Over this course I have grown a great appreciation for what goes into the marketing process for companies large and small. I found it fascinating in during class discussion and from the textbook readings how much marketing varies around the world. First hand accounts from classmates and the instructor made this part of the course much more interesting.

The group assignment was one of the more helpful and well run group assignments I have been part of in my 4.5 years at university. It was a cool to take a look at some of Canada’s most successful companies and see what they are doing to an ever-changing marketplace. The video was a fun, creative way to round the whole assignment off. The group I worked with was great, with everyone taking responsibility for their sections and having everything done by our preset deadlines. All round, it was great group to work with.

I feel like I have a new out look when looking at a new product launch, new commercial, or wandering why a company is so successful or not. Although we have only learnt the most basic concepts of marketing, I feel we have set a solid foundation in which we can continue to grow our marketing knowledge in the year to come.

While scouring the Internet for an interesting blog to comment about I, came across a particular blog post that caught my eye. The blog of interest is posted at briansolis.com, called The Ultimate Moment of Truth and The Art of Digital Engagement.

This article shed light on how drastically social media and the Internet has affected customers decision making process and the choice of there ultimate purchase.  Two terms that I learnt from this article are Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) and Ultimate Moment of Truth(UMOT). The ZMOT refers to the moment where the Internet affects our decision to buy a product, while UMOT is the “moment people convert an experience into discoverable content in any one of the many social media platform”.

Now days the first step in the purchase of a major product or service, requires googling reviews and comments of the product, before even doing any real research. At this point the customer is heavily influence by what other customers and peers have experience about the product, and hence encounter the ZMOT. Its not surprising that the ZMOT is brought on by previous customers UMOT, where they had and good or bad experience with the product or service and had to post it to a social media center where it will eventually influenc a potential customer in the future.

For these reasons companies now days need to make sure customers can easily share their product experiences on social media platforms, in order to develop their brand. The fact of the matter is, content will be shared, like and commented on continuously and your product with develop brand image weather its in line with the planned image or not. If companies fail to keep track of how their products and brands are being depicted online will result in an experience gap, and result in a loss of profit.

McDonalds is one of the best companies in the world at continually marketing itself, using various promotions, deals, and coupons to repeatedly attract customers to its restaurants. One of the most well know of all McDonalds promotions is its infamous Monopoly, where the customer collects stickers to win various prizes ranging from a free hash brown to $100,000 cash. It’s important to note that these stickers are generally only available on the more expensive menu items. This promotion draws customers in by providing a ¼ chance of “winning”. It’s almost as if McDonalds is using peoples inner gabling addictions to push their products. If a person was to get 1 of 2 required stickers for the $100,000 prize with in the first week of the promotion, it would be likely that the customer would start to live the movie, Supper Size Me.

Another particularly effective promotion is their coupon books that they distribute to households through out the year, usually around April and September. These coupon books are valid for a month and have a whopping $53 in savings! Although, I highly caution someone taking full advantage of these savings due to health concerns. Although the coupons provide outstanding deals McDonalds is still making a profit on these sales, and lures customers into purchasing additional complementary products. The discounts from the coupons are very effective at drawing customers to the restaurant. When you stroll into the campus at 2 am, ravaged from a night of fist pumping at Venue the 2 Can Dine for $9.99 coupon starts to look like a dream come true.

These are just a couple very effective promotional campaigns that demonstrate McDonalds ability to keep them selves in the back of their customers mind.

Professional sports teams have huge fan basis and consequently have a great influence on people all over the world. In current year charities have taken advantage of these attributes and have gained the support of either individual sports teams or the entire league. The most famous and well known of one such relationship is the NFL’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This is a entire month were the NFL teams wear pink socks, gloves, hats, T-shirts and more. The merchandise is sold and a portion of the profits is donated to the American Cancer Society. The NHL’s Hockey Fights Back has a similar charitable program where players and staff use pink and lavender gear, which is then signed, and auction off at the end the night and donated to charity.

The marketing benefits that come from these charitable movements are positive for both charity and sports team/league. The teams/league provide a excellent source of promotion the communicate their cause and what people can do to help (donations). The sports teams fan base tend to be very receptive to such promotion from ‘their’ team due to the social validation consumer principal.  By the sports teams and league caring for and supporting the charity, a social standard to support the charity will be created with in the fan base.

Sports teams and leagues benefit from these causes because they gain a larger fan base by showing public support. In addition some leagues/teams, such as the NFL, actually split the profits and make money off the sale of pink merchandise.

Every year over the Thanksgiving weekend, Whistler Blackcomb host their famous Turkey Sale. This three-day sale attracts 20,000 people to the base of Blackcomb every year to buy brand name ski and snowboard gear. There are a number of marketing concepts at play that have led to the success of the Turkey Sale every year.

The first marketing technique that works wanders for the sale is the promotion of the sale. The recent promotional campaign of the turkey sale is run off of the success the sale has had over the past 12 years. The sale has grown to become an event thousands of people expect every year. It practically promotes its self through work of mouth between consumers talking about the potential sales. The sale is so huge that hotels in the whistler sell Turkey Sale packages for the weekend, which in turn attracts more people to the sale. In addition, advertisements online on the Whistler Blackcomb website, as well in variously magazines and newspapers are place to remind the consumer of the upcoming savings opportunity.

The most important marketing technique used by the Turkey Sale management implements is the setting of the price levels for the ski and snowboard products. The sale sells the previous years brand name gear and equipment at sales up to 70% off.  Since Ski and Snowboard gear is somewhat of a luxury item they tend to have a huge mark up, so management can discount hundreds of dollars off of gear and still make a profit. The key to the success is they make sure that the full retail price of the equipment is clearly shown next to the sale price. This has the effect on the customer of setting the value of the product much higher that the cost of the customer.

To further push sales, management capitalizes on the consumer behaviour of scarcity. The consumers are aware that there is s pretty limited supply of stock available (the sale doesn’t seem to have too many of the same produce and same size in stock). When consumers finally find an item they are interested in or are looking for they need to make a decision to purchase the product pretty quickly. Coupled with the allusion of huge savings and scarcity consumers tend to make very rash choices that might not be fully thought out.

The Turkey Sale at is a hugely successful sale that plays off its own success, the perceived value of sales items and the scarcity principle.

In todays society marketing ethics isn’t just a companies moral and legal obligation to conduct fair business practices but it is also a great way to attract new customers and business.  Behaviour is deemed unethical when the values or expectations of the consumer, competitor or society as a whole are violated. The main areas of marketing that are prone to ethical problems are research, price and promotion of products or services.

The  key ethical issues that are associated with market research involves privacy issues and stereotyping. The amount of personal data that people put online is unprecedented and is readily available for companies to access for research. This creates a bit of  an ethically grey area in which the people view their information personal property when it is posted on a company website such as Facebook. Stereotyping is an issue for companies generalizing a large group of people either research or advertising purposes which often have harmful effects. Both these forms of unethical behaviour in marketing research have a detrimental effect on society as a whole.

The topic of price with regards  to marketing ethics is a broad subject, with many pricing practices that are considered unethical. Two common pricing practices that are common are price discrimination and predatory pricing. Price discrimination occurs when the same product or service is sold to two different customers for two different prices. The reason for the price differentiation could be anything, such as making a wealthier person pay more for a product than someone who’s not as well off. This is a clear violation of the companies customer base. Predatory pricing is the act of setting product prices artificially low to discourage competition and serve as a barrier to entry. In this case price setting has a negative effect on the market competition.

The promotional aspect of marketing is has some pretty straight forward ethical issues which include honesty of the promotion and the delivery channels of the promotion.  The promotion of a product needs to tell the truth about a product but is subject to “puffery”  which does create  a grey area. The delivery channels of a promotion that are often the subject of unethical practices are direct marketing, such as sam and telemarketers which constantly harass and pester society as a whole.

There is a wide array of possibly unethical behaviour in marketing; it is clear the best way to avoid committing such unethical acts is to first fully understand the issues that are prevalent in all aspects of marketing.

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