Month: February 2011

Groupon has offered good deals to many people, encouraging them to be more involved in purchasing activities and participate in the market ever before. Basically, Groupon is a website that features great and unbeatable deals on any purchases such as restaurants, salons, theatre, food, clothes, groceries, etc. in the city you live in. I believe this website is a great idea because it not only benefits consumers, allowing them to find attractive knock down prices on products that they can’t possibly find anywhere else, but also companies benefit from Groupon since it guarantees businesses.

How Groupon works is individuals sign up for free membership, and Groupon will send emails to all its subscribers on a daily basis, updating them with the best deals that are currently going on.  Groupon has a high exposure to the public, thus, companies that feature their promotions on Groupon websites can definitely increase their annual sales since Groupon can generate numerous sales within a short period of time.

This is just basically a marvellous marketing tool for many reasons:

1.       Motivates consumers to buy: It increases consumers’ purchasing power. In other words, consumers can buy products that they seek valuable at a relatively cheaper price, and therefore they could use the portion of the money that they saved on other purchases. This way, Groupon encourages and motivates consumers to spend-which all companies exactly need and want.

2.       It publicizes the company: Emails about exceptional deals that are happening in the store will be exclusively sent to thousands of subscribers. Thus, members can notice about companies, appealing values, and entertaining write ups, which can maintain consumers’ involvement in the market.

3.       Online Advocate:  Groupon gives appealing deals to consumers. In return, members spread the words and share information either in reality or virtually (Facebook, MSN, Twitter, etc.) about unbeatable and valuable offers that are currently being promoted in stores with their friends and families. As a result, it can increase number of potential buyers for the companies, exposing companies’ brand and reputation to the public.

4.       Risk- Free promotion: Companies who work with Groupon will not lose anything. Groupon is unlike other advertising tools, such as commercials, TV, newspapers, etc. where it doesn’t ensure companies that they will earn a profit or increase their sales. Instead, Groupon promises companies that they will market the brand to public and increase buisnesses. Companies do not need to pay any fees to appear on the website. However, a certain number of people need to sign up for the stores’ promotion in order to get the Groupon deal, if a minimum number of people didn’t join the offer, then sales would be cancel. The company only pays Groupon when the sales happen.

5.       Meet company’s needs: Groupon spends time with their working partners to find ways to structure the companys’ offers that best maximize companys’ values and profit, yet simultaneously attracting and meeting consumers’ needs. They assist companies in investing in committed buyers.

I had a MIS (Management information system) group project, where we are the representatives of the company that we were assigned to in class and we were supposed to find strategies to improve the firm and assist them in reaching their missions and target markets. Through this project, I have used my marketing knowledge from what I’ve learned in class and incorporated into our project. All I can say is, it helped A LOT!! Our MIS group was assigned to VanRealty Company and we decided to choose International post-secondary students as our target market. Our group realized that most International post-secondary students have difficulties in searching up information about available housings in Canada (their need). Therefore, we decide to satisfy our target consumers with superior marketing & customer service, so we can minimize their effort and hassle that comes with finding. From marketing lectures, we learned that customers sees value in a service or product according to the benefits they receive not the features of the product.  Our group has used many strategies to reach our target customers, ensuring that they benefit far more than they would have if they go to other companies. In this blog, I will focus on explaining one of our strategies, Virtual Online Tour, and how our group used marketing to deliver the value of Virtual online Tour service.

As you all know, almost all real estate companies have their own websites and also use Google to allow clients to look at previous tenants’ reviews, and the available facilities in today’s market. VanRealty has already possessed these search engines on their websites like all other real estate companies. Therefore we want to provide our target consumers with something that other competitors don’t have and could maintain a sustainable advantage that differentiate us from other real estate companies. As a result, we introduced virtual online tour for our clients. Basically a virtual online tour is a representative of any houses you selected; it’s a video clip that shows you the inside of the house and the environment around it, providing consumers a clear idea of what it’s like in real life since photos sometimes could be deceiving. Youtube today is the second largest search site, and therefore our group would also link our videos to Youtube, widely marketing our houses to basically anyone who’s interested in purchasing.

We make sure that Virtual Online Tour provides the advantages and values that consumers seek in products where the benefits they receive are worth their hard-earned money and minimize their costs at all time.

Almost everyone go through the process where they first sit down and go online to search up houses available in today’s market using any search engines they have access of. They keep searching until they find one that they are interested in, and then travel to the location to see the house. However, it is quite often that clients don’t find the right housing during their first visit and therefore would have spent enormous amount of time and money to go through the whole cycle again. As Virtual online tour is introduced, not only post-secondary students with low to average income benefit from this tool, but almost everyone could take advantage of this program because  the tour assists consumers’ decision making process which allows customers to make more accurate decisions and can save money, time, and effort from going through the whole purchasing process again.

Furthermore, buyers coming from all over the world are able to see the houses right away, and could possibly find a desired housing in Great Vancouver through these videos. Therefore, they don’t need to spend enormous amount of time nor stress about finding residences when they’re in Canada and they could even move in right away since we provide a service where we take the role of contacting the seller and the buyer, faxing contracts to both participants, and setting agreements between the two in two different locations. As a result, this brings much convenience to any clients of the company.  Last but not least, Virtual Online tour allows Van Realty to target all consumers and increase our market share in the industry. Now we provide our clients with property flyers and photos, information of housing, Youtube videos, and virtual online tour. This program provides our company a sustainable competitive advantage that differentiates us from other competitors and consumers seek more benefits from us and indeed minimize their cost throughout the process.

Wearing or using branded items have become a popular topic in our today’s society. Some people believe it’s not necessary to purchase designer brands because they are extremely overpriced and a waste of money to spend enormous amount of  our hard earn money towards branded products where you could almost get the same thing or similar styles somewhere else for relatively cheaper price and better deal. I agreed to those who stand their opinions until recently, I was browsing on internet trying to shop online, and suddenly came through these ads that my friend sent me. All I can say is those campaign ads of Designer brands are excellent representatives for the companies because itself could already explain the reasons behind the expensive prices it offers to consumers.

These ads of Balenciaga have successfully captured all the perceived values that the majorities seek when purchasing products. I could see high quality, exclusively fashionable, and considerably be the root of where new fashion arises.  It is quite incredible to see these designers turning a patterned fabric that would be hard to design into an extravagant piece of clothing. Not only the design has turned it into a masterpiece, but also the cutting and the seam line make it exceptionally unique and durable. If we just compare these clothing to the ones in Zellers, Old Navy, or even Winners, it would be difficult to find something that would equally match the quality and the fashion. Therefore, designer brands have differentiated themselves in a way that they offer many valuable qualities that consumers weigh heavily on relative to other attributes and consumers could seek numerous benefits over costs.

However, not everyone buys clothing or bags from particular designer brand just because they like it, but several factors could have influenced their purchasing behaviour.  For example, social trend, friends, culture, are some of many aspects that could have impact on consumers’ behaviours. Many people today try to follow the fashion trend, purchasing anything that’s popular among friends, in society, and even culture. They tend to feel pressured and obligated to purchase almost anything that their friends, family or even strangers have, so they feel like they fit in the group that consumers belong to, and most importantly, today’s society.