Ben Lee's Blog

Our marketing group, New Horizons Inc, had an amazing assignment 3 result. Our marketing video was one of the best videos that any of my previous groups have made. It was professional, informative, stylish, and EPIC! With team members who were all innovators with creative opinions, we came across a realistic and potentially the best solutions for Research In Motion, BlackBerry Ltd.

Throughout the whole project, especially in the first two assignments, we came across various challenges that slowed down the group pace and brought our confidence down as well. We struggled to come up with solutions for the questions during discussions and meeting goals of each meeting due to a huge variety of our schedules. And since the assignment topics gradually became broader, we had more directions to tackle the questions, which made the discussion process more complicated and time-consuming.

We overcame these challenges very soon after the assignments by compromising and accepting others’ ideas. Which led us to our successful video with brilliant details and smooth transitions. Although it took us a lot of time and effort, but in the end, we established a respectful and productive norm that demonstrated our results.

To further evaluate our project, if I would have done the assignments with the same group again, I would suggest to vote for a group leader before any discussion. Having a group leader allows faster and easier decision making while keeping arguments and conflicts to its minimum (of course this all varies based on the style of the leader). And I would try stop and prevent any off-topic discussions during meetings to minimize the waste of time. But overall, I believe the group was amazing and we have summarized all of our chemistry and knowledge in the final video.

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I definitely agree with Jason’s point of view of how people in Indonesia value goods and services based on their price. This is true even in other countries, except more obvious in Asia. I am not the type of person whom look for luxuries, limited editions, or scarce goods. I believe in needs and value them more than wants. Yes, I do sometimes look for luxurious leisures for relaxation but never in terms of materials.

In China, price is the first determination of a good’s value. If something is relatively expensive, its quality must be better. In Jason’s example, students driving a better car symbolizes their position and living standard, which may not be necessary true, but at least they try to demonstrate their wealth. For example, 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO is one of the most expensive cars in the world ($52 million), Personally, I dislike the look of this car, I would never buy it even if it’s price was the same as a second-hand car. And I would never figure out the reasons for whom that purchase such cars.

Our current “Culture of Wealth” may be explained with the rapid advancement of technologies. Nowadays, we shop without leaving the house and just within a few clicks with our fingers and we care about our appearance and reputation more than anything else. Companies have successfully changed our perception of goods through marketing. We now purchase a lot of  goods due to its so-called “value” rather for its use and our necessity. A competition between wealth is clearly demonstrated by the way we represents ourselves, which I believe is absolutely unnecessary and contagious.

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BlackBerry was once a big impact in mobile phones industry during 2010 and 2011. When it first launched the BlackBerry Bold model, its keypad and simplicity captured the public’s attention. This was the phone that was well-known around business professionals. Every business professional owns a BlackBerry phone because of its efficiency, i.e. emails, and its app such as BBM. The keypad is similar to computer keyboards creating an image of a smaller laptop, allowing users to type messages faster. The BBM app was a huge hit, users slowly became loyal to the BlackBerry community due to its simple yet efficient communication system. This was the main reason why most companies had all its employees to have a BlackBerry phone for a faster communication.

However, BlackBerry failed to hold its position in the industry as a leader. Because its competitor, Apple, soon created smart phones which changed the whole market behaviours around. BlackBerry then started losing all its consumers, even the loyal ones. The simplicity of iPhones and the wide range of apps allowed users to customize almost everything about their phones. Less and less people concern about the price or the functions of the phones, because great phones like BlackBerry still have a relatively lower price with the most fundamental functions.

To stay on the market, BlackBerry started producing smartphones. Recently it even partners with Porsch to create a luxurious and limited-edition phone. I do not believe BlackBerry will be successful. Because it’s target segment is too narrow, and its innovations are not enough to keep up with its competitors, and the customers wont buy a new phone just for its luxurious look while having the same functions.

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With the rapid growth of smart phones users, companies slowly gives up the traditional method to reach out to customers – advertisements, and instead use mobile apps to capture as much attention from customers as they possibly can. Social media takes the most responsibility for such changing trend. It also became a bridge for companies to access its customers. With such benefits, the competition between fashion clothing companies increased enormously. Customers have almost perfectly transparent access to companies’ data, including costs, prices, and more, they can easily jump from a company to another for lower prices. Thus price war is no longer an option for companies to attract and keep its customers.

People have unlimited wants and often value wants more than needs. Clothing is a typical example. Teenagers nowadays constantly changing their clothes and buy new ones to keep up with the fashion trend. In result companies like ASOS display thousands and thousands of clothing options in their mobile app.

Before you even access to the clothing, the app does a series of categorization for genders, styles, and types of clothes. Customers even need to join or sign in to allow ASOS to collect their shopping habits and preferences to decide on what kind of products to display or recommend.

These filtering features allow us to look at the clothes we wish to purchase instead of browsing through other things we do not want to buy. Along with other user-friendly features, ASOS successfully capture not only the local teenagers in UK but also the globe. Without such marketing method, ASOS would have not increase its sales and possibly fail to stand in the industry.

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In New York and Los Angeles, two cultural epicentres of the United States, billboards with cryptic messages regarding regulating the internet were erected anonymously. In the first week of October, several billboards in each city featured a plain grey background with unsettling quotes in solid black writing stating th

After the billboards had been posteings like, “Artists need to play by the rules” and “Your data should belong to the NSA”. The billboards were both shocking and confusing, because they relayed a sentiment that has very recently become a controversial topic for discussion in the U.S.for a week, in the middle of the night when no one would notice, they were changed to reflect the exact opposite of what they said before. For example, the billboard that said, “Your data should belong to the NSA” was changed so that it read “Your data should belong to YOU”. Such altercation to the billboards is a simplification of the trend that the internet has adopted over its own lifespan.

While the rate of improvement in technology has been rapidly increasing in the past decades, the consumer of the internet has been looking for ways to hold onto their savings due to the instability of the economy. Bit Torrent’s first set of billboards reflect the intuition employed when the internet first launched, but the second set mirrors the convenient ways for us consumers to transfer files online with ease. The controversy created by this marketing strategy is understandable, but ultimately the company is successful in this campaign because it strikes to the daily goals of the average day consumers: To save money where ever possible without giving up the very things that keeps us sane.

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This is a rather different interpretation of marketing. It came across my mind after reading a news article online on parents forces their children to beg on streets. When I lived in Taiwan and Shanghai, I often see children begging on the streets or with their parents. People whom pass by usually throw a pity glance or short comments about the unfortunate life of the child. Another common event I have encountered was that children would ask me for money, then run away to the far corner where their parents awaits them.

Marketing is the method in which a party uses to reach out, communicate, build a relationship with another party or group to achieve its objectives. The most common marketing we’ve seen is advertisement, whether through commercials, logos, or even word-of-mouth. In this case, some beggars that I have encountered market themselves to be emotionally attached to the public. As human beings, we generally protect those who are fragile or in need such as young and elders. Having their children to beg on the streets, the parents use sympathy and pity we feel towards kids to catch our attention. Such method is unethical because kids should be protected and raised in a healthy environment, instead, their lives are used by their parents to achieve profitable goals. Parents have the responsibility to take care of their children since they are unable to do so themselves, but forcing them to beg promotes a unhealthy family relationship.