offering a detailed overview of the topic.

Running head: VIRTUAL MARKETING TEAM
VIRTUAL MARKETING TEAM
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Introduction:
The Virtual teams are referred as the sets or group of employees that are scattered
over different time zones and different culture communities and languages or ethnicities. All
the members of the virtual teams are united by a common goal that is to achieve the
collective data information which can help the company to use the best and lowest-cost
global talent to reduce the cost of real estate.
Discussion:
Advice to the marketing director for creating new virtual marketing team:
In the fast and competitive market situations, the organizations are moving for the
faster turnarounds to widen the marketing scope of the organization. This needs constant
change and development in the methodologies. The marketing teams are developing
themselves is two groups. One is the primitive old traditional team based on conventional
methods that work on the physical proximity where they deal with people and customers in a
face to face manner. Whereas, the virtual marketing teams are the groups of individuals that
are working on collecting data and marketing perspectives but are separated in physical
distance on different areas of the world. Both the traditional or primitive face to face working
and the virtual teams have to go through and follow the five different stages of Bruce
Tuckman’s model that describes team development (Largent 2016). Neglecting some minor
communication barriers it can be stated that the virtual marketing team is a progressive
method of interacting with the customers.
Approach for creating a new virtual marketing team:
The selection of the team members is the most crucial part. The cultural boundaries
and different time zone plays a resistance role in the communication process. But this

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marketing plan proves to be beneficial as the infrastructure cost is less. This process Calls for
uncertainty in management, exceptional time and work discipline management and proactive
networking and the ability of learning new technologies and the ability to work across
functional and cultural boundaries (Gilson, Maynard and Bergiel 2013). There is therefore a
requirement of examining these core capabilities with the basic functional skills in the
selection of a virtual team member. Virtual teams support a smoother stricture of the
organization with high authorities and hierarchies (Hoch and Kozlowski 2014). This is very
essential for surviving in the hyper competitive market and delivers results faster. It also
encourages creativity which is set as the primary goals for the virtual team to maintain.
Yesteryear’s leadership style of command and control gives way to today's more dem
ocratic and coaching style as the managers are not able to control physically the day to day
activities of the virtual teams.
Support and evidence:
The virtual team reduces the operational cost in a new innovative way. The virtual
team can be divided and identified in several categories namely, project or product
development teams parallel teams, production functional teams, networked teams, service
teams, management teams, action teams, and ISD teams (Dulebohn and Hoch 2017). The
most advantageous effect of virtual team on an organization comprises of the methods of
saving costs associated with it. The organization eliminate high costing on property, office-
spaces, the bills for utilities that are gas, water, electricity and travel by executives. There are
many organizations that outsource to regions of low-cost in their operations. It provides scope
to the global talent (Dulebohn and Hoch 2017). It increases productivity and higher profits
which reduces time to market and creates opportunities. Since the members are located on the
different time zones, there are different teams present who may be working on same 24* 7

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projects so that when one employee member sleeps then there will be another somewhere
who will start working where the last employee has left doing the work (Benetytė and
Jatuliavičienė 2014). This reduces both time of product development and faster response time
according to the demands in global and local markets. Virtual team members focus more on
the given task that has been assigned at hand. According to the virtual team practice, it
enables and supports a flatter structure of the organization. Members are not permitted or
enforced to deal with unnecessary bureaucracy that tends to slow the decision making process
and also highlights the decision-making process. This improves the productivity and reaches
to the higher profits. While virtual teams works upon and relies heavily on the information
and communication technology, but it is not only limited to the information technology
industry alone (Joe et al., 2014.). Today, virtual teams benefit almost all sectors of the
industry, ranging from construction, healthcare, manufacturing and automotive in retail and
non-profit levels. Larger organizations around the globe such as Hewlett Packard, Whirlpool,
Texas Instruments (Mudigonda, Congdon and Ranganathan 2014). Every organization are
relying upon the virtual teams to enhance their marketing strategy.

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Presentation on virtual marketing team
(Figure 1: creation of a virtual marketing team)
(Source: Created by author)
(Figure 2: virtual marketing team)
(Source: Created by author)

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(Figure 3: teams in action)
(Source: Created by author)
(Figure 4: effects of virtual marketing team)

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(Source: Created by author)
(Figure 5: effects of virtual marketing team)
(Source: Created by author)

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(Figure 6: thank you slide)
(Source: Created by author)
Conclusion:
This report concludes the matter of virtual marketing teams and their impavt on the
marketing strategies. There are two things needed to ensure the success of the virtual teams.
The managers should change the perspective by which teams can be accepted which is
different from the traditional teams. The adequate training must be provided to the team
members and managers.

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References:
Bartelt, V.L. and Dennis, A.R., 2014. Nature and nurture: The impact of automaticity and the
structuration of communication on virtual team behavior and performance. MIS
quarterly, 38(2).
Benetytė, D. and Jatuliavičienė, G., 2014. Building and sustaining trust in virtual teams
within organizational context. Regional Formation and Development Studies, 10(2), pp.18-
30.
Dulebohn, J.H. and Hoch, J.E., 2017. Virtual teams in organizations.
Gilson, L.L., Maynard, M.T. and Bergiel, E.B., 2013. Virtual team effectiveness: An
experiential activity. Small Group Research, 44(4), pp.412-427.
Hoch, J.E. and Kozlowski, S.W., 2014. Leading virtual teams: Hierarchical leadership,
structural supports, and shared team leadership. Journal of applied psychology, 99(3), p.390.
Joe, S.W., Tsai, Y.H., Lin, C.P. and Liu, W.T., 2014. Modeling team performance and its
determinants in high-tech industries: Future trends of virtual teaming. Technological
Forecasting and Social Change, 88, pp.16-25.
Largent, D.L., 2016. Measuring and understanding team development by capturing self-
assessed enthusiasm and skill levels. ACM Transactions on Computing Education
(TOCE), 16(2), p.6.
Mudigonda, J., Congdon, P.T. and Ranganathan, P., Hewlett-Packard Development Co LP,
2014. Establishing network quality of service for a virtual machine. U.S. Patent 8,638,799.
.

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