Chang Wen's Blog

      Today, let’s have a look at the markets in ancient time. The ancient markets were production-oriented, all transactions were made by face-to-face transactions without logical regulations. Compared to these, we can see what a huge change marketing made that facilitating our daily purchasing. Thanks to COMM 296, I became a beginner marketer, Who might have chance to make differences in the future.

     Here is a famous ancient Chinese painting which describes the market condition 1000 years ago. In that time, the markets were hold every month. Those days were like festivals for everyone, that was why  this picture likes so prosperous.

       This picture shows the  market in ancient Egypt. In that time, all kinds of products and services were provided in the markets. Ancient market was not only a place for products transactions. It was like a meeting place  for people from various walks of life and thus became a way of information exchangeing.

       This one was a tradational animal market, all the goats were taken to the market. I cannot imagine how many efferts and time were wasted on transporting so many goats. Look at the convenient shopping we have now, marketing really changes a lot.

       This semester, my group is choosing Starbucks as the target company for marketing analyzing. In the process of finishing homework, I did a lot of researches on Starbucks and generated some ideas on this company. Since there were some limitations of our homework topics, some of my ideas couldn’t be used in the assignment.  However, i really don’t want to waste them. So, at the end of this semester, I think it is time to summary all the ideas I got and it is about why university students like Starbucks.

        First of all, Starbucks has a very strong and well-known symbol, the two-tailed siren with a balance of green and black, which creates a unique position for the brand that distinguishes Starbucks from its competition.  Moreover, the influences of a strong symbol are especially significant to the university students around 18 to 22 years old.   From our previous knowledge about some psychological factors of this generation, we know that they pay lots of attentions on their self-image and celebrate diversity.  What Starbucks did was endowing its products with an idea that Starbucks’ coffee is different from others by providing a unique symbol. Since this idea satisfies students’ willing of becoming different, they tend to be loyal consumers of Starbucks rather than those coffee stores with insignificant features.

       Secondly, to facility students live while they having coffee, Starbucks is expanding stores in university campus. Nowadays, coffee store is no longer a simple place of having a cup coffee. People start to regard it as a comfortable space of meeting family or friends while enjoying their coffee. To be more specific, our targeting consumers seem to have more concerns about the coffee stores’ space. University students are always seeking a discussion place, but it cannot be the silence required library apparently. Consequently, coffee shops have become the perfect place for students to discuss about their homework and talk with their friends by providing free Wi-Fi and enough spaces. It invisibly increases the demand of coffee in the university and attracts more and more coffee producers to open their stores in the campus. At this point, Starbucks need to build its location advantages in order to stand out from the competition inside campus.  And that is probably why Starbucks is keeping expanding its stores. It makes sure that students can find at least one store nearby and gets enough study space for them to increase the number of consumers while preventing of losing its loyal student consumers from going to their competitors’.

        Lastly, to satisfy easily bored targeting group, Starbucks keeps a close eye on time trend and continue to innovate. Starbucks has done a great job in its coffee beans and related products selling in stores. Apparently, this big success can attribute to its initiator position at this market. Recent years, Starbucks is committing itself to inventing new products and creating new market. New products like the VIA instant coffee and holiday restrict coffee beverages all have great demand among students.  New products can always satisfying students’ curiosities to hunt up new sensations and make them never get bored of Starbucks. 

       This week, I learned some promotion startegies in our marketing class and I found it was quit important for markerters to creat a profound image to their consumers. To be more specific, an image that can generate a   unconscious reflction in consumers head and thus differenciate its peoducts with competitors’. For me, advertising is all about selling creative ideas, here are some ads which ,I think, are brilliant.

And the follwing images are some outdoor ads that I foung very unforgetable:

      When it comes to comic, a lot of people may regard it as children’s stuff and don not take it seriously. But along with the booming of the animes and 3D movies, we cannot deny that comic has generated a solid market not only just for kids, it entertains people for all age. Talking about the comic industry, Japan seems to be a great example for analyzing. In my view, the Japanese comic industry can be divided to three main parts as follws:

1. Manga

         Manga is a Japanese word means comic book.In Japan, manga constituted an annual 406 billion yen (approximately $3.6 billion USD) publication-industry by 2007. Manga is closely related to Japanese people’s daily life and people in all ages read manga. There are various kinds of manga such as action-adventure, romance, sports and games, historical drama, comedy, science fiction and fantasy, mystery, horror, sexuality, and business/commerce.  Manga is always serializing in magazine and also publicizing as book-sized volume. Since the 1950s, manga have steadily become a major part of the Japanese publishing industry. The most popular manga magazine in Japan is called Shonan Jump.   It contains some most famous mangas that have been serialized for years. Recently, Shonan Jump has expanded worldwide, where distribution companies license and reprint manga into their native languages. Here is a picture of the English version of Shonan Jump.

       2.Anime

           Talking about anime, with the advancing in technology, it has becomes an visual arts that generates big revenues in movie industry. However, in Japan, the anime is not simply means “anime movie”. Anime is as popular as drama that appears on TV all the time. All the popular manga series all have their TV anime version or the special movie version. Speaking of Japanese anime movie, the Oscar Best Anime winner Hayao Miyazaki is really worth-mention. He is the most well-known anime master in Japen and all his movies are regarded as national treatures of Japan.

     3. Comic-Related Products

            In Japan, the selling of comic-related products is also a huge number. Stuff like toys, stationeries and costums are pretty popular among comic fans. Sometimes, the limited edision products can generate great reserve values in the future.

           Besides that, cosplaying the comic characters by dressing and acting like them has became a job in Japan. People regards cosplay as a visual arts and it is very popular among young people.

     The video above is the offical trailer of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and it was releasing on this Friday. On Saturday, I went to the theatre with friends, and I was really shocked by the long line outside. A lot of people in line even dressed in Gryffindor’s red and yellow gowns. All these stuff have been a common phenomenon every year when Harry Potter series is releasing. Harry potter has its worldwide fans from various ages, from little kids to middle aged working people.  Harry Potter is no longer a simple fiction, it has became a culture, a legend.

      I started reading  Harry Potter books since I was 10, harry potter brought me to an imagine magic world. After that, expecting every now Harry Potter book or movie has been a habbit for me. I can still remember how exciting I was when I open the first page of Harry Potter, and that feeling is never gone along with I am growing up. I believe fans of Harry potter all have their own memories like me, using a marketing definishion, which makes us becoming the loyal consumers of  Harry Potter products. Thus, Harry Potter provides a big market with a huge number of potential consumers. A lot of marketer realized this big chance and various kinds of related products  were appeared.

     Here is a picture of the Harry potter Theme Park in Hollywood. Harry Potter is  boosting many kinds of industries from movie to tourism. A successful fiction series has created billions of treasures and increasing opportunities to the whole world now.  As a marketing student, I think there are two key factors behind this legend. Undoubtful, J K Rowing  made  awsome books which bring great value to its readers. Besides that,  all the related products like movies and clothing also created more value to Harry Potter and brought the value to more consumers.

     The picture above is the annually Starbucks chrismas red cap of  2010. And the cup theme of this year is “Share A Cup, Share A Story”. It has been a tradition we regard the red cup as the sigh of the upcoming Chrismas. Obviously, Starbucks did a great job on their packaging design, which increases Starbucks holiday selling greatly. As influence of the red cup example,  have you ever thought about how the product packaging influences your daily buying decision? Some times, the interesting packagings influences me a lot for impulse purchasing. For me, the creative packagings are selling ideas to ideas and further differentiated  products.

    Are you experiencing the mysterious disappear of your lunch sandwiches? God knows which glutton of your office steals it form the fridge. Look at this package!!! It makes the sandwich mildew, how can a normal person steal a sandwich with green spots on it. A simple design on the bag makes things so different. It even adds a new function, anti-theft, to a small bag. Such an amazing and funny idea that can also make this sandwich bag maker stands out from the competition and add more value to the bags.

        Ha~ What are these，some fruits in the weird shapes? Absolutely not, it is a juice box designed by a Japanese company. When I looked at these boxes from the first sight, it really gave me an idea that the juice inside must be extremely fresh and healthy as the newly picked fruits.  Are you thinking the same as me now and having a strong desire of drinking a box of them? Unlike most of juice makers, who prints lots of words on the boxes to demonstrate how fresh their juices are. This juice maker instils a much stronger fresh-juice idea to its creative packaging, which gives its consumers a visual impact when they are buying juice from numerous choices in the shelf.

       Zara is a pretty successful brand among the whole world. It is the biggest brand in Spain and expanding to more than 50 countries as I know.  It builds big stores at almost every busy street and appeals numerous people every day. For me, Zara is one of my favourite brands because it can always catch the fashion trends quickly, most importantly, the price is reasonable!!!

       A cloth of Zara in the latest fashion style can be 10-15 times cheaper compared cloth of some top luxury brands like Louis Vuitton and Hermes. The fashion trend changes so fast and unpredictable these years, those fashionmongers are so afraid that their new dress will be out of fashion some day. It is less risky for them to purchase a $100 Zara dress in the latest fashion style and pay 1000 bucks on a classical style designer dress which will never out of fashion. So, Zara has positioned itself successfully as the “throw away fashion” and doing a great job in this market. In the other hand, Zara Not only for those fashionmongers, it gives those girls with small budgets for dress a dream, that they can also looks as fashion as the models in Milan.

      When it comes to the marketing strategies of Zara, I find an interesting one that can attributes to Zara’s success. Unlike those massive producing competitors, Zara only produce a small amount of clothes in a certain style and pay more attention on the variety of styles. As a consequence, consumers with different fashion tastes can easily find a cloth they like in Zara and have the idea that if they do not purchase that cloth this time it will be sold out on the next time. This strategy invisibly strengthens consumers’ willing of purchase and avoids Zara’s problems like overstock commodities.

      I think Zara is a great resoures for marketing students like me for market analyzing. Hope I can do a better job next time when I get more marketing knowledge in the future studing.

When the word “computer’ pops in my mind, I automatically divide  this term as two categories, PC and Mac. However, is there really a functional difference between these two? The answer will be no for most of people. But what makes Mac a “different” product out of its original category, I believe it is because Mac did a great job in branding itself with an strong idea of “Think Different”.

This one is the  “Think different” campaign of Macbook. And it is considering as a very successful and impacting ad, since it establish a good metaphor for the consumer and reach the purpose of being unique. In this ad, the designer used a very classical Einstein’s thinking face in a black and white graph, and there is a slogan “think different” with a colorful bitten apple logo in the right top. The interesting thing is there are no features about the Macbook, the reason is it gives the consumers a metaphor about Einstein and the Mac. As we know, Einstein is one of the most outstanding scientists and inventor in the last century. He is a symbol of creation and innovation. In the Mac’s think different series, they defined Einstein as “crazy one” who can see things different and not restrict by the rules. These crazy people “change things, push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do” (Cruikshank 123). By combining all these information, this ad successfully form a metaphor that Mac is the Einstein in computers. The slogan “think different” gives the Mac an identity that by using this computer, you are free to think different from others and change the world as Einstein did. Consequently, this campaign makes the Mac products stand out from their competitors and embody the meanings of Apple brand. It makes the Apple become unique and firmly established a collective understanding among consumers.

Reference:

Cruikshank Jeffery L. “Keep Your Cool”  The Apple Way. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006.

     Sushi is maybe the most famous and widely accepted asian cuisine among North Amrica. InVancouver, sushi is as poppular as the traditional western fast food such as humbergers. Just like the picture above, the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games mascots QUATCHI and MIGA are eating sushi together, obviously,  suhsi is becoming one indispensible delicacy in people’s life. And it is arose the interests of me to do some search about this big sushi market in Vancouver.

    This graph was found in Google Map about the sushi restaurants in Vancouver. As I can see from the graph, there is neraly one sishi restaurant in almost every 4 blocks.And the sushi restaurants become clusting among Downtown. So, competitions among those restaurants are considerably high, which, on the other hand, ensure the quality of the sushi in the whole market.

     This is a picture of  varieties of sushi in a convenient store. Sushi is a kind of clod food, so it is perfectable to be stored and selling in the supremarkets and convenient stores for a short time. It makes sure that even a time shorted people can grab a box of sushi for lunch in convenient store downstaires instead of spending time in a restaurant. The unique cold food quality gives suhsi a wide range of consumers.

    Here is a photo of the fresh salmon supplies in the costal market Vancouver. As we know, Vancouver has a good resources of the highly quality salmon, and raw salmon is the basic ingredient for making sushi and sashima. The fresh and juicy salmon meat gives the sushi more fancy taste and another reason to be a fan of sushi.

     This week, I did some research about the Starbucks Corp. by finishing group assignment. There was an interesting picture I found during researching, unfortunately, this stuff was not associate with our situational analysis homework. So today, I want to share this picture in my blog and put some comments on this interesting phenomenon.

     Starbucks’s worldwide expanding is one of its significant marketing strategies. As consequence, Starbucks have built a successful brand name towards its consumers and the visibility of its brand logo is pretty high due to its clustering marketing strategy. Obviously, logo is the recognized symbol of a brand and representing the meanings of the brand through a certain formal simplicity. Logo makes the first impression for the brand, every brand in the world want to show their uniqueness through the logo. Starbucks’ logo stands for its brand culture which provides the high quality coffee and efficient service. That is why people are willing to pay a higher price on a cup of Starbucks rather than a cheaper but less famous one in other coffee shop.

     Till here, it is easier to explain the copycat phenomenon towards Starbucks. It is because those copycat companies want to misleading consumers on their first impression. Consumers may enter that store unconsciously and pay for a cup of coffee or shift their good feelings about Starbucks to those copycats. From my view, that makes copycat company stands out from their same size competitors just from the first impression of consumers.