Intro to Marketing

The Marketing Plan assignments were closely related the topics we covered in class and through our readings, and provided a valuable opportunity to learn how to apply these concepts to a company – for our team, Club Penguin – to both assess and improve it. The assignments helped emphasize that there is much more to marketing than advertising, and that marketing is tightly interlinked with many diverse aspects of a business and crucial to its success. In addition, working in a team to complete the assignments meant that I gained insights and different perspectives from my team members that I would have otherwise lacked, and the team structure allowed us to develop our ability to take a broad range of ideas from multiple people and integrate, develop, and communicate the ideas as part of a cohesive analysis and plan.

If I were to do similar assignments again, I would seek to ensure that our research was not only thorough, but thoroughly analyzed so that we could clearly assess the company, its situation, and its strategy. Facts are not meaningful until they are synthesized into a comprehensive analysis which can then provide a direction for the organization, and interpretation of facts needs to be stated explicitly rather than implied so as to ensure that the audience can follow one’s argument.

The fourth assignment was also a useful exercise that showed how differently various groups approached the same assignment. In particular, I reviewed two videos on the same company, which enabled me to compare and contrast the ideas and styles of the two teams and think about what worked better in each video.

In all, the Marketing Plan assignments were an opportunity to not only learn about our chosen company, Club Penguin, but develop skills and acquire insights about marketing, teamwork, and more, all of which will be relevant in a wide range of contexts going forward.

Kiva is a non-profit that uses an online platform to facilitate microfinance around the world by connecting lenders with borrowers who would otherwise not have access to loans. Although it’s markedly different from a conventional business, it relies heavily on marketing to maximize the change it creates because it needs to constantly attract lenders.

The Kiva homepage, shown above, demonstrates a variety of marketing techniques. The inclusion of a photo and description for each borrower serves partially as an emotional appeal to lenders, letting them empathize with borrowers. Also featured is Kiva’s blog, where regular posts keep readers engaged by providing updates on recent developments within Kiva and other topics such as microfinance and sustainability. In addition, Kiva fosters trust in its service, and therefore strengthens its brand, by showcasing its award from Charity Navigator as well as impressive statistics such as the number of lenders who made a loan in the past week, which prove that Kiva is well-established.

Although Kiva doesn’t sell a product or service in a conventional sense, it still effectively engages in sales promotion. It offers a free trial loan where someone can choose a borrower to “lend” to, and a partnering organization lends on the individual’s behalf. This works well with Kiva’s direct marketing through direct emails to lenders. After a lender, even one using this free trial, chooses to make a loan to a borrower, Kiva sends the lender regular emails that inform them when part of their loan is repaid, show the repayment status of the loan, and encourage the lender to make more loans.

To date, $418 million has been lent through Kiva, and effective marketing tactics such as these are doubtless an indispensable part of how Kiva has been able to make change of such great magnitude.

Transparency is often touted as desirable in government and corporations, but Lauren’s recent blog post about Lululemon’s massive recall of sheer pants highlights how transparency can go wrong. As Lauren discussed, one of the major issues the recall poses is that Lululemon now has a large inventory of pants they can’t sell, and conventional ways that they could dispose of the apparel could deal a significant blow to its carefully cultivated brand image. In addition, the recall has cast doubts on Lululemon’s quality among many parties: investors’ reactions were evident in the precipitous drop in Lululemon’s stock price, analysts have increasingly voiced their concerns about quality, and even devoted fans have begun to lose faith in their favorite brand, some going so far as to call for the firing of CEO Christine Day. An essential part of the promise made by the Lululemon brand is the premium quality of its products, and a disaster such as this is a step towards breaking that promise.

Clearly this calls for some very skilled PR crisis management, and Lululemon is also offering returns on pants purchased after March 1. But how else could Lululemon’s marketing department reassure the public that it still offers products of, according to Day, “the very highest quality”? Lululemon may need to remind consumers of Lululemon’s differentiation by soon offering line extensions with especially innovative products which emphasize the company’s focus on product excellence. Also, salespeople – “educators” – may benefit from additional guidance on how to reinforce the idea of quality when speaking to “guests” and how to assuage their concerns. Both at point-of-purchase and out-of-store, Lululemon may want to provide additional information on how its apparel is made and the lengths it goes to to ascertain the quality of each item. So far, Lululemon has reacted commendably quickly to the crisis, and by continuing to respond well, it can uphold the powerful brand that has been integral to its success.

Although the Brand Channel post I discussed in my earlier post was about The Bay’s response to Target’s entrance into Canada, I wanted to follow up with a further look at how Target’s marketing strategy may be significantly different from The Bay’s. Target, with its lower prices and more household-oriented product mix including groceries and other food items, will attract more families as well as generally a younger demographic compared to The Bay. Target’s chief merchandising officer described Target’s “target” market as “Young, active, well-educated and with children at home,” while The Bay seems to target more affluent and older individuals, as suggested by its positioning as having a “reputation for service, quality, and more than ever, for style.” Furthermore, The Bay has an advantage in its current placement; its long history means that it has secured prime properties, such as its massive store in the heart of downtown Vancouver. For Target to steal a large amount of The Bay’s higher-end clientele, it would have to find properties comparable in both size and location.

So if not The Bay, who should feel most threatened by Target’s move into Canada? Barclays has identified Sears Canada, Old Navy, Loblaw’s Joe Fresh brand and Canadian Tire as the stores most endangered by Target. Sears in particular offers similar product types as Target, are located near the Target stores’ Canadian locations, and lacks the other advantages that Target has, including its unique designer lines, partnership with Starbucks, and innovative promotional tactics. Target seems ready to take advantage of the weakness of some of its competitors and gain significant market share in Canada as it continues to open stores this year.

Brand Channel recently discussed The Bay’s rebranding in response to Target’s recent foray into Canada. The Bay will now be named Hudson’s Bay, with a new logo to accompany the new name:

Its new name and logo, through elements such as the coat-of-arms and date of incorporation, seems to more explicitly reference The Bay’s incredibly long history and strong Canadian heritage, both of which set it apart from Target. To me, the old logo felt aged, while the new logo looks classic and communicates a slightly more upscale brand that Target’s simple, brightly-coloured logo. This seems in keeping with The Bay’s current positioning in relation to Target, as it tends to generally stock higher-priced clothing and cosmetic brands than Target does. For example, Bay’s Topshop/Topman line overlaps with the price ranges of some of Target’s designer collaborations, but the Topshop line is a lower-priced line for The Bay while Target’s designer collaborations are premium in relation to Target’s other apparel.

Target aims to be “incredibly competitive with the lowest-priced leaders in Canada.” Given this difference in pricing strategy compared to The Bay, I wonder whether The Bay will decide to do as the Brand Channel blog post conjectures by “competing on virtually everything—possibly even price.” Currently, I see The Bay as having a profit orientation, so lowering prices to compete with Target seems like a fairly radical shift to more of a competitor orientation and has implications for The Bay’s brand and positioning as a whole. I’m curious to see how The Bay’s rebranding initiative plays out and whether it will successfully hold its ground against Target in the coming years.

A few weeks ago, my old laptop was a victim of a fatal accident. Once I had determined that it was dead forever, I knew I needed to quickly purchase a new one, and recognizing this need was the first step of my decision process as a consumer.

Next, I embarked on a diligent search for information, primarily through Internet research. I committed myself to spending a significant time researching the purchase due to several factors: for one, there was a high performance risk that the laptop would not be as fast as I wanted it to be, as well as a high financial risk, since a laptop is a significant purchase and could also result in further expenses if it needed repairs in the future.

While evaluating the alternatives, psychological factors relating to my needs and lifestyle played a large part. As a student, I primarily needed my laptop for school and other work, and I also wanted something easy to carry around. Thus, performance and weight were two major criteria, while I skipped over parts of reviews I read that talked about graphics cards or other aspects that I didn’t feel were relevant to me. In regards to choosing a brand, I was influenced by my somewhat negative experience with my previous Dell. And, although 99% of Sauder seems to own a Mac, this direct reference group did not have a large impact on me since I still prefer PCs in terms of value and practicality (I guess that makes me part of the 1%…but maybe not in a good way). Thus, both Dell and Apple were part of my retrieval set but not my evoked set. Meanwhile, the social factor of family influence was also significant, as my preference for brands was shaped partially by my dad, who likes Toshiba. Relative to other buying decisions, elements of the marketing mix didn’t affect me much, as many of my options were in the same price range, I knew I was going to purchase online, and I relied on my own research much more than any ads I had seen. In the end, I did decide on a Toshiba, and although I’ve only had it for a few days, I’m a reasonably satisfied customer as it’s met most of my expectations. Although my new laptop makes for good blogging material, hopefully it lasts longer than my previous laptop so that I don’t have to go through this extensive decision process again anytime soon.

Of the four Ps of the marketing mix, I see promotion as an area as having a great potential for raising complex ethical issues. Although a business certainly needs to ensure that customers are aware of, and ideally have an affinity for, a product, there are situations in which a business is promoting a product which is detrimental to at least some aspects of the wellbeing of the consumer. A simple example of this is the many junk food commercials which are often aired on television, like this Pizza Hut advertisement:

An ad such as this may not be merely increasing Pizza Hut’s market share – e.g. enlarging Pizza Hut’s slice of the (pizza consumption) pie at the expense of Domino’s slice – but rather may be increasing the size of the pie as a whole, i.e. causing television viewers to increase their total consumption of pizza. Thus, Pizza Hut’s promotion encourages unhealthy activities, and the widespread promotion of unhealthy foods such as these could account for the obesity epidemic in many parts of the developed world. This raises the question of whether it is ethical for junk food advertisers to sometimes be so aggressive with their message – are they adversely affecting the wellbeing of society as a whole? However, the utility gained from pizza is arguably sufficient to overcome its detrimental effect on a consumer’s health, and it is ultimately a consumer’s decision to choose pizza rather than a healthier food. On the other hand, consumers such as children may be especially susceptible to such advertisement (the related issue of placement in schools, rather than promotion, has been a controversial one).

Overall, I think that this is a difficult issue for businesses which sell potentially unhealthy products to handle; they still need to maintain market share to survive, and it is not necessarily unethical for them to sell such products in the first place. However, it could still be beneficial for them to be aware of the ethical implications of their marketing decisions.