Today, I want to share some of my recent thoughts and experience about  marketing. Accidently, I attended an orientation in the SUB, which is about a summer internship program of Southwestern Company. Basically, it’s an opportunity for university students to learn some selling experience and make some money in the summer by working as a sale person. I wasn’t quite sure about the program and came up with a lot uncertainties after the first orientation. But as I wasn’t so willing to take the summer courses at that time and one of my friends really recommended me to take a look on that. I applied and took the interview. Luckily, I got picked. Through the trainings from my manager and also researches I did, I found the job I’m going to take isn’t only about selling a product. It’s actually worth more than that. I remembered that there’s one alumni article I read  on the SWredline webwage that suddenly changed my view on sell and marketing. He mentioned that selling is not only selling a product, but rather it’s about selling yourself. Customer knows whether he/she gonna purchase the product by judging you. If they like you, they’ ll probably buy your product, vice versa. I really the alumni’s point and he just gave me a good lesson on marketing.

The video above is an overview about the latest iPhone application, which is called the Talkbox Voice Messenger and it is so interesting that I highly recommend to all of you.

The TalkBox Voice Messenger is a new, free ISO application, which allow iPhone users to send “voice IMS” to friends. Basically, it’s like live messenger, but instead of using keyboard to type into words, users can now talk directly to their iPhone, and the voice will be sent to you friends right away.

Some interesting things that I really like about the app, first of all, the group conversation. Like MSN which you can add multiple friends to the same conversation, the Talkbox can also do that. The feeling between reading a message and listening to voice messenger is so different as people may misunderstand from the text but listening to actual voice won’t lead to misunderstand issue at all.

Besides, it offers the “location sharing” function. just press the small icon on the screen and your friend can know exactly where you are by looking at the google map.

Moreover, user can sync their Talkbox friend list with their facebook/Twitter friend list, and all the facebook/Twitter friend who has joined the Talkbox will be automatically available for chatting.

However, as the app has just been developed, there’s something it should work on to improve. For example, the limit time of each voice message is pretty short and somethings when users go back to listen to the previous records, the voice might be breezing and hard to understand.

Overall, the app is a creative design and it’s free right now. I believe that in the near future, it would be available on iPod as well. And also the fabulous design would attract more customers for Apple, who’s always been leaders for creativity.  Really hope to see more interesting apps turning up.

It seems like most of the mobile phone users in Vancouver choose Rogers, Bell or even Telus when signing up mobile plan contracts. In fact, my current mobile plan is a 17.50 per month(before tax) plan which I signed up two a half years ago. Since it’s approaching the end of the contract, I’ve started to look up those new plans and besides, as I just lost my cell phone, I really want to get a new smart. By comparing those different plans from the mobile companies, the plan Wind offers actually attracts me most.

Let’s take the Blackberry Bold 9700 as an example, for those mobile users who pays monthly payments without signing a contract. Wind has the lowest pay but with a lot more benefit. Here’s a table shows the comparison.As you can tell from the table, Wind is the leader in every category (Minutes, Data, Unlimited Talk, Text message, Monthly Payments)

Here’s a another example with the $40 plan. Currently, a Blackberry Torch 9800 cost $624.99 without any plans, but 99.99 with a 3-year contract.

From the table above, we can see that with Wind $40 plan, users have unlimited calls through all provincials  and text messages. Users don’t have to pay for the Call ID and they are free to make calls to America. Even though Wind doesn’t have discount for phones, but also users don’t have to sign the 3 year contract with companies. Say for international students, you will be back in hometown for the whole summer, you don’t have to pay for those months. And also not every users can actually do within the limit. Sometimes, there will be more phone calls, or text messages, with unlimited minutes and text, users will feel more comfortable with that.

Related to marketing terms, the plan Wind offers or we could define these as Wind’s marketing strategy is effective as there exist certain group of people are in favor of the n0 contract plan with plans better than the current ones. And if Wind chould solve the signal problem, I guess in the near future there will be more customers as people who would like to keep their current phones will definitely choose the better Winds plan.

Therefore, taking all the pros and cons together, personally, I think Wind is a pretty good choice for smartphone users and I will probably choose Wind when my plan expire.

Recently, I found an article talking about the Top 10 Marketing Tips All Time, the author listed ten key tips which he thinks is the most important. Based on that, I have some couple things to say and some personal experiences related to that as well.

First thing I want to comment on is “Know your audience”, I absolutely agree with that and it’s the fundamental to success marketing. From what we learned in the class, marketing is all about creating, delivering, capturing values. The more suppliers know about their target market, probably the better they will perform better than their competitors. Testing is a necessary step in helping company’s to know their customers. Firm could use web page, post card, email, or face to face surveys to gather useful information such as consumer preferences, acceptable price ranges, etc.

Besides, “Don’t sell on price” is also a good point. As it mentioned in the article that many markets fail as they focus too much on price. It’s true that revenue and profit means a lot to marketers but successful marketers know how to set their prices to generate the most profit. Rather, focusing on creating value makes the perception of price becomes insignificant. As for me, if the product offers me the value I need, I won’t mind spending a bit more money on that if there’s no other substitutes.

Finally, “Nothing can replace experience” is an eternal truth not only applies to marketing but also to every thing in life. Do not rely everything on others, a good CEO can work in every position in the firm and has all those skills. The actual working experience give people so much knowledge and ability to make them stronger.

Recently I read an article from my classmate’s blog about IKEA,

As an international student, I found it really interesting that IKEA is always my first choice when purchasing furniture or commodities. What Yuli said in her article really reminds me of the shopping experiences at IKEA such as the price of the IKEA products are really low, which I guess is one of the main reasons why there are so many customers or students would like to buy from them, and also the easy and comfortable in-store shopping experience as known as the “Do it Yourself”, which customers walk around, try those samples, write down the code of the products they like (for big size products), pick them up at the warehouse and finally pay the price.

Apart from that, what I also like about IKEA is that the great design and self assembly products. IKEA’s products look simple but it doesn’t look ugly at all. The instructions for the furniture are easy to understand and there is no problem get your furniture up and running and that’s probably why IKEA is so cheap. IKEA has a clear target market as they are not focusing on those wealthy people who purchases the stuff with the best quality. They have a relatively large target market and it’s pretty hard for competitors to capture as IKEA’s brand image is so strong nowadays.

Besides,  IKEA makes their furniture with wood from well preserved forests and also they also use low energy consuming light bulbs, which makes IKEA a eco-friendly company.

Finally, the cafe and food in IKEA is really special and with good tastes.

While reading my friend Yu Bozheng(Aaron)’s blog about Flight Ticket and Price Discrimination, I found it’s very interesting in learning about how the price dicrimination works in the airline industry and now understand the reason why people should book their air fare in advance.

Apart from that, I was trying to position myself from a operator’s view to think over how I should charge prices on different customers to maximize my profit. Basically, there are two main categories of customer.

The first type would be leisure travellers.  They are always ready to buy tickets well in advance and it’s really hard to charge these travellers heavilyon the price as they have multiple options on choosing air agents, or they could simply rescheduling their trip. For example, students like us definately are defined into this group as we know roughly when school terms end and when they start to book ticket ahead of time.Therefore, operators usually compensate this through strategies on pricing heavily on the second group—the business traveller.

Inflexible schedules, last minute planning, and less sensitiveness to price changes are some characteristics of the business travellers. Without many options and choices, business travellers ususally end up with relatively high pirces as they book their tickets only a few days in advance.

However, to avoid the remaining unfilled seats, operators would be looking for frequent business travellers and offer them the ticket at a reduced price, in which way both the operator and the traveller are happy. If the demand for business travellers is low, they then switch to students and less frequent flyers and that’s when you can see those advertisment on the operators website showing the least air fares.

Above is the official nba league ads, which is an absolute valueable stuff for those who love to watch nba games. With the league pass this season, users can watch every nba game, live or on demand, catch the action in HD quality, and watch the whole game smoothly without buffering.

However, today I want to talk about another part why it’s fabulus. Here is a video of using the nba league pass on Andriod system.

With more and more high-tech inventions coming to people’s life, the idea of creating the nba league pass mobile application is revolutionary. With the app, it shows you all the games that are available on the nba application. While watching the game, you can view stats by selecting the “view stats” button, you can quickly switch channel to another game. For all the game you’ve missed, you can also look at “replay” to catch up all the games played in the last two days. Besides,  you can set an alert to remind you the games coming up by view the schedule or you can simply set a reminder of you favourite teams incase you will miss it. Last but not least, you can view highlight, all the top dunks, plays of the day, yesterday and the day before.

Why I like the  nba league pass mobile app is that it enables me to watch live and high quality nba games no matter where I am. Besides, as there aren’t broadcast of every nba games on happen in Canada, sometimes there’s conflict with the NHL, therefore, the nba league pass becomes the only way to access to the game. Finally, the price of the nba league pass through the whole season is around $150.

The new released Apple product IPAD 2 is just fabulus from my point of view. There are several reasons why I consider it’s a product worth purchasing.

First of all, based on the success of the original IPAD, the recent version has a all new dual core A5 chip which added a lot more spead to things people do everyday like surfing the Internet, sending email, it also make graph performance nine times faster. It just amazing.

Besides, as you may notice from the video, the IPAD 2 offers ten difference color of cover to protect the display. The cover works perfectly fine on the device. It stays in sleep mode when the cover is on and wakes immediately when users take the off. Also, the cover can be folded to create a stand for typing or watching videos.

Moreover, popular iphone 4 apps and lots of new apps have been added into the device. For example, the facetime, as the IPAD display is much bigger than iphone, the facetime experience is so much clear and more expressive. I-Movie, another fancy apps I really like from the video, just offered users a easy and comfortable experience of editting movies with high quality. The most interesting app I found in the video is called the GangeBand, you can either new your own instruments or the touch instruments that were built in. It reacts prefectly to what you are doing. Users can easily make music even though you are not a musician.

Last but not least, the IPAD 2 costs $439(16GB), which is a fair price in my view comparing to the price when Iphone was released. Therefore, if you like it, just check it out at the apple store to take a real experience of it.

After the 3D Green Hornet Movie from last week, something special flow into my mind is that: Would it just be perfect if people could watch 3D movies at home? Has this technology already been invented? If so, what would be the cost? With these questions, I tried on google and youtube, and there I found the Fancy Roxio Creator 2011.

Like other innovated product, the Roxio Creator 2011 advertisment itself is not that special, but it comprehensively shows it’s powerful feature. With the strong software, users can easily add 3D to the video and creat hollywood style movies on dvd, plus creat 3D photos from regular camera. Apart from that, It also masters in dics copy, photos and music editing, memorable movies and slide shows creation. Besides, dozens of tutorials are included, which makes users easily to acquire the skills. All these features make the software a multifunctional Digital Media Suite.

In terms of marketing, first of all, I would say the Roxio Creator 2011 has a pretty large target market on both who prefer watching movies at home and watching movies at the movie theatre. From a movie-fan’s prospective view, the new technology just creat another good choice for me if I would like to watch movie at home. Besides, all the 3D movies shown at the theatre are fixed. I mean you can not make it 3D if it’s not. However, the new technology saw and captured movie fan’s wants and needs and made it possible for them to make their own 3D movie, which certainly is another value Roxio were trying to deliver to their customers. Moreover, it’s always smart to connect your business with Facebook and Youtube as they becoming the most influential and necessary part in life. So does Roxio as users can easily post pictures or videos, which makes consumers more feel like it’s also valuable. Finally, the upgrade system is also a good option as consumers can always upgrade their current Roxio version to the lastest one on their website, which is a good strategy to keep their current customer and make them more loyal to the brand.

I recently saw a commercial on youtube about the movie The Green Hornet.

The Movie has already made 33.5 M over the last weekend in U.S and 50M worldwide up to Jan. 18. I think this movie’s target market aims at the Asian market, especially China  and the teenager’s market as well. This because one of the main character Jay, Chou is the most popular celebrity in China. He’s famous for his singing and composing but in this movie, it would be Jay Chou’s debut in Hollywood. So lots of Asian audiences are curious about how Jay’s gonna performance in the movie and how well his English is. I’m also curious as well as to how Jay performs. Here’s the picture of Jay.

To talk about the movie itself, it’s categorized in an action and comedy movie about 120 minutes long. The story is about Britt Reid (Seth Rogen), the main character heir to his father’s company after his death and teams up with his father’s assistant Kato to become a masked crime fighting team, which is a pretty typical storyline of action movie. The movie was released on Jan. 14 this year, which is an excellent time because it’s the only action and comedy movie released during the period. Therefore, the Green Hornets obtains a lot of market shares as there’s no direct competitors of the same movie genre.

The movie really aroused my interest after watching the trailer. I’m planning to watch the movie this weekend as many friends of mine who had seen the movie last weekend said it’s actually a good movie worth watching over the weekend to make people feel relaxed after the tiring week. Moreover, the movie is 3D, even though it’s not that fresh to people, but I guess watching a ‘real’ bullet approaching you might be a different experience to you. So, if you’re interested in the movie as well, take a look at it and you can share any of your comments here in my blog. ^_^