This course gives me the basic marketing knowledge that I am supposed to learn about. I find it very interesting and useful for my future career. It is not only helpful for my upcoming job searching, but also gives me the tool to choose what sort of business I should start if I want to launch my own business in the future. By the way, it is not the first time that I say that I love Rui’s lecture.

For the lecture listening, I should have been more prepared. I always try to come to the class on time and sit in the front. However, listening to Rui’s lecture and taking some notes have been the only two things I have done in the lecture. In fact, I think I should have read the chapter before the class so that I can think more critically in the class and raise some more meaningful questions.  Now I am reading the book as a way to prepare for the final. I hope I can make it up, and I am sure I still need to read the book (or similar book) one more time.

For the video filming experience, it was full of fun indeed! I was not so excited about this project in the beginning. However, it turned out to be very interesting and I enjoyed the filming and acting experience. If I have to reflect anything, I wish I could make everyone prepare the script and other issues completely well before filming so that we could save time on the filming. Anyway, I still enjoy it.

Lastly, I want to thank UBC for giving me the chance to have the minor degree in Commerce, and I want to thank Rui for his time and efforts for this course.

Andy Ye

Just read John’s blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/jtran007/) and I totally agree that co-branding project will have some extent of risk, but it is worthwhile trying the new project after serious marketing research.

Successful Co-branding is not about just creating a new brand or product. Instead, it must be something that has the characteristics and spirits from both of the two brands. In John’s blog, his favourite co-brand is the Oreo-DQ ice cream. Both companies are successful without each other, but both of them give their unique charm to each other to create this beloved ice cream. Oreo offers its popular flavor to DQ and DQ provides its well-known ice cream.

An even more phenomenal co-branding is the cooperation between credit card companies and other companies. VISA cooperates with Visa to offer customers the Target Red Card. Customers can get 5% cash back by using this card to purchase in Target. Both VISA and Target get their brand images expanded and sales increased. This kind of cooperation can be found in almost every single large superstores and department stores.

The latest one I saw on TV was the cooperation between NHL and Scotia Bank. Fans can get ScotiaHockey Reward point for purchasing on ScotiaHockey NHL card which can help them get NHL merchandise and game tickets. For companies, Scotia Bank gets its sales boosted and NHL gets  its brand awareness expanded. What a win-win cooperation!

– A response to Simon Montlake’s article “The Middle Way: Inside Lenovo’s Bid To Build A Better Tablet”

On Aug 29, 2013, Lenovo launched its first tablet product, Lenovo Yoga Table, which indicates that the PC giant is completely competing with its other competitors, like Apple and Samsung.

Lenovo Yoga Tablet (Youtube Video)

Nowadays, customers’ taste change very fast, especially in electronic devices markets. In order to win from the intense competition, companies have to keep on innovating their products and technologies and launching new products with fast speed. Market pioneers always have slim chance to take up bigger market share easily by increasing customers’ switching cost. In this respect, Lenovo is a laggard as Apple has launched its iPad 1 in 2010 successfully.

However, it is never too late to catch up if you know how to. Out of all the tablet followers of Apple, every one of them failed except Samsung. Therefore, companies must make sure they are on the right track. The once innovation leaders, like RIM and Nokia, all failed to sustain their competitive advantages by mistakenly estimate the market trend.

Mr. Simon Montlake has analyzed Lenovo’s business strategy on tablets in Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/sites/simonmontlake/2013/10/30/the-middle-way-inside-lenovos-bid-to-build-a-better-tablet/) and he thinks that Yoga tablet’s design is neat and attractive, but he is not so sure about the success of this new tablet. I totally agree with him. From my perspective, Yoga Tablet looks really charming in its video. Plus the technical features also make me believe it will be a reliable tablet. However, I still will not buy it. Simply because I have no opportunity to try it before I make any decision. I think many people will have same ideas as mine. So I strongly suggest Lenovo starts launch its experience stores in the world since they start to have such a wide and deep product mix.

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There are two categories of customer who are controversial and unethical to be targeted in marketing. One is children, and the other one is the elderly. They all have weaker ability to tell if the advertisement is true or false or the products the sales promote are real or not. As for children, they are a little less unethical to be targeted for they have their parents to help them make the decision. However, the elderly usually lived alone or with their mate who is also old.

The reasons I can think of why the elderly are very unethical to be targeted are below:

1. The elderly have sufficient time to listen to salespeople’s promotion. After the retirement, the elderly will have too much time than they ever had after childhood. They wish to have someone to talk to them every day and this is exactly what marketing people want. The more time they listen to salespeople’s promotion, the more likely they are willing to purchase the promoted products.
2. The elderly have the money to pay those fake medication and fraud high-tech appliances. The elderly have their retirement fund every month. Most of them will still have much money after paying the monthly living expense. The elderly have the purchasing power that marketing strategy makers are looking for.
3.  The elderly are easier to be fooled by sales people than younger people. They are too old to get updated with the latest science and technology and their memories are easily affected by the so called new research findings and the power of suggestion. (MEDICAL FRONTIERS, 2013)

Because of these reasons, I believe that targeting the elderly in the marketing strategy is unethical.

Reference

MEDICAL   FRONTIERS. (2013, 09 23). Elderly More Easily Fooled, Study Finds.   Retrieved from The Courant:   http://articles.courant.com/2005-05-17/features/0505170050_1_researchers-elderly-group-study