In Jiaqing Yao’s blog post “Taobao–the great successful of Ebay in China“, he introduces the Chinese version of EBAY to us. Being a Chinese myself and a user of both the two online shopping website, i want to discuss how Taobao approaches its customer by setting a smart target market and how Cultural environment contributes to its success.
Founded in 2003, Taobao was operated after the opening of Ebay China. Although Ebay took the advantage of early opening, it was took over by Taobao and had to virtually exit the Chinese market. I still remember hearing the name first time when I was in elementary school. Taobao, with a meaning of digging and exploring the treasure in English, smartly targets its customers. As a developing country, the working age population of China didn’t have much experience with high tech and services related to that. Both of my parents can only type in short sentences, surf on the internet for news. Unlike Ebay which targeted the working population, Taobao targeted the younger generation born in 80’s or 90’s. Young adults and teens were more willing to take adventure and adopt any new technologies. Through interesting blog posts and the cooperation with other social networking websites, Taobao won the heart of the younger generation. It created a young, activate brand image among young adults in China.
Taobao is successful at using cultural environment as an advantage. When Ebay is introduced to China, the platform, layout of website had to follow the worldwide form in order to maintain its image and expectation from customer. Taobao, on the other hand, provided a cleaner and easier layout of the search engine with categories such as group buy deals which was favoured by Chinese people. The brand also uses orange as its main theme colour, which most Chinese shopping malls would use.
Taobao also successfully used “words of mouth” strategy, which was a very powerful tool in China. Unlike countries as Canada which information from all sources especially from the internet is familiar to customers, the Chinese customers are far more unfamiliar and conservative . As I have mentioned that it retained a very positive and attractive brand image in the younger generation, it quickly accumulated a large number of fans. the young and active fans contributed so much in spreading out the brand image, and many people were introduced to Taobao from that. I started using it in 2006 after hearing the wonderfulness of Tabao from my best friend.
Another winning strategy Taobao adopts is the focus d in domestically produced goods and services. Since the price level of domestically produced products were a lot lower, the platform of international offers that Ebay provided were far less attractive. The patriotism towards Government and Country that Chinese people shared is another reason why Taobao was so popular comparing to Ebay. The philology of trusting “Zijiren” — inner and closer people shortens the distance between the population and Taobao. Taobao produces ads and commercials that are more friendly with emphasis on Chinese people’s daily life. I guess after all, Chinese people knows themselves better than others do. Joking.
This is a response to Michael Aynsley’s post “Say goodnight to the big guy: HMV to close in Vancouver“.
I live in West Vancouver, so I basically have to go across downtown every single day. Having HMV in the corner of Burrard and Robson St doesn’t necessarily mean that I shop there all the time, and yet it becomes a part of my daily routine to see the gigantic massive pink logo–HMV. However, I had said my farewell to the big guy—HMV announces its closure in November last year. This news brought up people’s attention and discussion towards the fallen records industry, and citizens hoped that HMV Canada would change their decision. Sadly the miracle didn’t become true – HMV closed down in January 2012. It had broken thousands of record supporters’ heart.
I agree to Anysley’s point that the cause of this closure is due to the rapid growth of technology. Back in the 70’s or 80’s, even 90’s, music plays an important role in people’s life. Some would spend over 50% of their income to buy records. People had less ways of leisure and music was weighed so much that it became an attitude, even a belief in life. As the technology integrates, the passion towards music shrank quickly. Consumers are introduced to multi-dimension and multi-channel ways of entertainment. The convenient and fast web downloads made the record industry almost unable to sustain, not to mention the various illegal free sharing of music and movies. This was also a crush to the music industry. Instead of publishing an album, more singers choose to produce “single” – an individual song that will not be published in the form of records. Although records have many advantages compare to digital music such as its sound and quality, but the invention of mp3 players and ipods provides consumer with more variety of music with less money spend and space consumed.
It hasn’t been easy for the record industry. As Anysley mentioned in his article, “the rise of digital options has taken a significant toll on the overall sales of CDs, with 30 per cent of music consumers in Canada now choosing to shop online.” As the generation changes, newer generations – Generation X and the Millennials are more in favor of newer technology, therefore worsen the situation for record industry. Blockbuster was down already and now the spotlight seems moving towards HMV. HMV has to make some urgent and helpful decisions to save the fallen industry and declining company. Marketing department has to burden many of the responsibilities. By adjusting its four Ps and marketing strategy, it has to win back consumers’ heart and create new features and attractions. Otherwise, we can already foreseen the future of the industry – not looking good. As I have mentioned in the title– HMV is down, who’s gonna be the next?
When I was looking through marketing classmates’ blog posts trying to find inspirations, Louisa Yeung’s “ Marketing Post #1: Are you embarrassed of your past? “ jumped right into my eyes. The new feature that Facebook carried out – Timeline has been one of the popular topics among my friends. Moreover, Facebook had already announced that Timeline would become a non-optional feature for all users. It really had become some big, even to less frequent Facebook users as me.
Back to the time when Louisa published her comment, Timeline was still a new feature that Facebook introduced to its users for try out. Some brave ones made their moves while the majority held its opinion. But after Facebook’s announcement on Jan. 24th, Timeline officially became non-optional to all Facebook users. After the first notification from Facebook group, you will have a 7-day preview period to set up your Timeline and familiarize yourself with it. After 7 days, there goes your brand new Facebook homepage.
Although this unstoppable feature had already embarrassed so many people, most users choose to spend hours resetting their accounts or starting new accounts instead of giving up on Facebook, as Louisa Yeung commented in her blog. I totally agreed with her opinion about this phenomenon. Facebook somehow plays the role of a monopoly in social networking – instead of running a more customer-managed relationship as most firms do nowadays, Facebook has relatively powerful control in its company as well as the industry. Even its major competitor “Twitter” couldn’t take place of Facebook – although the two share similarities, the distinct feature that Facebook offers couldn’t be replaced by Twitter. The massive market shares that Facebook owned keeps its competitor away.
Facebook initially segmented and targeted its market at young college students in the States, but since it demonstrated strong comparative advantages in its product – the convenience of social networking and the advance of technology, the company quickly grabbed customers even outside of its original target market. After years of adapting and modifying its features based on customer’s needs and feedbacks, Facebook held its place in the market. No need to mention the glorious story of Facebook, what really caught my interest was Facebook’s IPO. The company had filed its registration to go public on Febuary 1st with a valuation of $100 billion. The social giant seeked to raise $5 billion in initial funding, which was one of the largest IPOs in technology history. With its 845 million monthly active users and half being daily users, Facebook’s IPO came in late after its founding 8 years ago. No matter the numerous arguments about its valuation of $100 billion would settled down or not, the huge market potential behind Facebook couldn’t be avoided by marketers and investors. With its brand new features and IPO, Facebook stands in the middle of a transformation. It has been gone along the way, the only question left is — how far can it go?
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/02/facebook-ipo-2/all/1
As I was looking for inspirations for my marketing blog assignment on CBC news website, I came across the news about Tim Horton’s new cup sizes. Instead of the old cup sizes, Tim Horton’s decided to rename its cups on size down — which means a “Small” will now be an “Extra Small” and a “Large” will now be a “Medium”. All of these changes are made to bring out the new 24 oz Extra Large.
Despite the huge inconvenience of this change that would be brought to habitual customers such as myself, I am curious about the fact that how many people would actually try the 24 oz cup – with a size more than two bottles of beer! Do we really need that much caffeine all at once?
The survey held by CBC News towards this “tremendous” cup size has shown people’s attitudes towards the change – 53.75% of the participants claimed that they would not purchase the new Extra Large cup.
As some people questioned Tim Horton’s change, the new cup sizes are named the same as Tim Horton’s in the States with the exception of the 8 oz cup which had never existed. I guess Tim Horton’s gets confused itself by serving double standards to US and Canadian customers, only this time that the Canadian customers will make the sacrifice to think before they order. As Tim Horton’s entering the US market, its marketing strategy is modified towards the US custom — “super sized” coffee instead of Coke from MacDonald’s.
Although the changes is going to be made starting from next week, I doubt that how many Canadians would actually purchase the 24 oz cup — it sounds a little too much, isn’t it? Whether like it or not, just remember to think before you order at Tim Horton’s. I could already seen people getting confused when they get their drinks.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2012/01/will-you-drink-tim-hortons-24-ounce-cup-of-coffee.html
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