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Procedia Technology 8 (2013) 275 – 284

6th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies in

Agriculture, Food and Environment (HAICTA 2013)

WooDB: A DBMS Approach as a Marketing Tool for Wood

Entrepreneurship
Ioakeim Tzoulisa,*, Zaharoula Andreopouloua, Christiana Koliouskaa, George
Tsekouropoulosb, Vagis Samathrakisb
a
Laboratory of Forest Informatics, School of Forestry and Natural Environment, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
b
Alexander Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki, Greece

Abstract

Within the current trends in the modern society, wood entrepreneurship sector gains increasing interest, globally. A database can
be a marketing tool in wood enterprises, as registered wood properties and origin constitute quality characteristics that must be
acknowledged by wood entrepreneurs. The particular structure and origin that characterizes each wood type, differentiates its
usage and behavior, and determines its final use in wood products. Wood is produced by national forests but it is also imported
from various countries and continents. This paper describes the use of this modern marketing tool, a database named as WooDB.
WooDB aims to present the most important and utilitarian timber species. At pilot level, scientific records relating to European
and Tropical wood, their uses and characteristics have been used. WooDB uses macro commands to create interactive elements
for the management of the database, in a user-friendly interface, even for non-experienced users.
© 2013The
© 2013 TheAuthors.
Authors. Published
Published by Elsevier
by Elsevier Ltd. B.V.
Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
Selection andpeer-review
Selection and peer-review under
under responsibility
responsibility of TheofHellenic
HAICTA Association for Information and Communication Technologies in Agriculture
Food and Environment (HAICTA)
Keywords: Database; Marketing; Entrepreneurship; Wood enterprise; Tropical wood; WooDB

1. Introduction

A major feature of the global economy during this time has been the liberalization of emerging economies and
their integration into the worldwide economy [1; 2]. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) offer

*Corresponding author. Tel.: +30-6972-702-827; fax: -

E-mail address: kimon13@[Link]

2212-0173 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of The Hellenic Association for Information and Communication Technologies in Agriculture
Food and Environment (HAICTA)
doi:10.1016/[Link].2013.11.037
276 Ioakeim Tzoulis et al. / Procedia Technology 8 (2013) 275 – 284

huge opportunities for all to progress and benefit and new prospects exist for economic growth, better service
delivery, social and cultural advances [3]. Advances in information and communication technologies have been
identified as enablers of entrepreneurship [4]. ICT’s give the integrated organization the opportunity to access to a
large amount of information with a set of online services (e-services) [5]. The ability to access huge amounts of
data, effortlessly and quickly, is the incentive for better communication, scientific growth and technology
development, thus, the adoption of ICT in public administrations as it is combined with organizational and structural
change aiming to improve public services and sustainable development.
A database constitutes an effective tool for management as it is a set of data characterized by some logical
structure and grouping. The structure of the database provides data independence, has greater consistency of data,
causing improved data sharing, increases productivity, improves accessibility of data and reduces maintenance and
program management especially when a powerful database, (DBMS) used [6]. The total approach of data entry in a
database has two further advantages, such as reduction in duplicate record and creation data accuracy because of
automatic data update [7]. So, a temporal database maintains past, present and future data [8].The essential feature
of database technology is that it provides an internal representation (model) of the external world of interest [9].
Each user can access and use the same data for different purposes at the same time [6]. DBMSs also offer multi-
processor support, support for parallel queries and clustering. The data stored in a DBMS package can be accessed
by multiple users and by multiple application programs like SQL Server, Oracle and Ms-Access.
Assimakopoulos et al. [10] in their research on business intelligence systems for virtual enterprises summarize
that the modern business environment requires fast, efficient and reliable management of vast amounts of
information and diverse data. Therefore, the adoption of new technologic solutions and innovative managerial
practices are needed, which will offer flexibility, immediate feedback and short decision-making capacity [6].
DBMSs have more recently emerged as a fairly standard part of any company back office. Sales and marketing
would be impossible without good database systems [11].
A database is a valuable asset and a great tool for achieving the marketing objectives of an enterprise. A database,
also, supports the modern marketing concept, as it can bring together all the necessary marketing information. Many
organizations have embraced the marketing concept by using segmentation techniques, specifying marketing
strategies, and establishing dedicated marketing departments (staff or line) [12]. Marketing is considered as a core
activity [13]. Studies of the role of marketing within a firm may be divided into four key categories. First there is
research that assesses marketing’s role as an orientation, typically assessing its impact on performance. A second
category of research focuses on marketing’s influence at the level at which the firm’s corporate strategy is
formulated. A third category examines marketing as an organizational subunit. Finally, a fourth stream of research
considers marketing’s role concurrently as a function and an orientation [14]. Business Marketing as a research
domain can be conceived of comprising several interrelated or nested layers [15; 16; 17]: 1)Individuals and their
behaviours (behaviours of customers and sellers), 2) Groups and their behaviors (sales teams, buying centers,
DMUS), 3) Organizations or firms and their behaviors (marketing and customer organizations, other relevant
actors), 4) Functions and their behaviors (marketing as a function and its interactions with other company functions),
5) Management (marketing as specialized and institutionalized management), 6) Interorganizational behaviors
(between suppliers and customers), 7) Institutional systems and their dynamics (e.g., distribution channels,
networked ecosystems), 8)Markets, industries and cultures and their dynamics (forming the context of marketing
and consummating behaviors). The elements of marketing mix proposed by McCarthy [18], [19] were the product,
the price, the place and the promotion. These elements are the so known 4 Ps. Companies' marketing
communications resource allocation decisions have become considerably more complex as the channels available to
reach consumers have expanded to include more interactive marketing vehicles, e.g., online display, paid search,
mobile, and social media, in addition to traditional marketing vehicles, e.g., TV, print, radio, and personal selling
[20; 21; 22]. Modern marketing techniques demand the use of e-environment relation development of the supply
chain with the corresponding new partners, geographical expansion e.t.c. [23; 24]. Economic crisis make it
imperative to identify ICT innovations, practices, policies and innovative electronic/ mobile business models such as
Internet marketing, promotion, consulting in the context of employment, growth and competitiveness [25].
 Ioakeim Tzoulis et al. / Procedia Technology 8 (2013) 275 – 284 277

1.1. Wood Enterprises

Within the current trends in the modern society in wood and wood products, wood entrepreneurship sector gains
increasing interest, globally. With the development of economy and the improvement of people’s living standard,
wood enterprises have been developed rapidly in recent years. The wood trade helps shape observed forest change,
by relating forest stock change to net trade of wood products by localizing the origin of wood consumed in a given
nation. For many nations, traded wood products have a relevant impact on the course of ongoing forest transitions.
Wood products trade can influence forest change and place various nations within this framework [26]. Wood is the
raw material for different industrial products of primary processing such as poles, sawn timber, veneer, plywood,
particleboard, fiber boards; pulpwood, etc., which are materials to produce other products such as secondary
treatment furniture and paper. The number of wood products is large and are said to be matching with those products
derived from petroleum. Wood is produced by national forests but it is also imported from various countries and
continents. European and tropical timber is of a great importance for local wood market in Greece due to their
characteristics, features and qualities .Wood has a lot of advantages as a material but also disadvantages Some of the
advantages are: easy treatment, renewable material, easiness to find, beautiful aesthetics (variety of colors, textures
and drawing), high mechanical strength in relation to its weight, insulator (sound, heat), cellulose source, non-
polluting the environment and relatively low-cost. Some of the disadvantages is the fact that it is a hygroscopic
material and its dimensions vary with the recruitment or the loss of moisture, its an anisotropic material and presents
instability in the structure and properties, affected by microorganisms (altered, rot), burns easily, its production is
influenced by environment and heredity [27]. The construction of wood, its chemical composition, the content in
extracts and whether errors appear or not, determine the physical, chemical and mechanical properties of wood as
well as its behavior in the exploitation and use in natural or processed form. The particular structure and origin that
characterizes each wood type, differentiates its usage and behavior, and determines, to a large extent, its final use in
wood products [27]. Wood properties and origin constitute quality characteristics that must be acknowledged by
wood entrepreneurs [27]. European Union (EU) member states should seek to harmonize the forest industry data
system and establish a single economic value of forests and consistently linked the forest balance with wooden land,
timber, forestry economic activities in the cash flow accounts and wood supply and use in the natural and monetary
values. In EU is the data system of forest industry, but each European country is necessary assess its suitability and
to adapted to situation which is in the country.
This paper describes the use of this modern marketing tool, a database named as WooDB. WooDB aims to
present the most important and utilitarian timber species. At pilot level, scientific records relating to European and
Tropical wood their uses and characteristics have been used. WooDB uses macro commands to create interactive
elements for the management of the database, in the form of a user-friendly interface, even for non-experienced
users.

2. Methodology

The pilot phase of the WooDB includes recordings from European and Tropical woods, but it is expandable to
include all kinds of timber, Greek and non-greek species. The data of timber originally recorded in the WooDB
come from references, scientific literature review [28; 29; 27]. WooDB was designed in order to store data for wood
in two-dimensional tables consisting of rows and columns. The data are organized in several tables with fewer
fields. The tables have been designed to follow the principles of the first two normal norms, which means that there
are no repeated data groups and fields only depend on the primary key. Databases offer access and handling to a vast
amount of data, collection of relevant data, independent data processing, common view of the database, increase in
productivity and reduction in delay time [30]. WooDB was designed and developed with Ms Access software.
During the development of this database, an information system with friendly interface was designed. The interface
includes various forms with interactive buttons that have been designed for inexperienced users in computing. All
the screens in the interface are designed to incorporate interactive buttons in both in Greek and English language.
WooDB includes data for timber species of European and Tropical regions in the form of tables, queries and forms,
and comparison of them. Macros used in the DB were mainly macro for the opening of the form, the addition of
records and to delete records and mainly macros to automate menu and the works of the system [31]. WooDB
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supports the storing of this information and their effective manage with the help of available integrated tools. One of
these useful tools is the creation of queries. By creating queries, users can recover a subset of information from the
original database tables that meet certain criteria, already set. The query result is a data table, which contains just the
necessary information according to the used criteria.

3. Results

Research resulted in the retrieve of 117 wood species. In the WooDB, five tables have been created named as:
"Continent", "Individual timber codes', 'Name and features', 'Uses', 'Encoding uses'. These tables have been linked
with common areas, creating “relationships”. The relationships of the 5 tables are presented in Figure 1.

Fig. 1. Relations between the Tables in the WooDB

 Ioakeim Tzoulis et al. / Procedia Technology 8 (2013) 275 – 284 279

Figure 2 presents the development of the database table “Name and features” of the European and tropical wood
species (scientific name, common name, color) of the available data recorded.

Fig. 2. The database Table “names and characteristics”

The data management in the WooDB can be achieved with interactive buttons that activate successive interface
screens. Users select through interactive buttons until they obtain the data of his interest.
Figure 3 shows the initial interface screen which automatically enters the user in the WooDB. When the user
enters the WooDB, he can choose among 3 options with 3 interactive bilingual keys buttons, leading to respective
interface screens.
280 Ioakeim Tzoulis et al. / Procedia Technology 8 (2013) 275 – 284

Fig. 3. The introductory interface screen of the Database

With these interactive buttons, the user of the WooDB is able to access to the information derived from queries in
the WooDB about: a) "European timber species," b) "Tropical timber species" and c) advanced to the interface
screen containing many interactive buttons that trigger questions that have already been designed to answer common
questions that users do on the timber species (Figure 4).
 Ioakeim Tzoulis et al. / Procedia Technology 8 (2013) 275 – 284 281

Figure 4. Main Selection Screen

Furthermore, by selecting the interactive key “questions / queries”, the users are headed to the interface screen
that includes a plurality of prepared questions for the WooDB to be selected according to the needs of the user
(Figure 5). These questions are typical user queries, but through the main window of the database, more queries can
be developed. When the user selects the active button "questions", he is driven to the table that includes several
questions about the uses and the wood species that appear in the form of interactive buttons.
282 Ioakeim Tzoulis et al. / Procedia Technology 8 (2013) 275 – 284

Fig. 5. Interface screen with interactive buttons to select queries from the database

In Figure 6, the results of the query "Tropical timber species for musical instruments' is presented.
 Ioakeim Tzoulis et al. / Procedia Technology 8 (2013) 275 – 284 283

Fig. 6. Query results to present “tropical wood for musical instruments”

4. Conclusions

Advances in new technology tools and practices have been identified as enablers of entrepreneurship. Databases
can become a valuable asset for achieving the marketing objectives of any enterprise. The application WooDB, is an
effective bilingual pilot tool for the design of an integrated management and marketing tool of European and
tropical timber species, based on detailed scientific records that describe the specific characteristics of these species.
All over the world, modern life-style depends highly on wood and wood products; hence, wood entrepreneurship
sector has gained much attention. Wood properties and origin, such as European or tropical timber, constitute
quality characteristics that must be acknowledged by wood entrepreneurs in their marketing. Wood entrepreneurs
can use WooDB as a key reference tool, aiming to organize their tasks, to increase overall business and marketing
efficiency. Despite the fact that the application is in pilot form, all the available current data in international
references are registered. There are plenty of data (forms, tables) that help in drawing conclusions from computer-
illiterate users because the management of the database is succeeded by selecting interactive buttons in successive
interface screens. Besides in the DBMS that was developed, an experienced user can enter the WooDB and create
additional questions in query forms, and additional buttons or use other tools aiming to modify its own applications.
WooDB may be extended to develop a broader database, which will include most types of timber globally to
exploit in scientific, academic, bibliographic and commercial sectors. The DBMS and interface that was designed in
a user-friendly type, it is bilingual and it can be further extended in other languages, as to be multi-national.
284 Ioakeim Tzoulis et al. / Procedia Technology 8 (2013) 275 – 284

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