Our team for the marketing plan assignment is just amazing! Everyone is committed to the assignment and communicated efficiently during team discussion. Throughout this term, we worked together for writing marketing plans, making decisions about the research content and also making the final video to present our work. Our team is really diversified: people are from different cultures and having different personalities and working habits. It is really amazing to have the opportunity and real experienes working with such different people in a teamwork setting. It let me know how I should communicate and work with others in such a circumstance in the future.

The first two assignments that ask us to do specific research for the company we chooses and came up with marketing strategies and target market gives me a general feeling of how people in the marketing industry’s work like. When doing the assignments, I imagined myself as a marketing person who wrote the real marketing plan for the company. The difference is that I had to go back to textbook to make sure every detail is expressed in a professional way. When working for these assignments, we assigned different parts to each team members, in such a way we can come up with general frame and  content more efficiently. And then we help each other by asking questions to test each statement and providing further research. Through discussion, we perfected our statements and research in the end.

For the video project, we did that in the clc and we expected to spend the whole day videoing it. But fortunately, we only used three hours for the videoing process. The reason behind that is we already had two meetings ahead of the real videoing. We already had a plan about how the video is going to proceed and we had finished the scripts for each part. I am really proud that our team prepared for the final project sufficiently by having several meetings and communications on goolge-doc instead of working on it right before the deadline. It teaches me a lesson that preparation will never fail you.

If there is one thing I could change , that would be the choice of the company we worked on, Bell .It is not that the company is not workable, it’s just take a lot more time and effort for our team to do the actual research and to come up with a reasonable strategy for a company that larger and a company that we really lack of common knowledge. Other team who choose a clothing industry or pepsi just seems easier. But, all these difficulties teach me how to do real research  how to do strategies without personally knowing the company well. I guess all the efforts are worth it in that way.

In general, I love my team!!!!!

Reading an external marketing blog about how Chinese brands can succeed internationally enables me to realize what difficulties and challenges Chinese brands facing when they try to target the international market and the underlying reason why brands so popular in the domestic market can’t get the same attention form market abroad.

The primary reason is that most Chinese brands that try to enter the international market are those who already succeed in the domestic market and have a brand position targeting medium or capital class, however, internationally, China has such a famous reputation for cheap labour and low-end products, which blemishes the brand image of those companies even before they tack any actions. As a result, instead of using their own brands, Chinese companies prefer to buy overseas companies and use their brand names to sell the products they want or as a mean of introducing their own brands as alignment. As the blogger mentions, one successful example is Lenovo who introduces their products and even brands in the new market through buying an already well-known brand in North American market, IBM. Besides, due to the lack of accountability  when selling edgy or luxury goods, Chinese companies are enforced to invest in technology or natural resources company rather than brands involving judgements of consumers’ tastes.

Luckily, there are a few delightful changes brought by some chinese brands recently : Stella International, a manufacturer for Prada has started selling luxury goods under its own Stella Luna brand in ‘its first overseas boutique on Boulevard Street  in Paris’. Another brand, Bosideng, also opened its  site on South Moulton Street in London. In China, Bosideng’s business is focusing on selling down jackets, however, in London, the company make some specific and smart changes with targeting ‘fashionable young males with 400-pound-sterling suits’. Both brands realize that they need to get rid of the ordinary cheap and low-end brand image by choosing new target and  proper store location.

Therefore, one important thing Chinese brand need to work on for entering international market is to reposition their brand to replace the impression of cheap “made in China” products, which actually  is a long-term accumulated image. This strategy is supposed to need a huge cost and  a lot marketing effort, but it will change consumer’s preferences in the international market eventually.

I found one marketing blog about Samsung’s extensive marketing beyond smartphones, written by my comm 296 fellow classmates,Claire Choi, interesting and inspring. She summarizes the underlying reason why Samsung chooses to create products beyond smart phones rather than stay focused like Apple does. She reports that Samsung distracts ifself with housng appliances,such as wifi-equipped washing machines that can be controlled by a smart phone app. Then she analyses the benefits brought by this decision: Samsung captures the protential customers’ needs for smart housing appliances; using the platfrom already built when promoting their smart phones, Samsung incerase its breadth while taking advantage of the economic of scale.

Actually, Samsung captures the potential consumers in China using its technology innovation and creating specific products for this target market, such as air purifier. In other parts of the global market, Samsung takes fully advantage of the recent success of its smartphones, which enables it to accumulate the consumer loyalty and credibility in the electronice device market. The company dosen’t hesitate to invest in its marketing budget to make widespread promotions compared to its competitors, and in response， “Samsung’s share of the US market for major home appliances in dollar terms has surged to 10.5% in this year’s second quarter from just 2.3% five years earlier.”

samsung’s smart home concept

I always wonder why Samsung is willing to dilute its brand and to broaden its product line except for the reason that those products can bring some limited profits. Claire’s blog gives me a general direction to think about the underlying reasons and accompanying benefits: Samsung will not satisfied by  only smart phones, it aims to create a world where people allow view smart home appliances as necessary as smart phones; it not only realizes consumers’ needs but also creates a new need for them. Also, the home appliances along with the smart phones create an integrated product bundle for the consumers through various kinds of apps, which make consumers to see the decision to buy Samsung’s home appliances easier and worthier.

watch?v=vBQIH9DJ35c Here is a video on youtube introducing the smart washing machines

Recently best buy and future shop offers a rare promotion sale for video gamers: they allow people to trade in their old video games for a new one among the three, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Battlefield 4 or the 10th iteration of the Call of Duty franchise, Call of Duty: Ghosts for free, which means the customers can save $60 through this exchange. This promotion creates unexpectedly huge lines in front of the stores across the country, which are comparable to those during boxing days and the new video games promoted were out of stock in less than 45 minutes. 

(the promotion line-up)

The promotion is not actually totally free for the marketers, it is used to create brand awareness in consumers’ mind and also to further promote for upcoming introduction of the major profitable new products such as Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4 in the next few months. These new products are supposed to be more profitable compared to the video games traded for during this promotion, but can be bought in various stores besides future shop and best buy. The gaming business launched in 2008 by the company is not fully awared by the customers and by doing this promotion, both companies let the potential consumers realize that it can be a good option to choose future shop and best buy for their video game shopping and therefor generate consumer loyalty to some extent.

(line up for the launch of ps4 in front of the stores in midnight)

In my opinion, this promotion can be seen as a successful marketing example. Its purpose is not to earn the short-time profits but to earn the long-term larger profits. The companies recognized the opportunities and potential profits brought by the promotion and are proved to make a right decision: despite the huge line-ups, social media also gives positive and intensive feedbacks for the promotion, which even further increase the companies’ awareness among potential consumers who don’t have the chance to know the promotion ahead. But still there are some negative side effects of the promotion: the huge line up creates excess demand for cashiers and staffs and therefore hinders the normal routine of operation the stores and scare away customers seeing the long line waiting outside the stores. However these effects are really temporary and even negligible compare to the benefits brought by the promotion– the sharp increase of awareness of the companies’ gaming business, which is proved by the huger line up in front of the stores  for the launch of ps4 in the midnight.

Youtubers appreciate the trade in promotion Here is a video on Youtube: a video gamer got the trade-in promotion and gave positive feedback for it and therefore promote automatically for the companies

(check the video below to see how food companies aimed at kids using commercials)

junk food commercials aimed at children

Children are always treated as the lucrative potential market for fast food companies. It is said that these companies invest in more than $5 million every day for marketing unhealthy food targeting children.With such efforts, Kids are exposed to approximately more than 10 food commercials per day. Marketing commercials food kids “emphasized everything but the food”: Images of fancy food packaging were shown in 88 percent of kids’ ads versus 23 percent of adult ads.The companies realize that for children, giving out toys or fancy packagings are more appealing and even has a stronger lasting impacts ,since children may get tired of the food while they will never lost interest in the constantly updated toys.Also,Their purposely marketing forces the parent to also become a consumers when they come accompanying their children.

This marketing method should be regarded unethical because it involves in both “ selective marketing targeting vulnerable” and “damaging personal autonomy”: The marketing strategy emphasizing premium like movies or toys lures children to purchase the products and exploit their  lack of capability to realize the marketing strategy underlying the commercials so that  children can’t resist the temptation of the colourful world built with the junk food depicted intentionally in the commercials.The firms realize the weakness of children and then they take advantage of this specific vulnerability; by this token, this manipulation should be classified in “selective marketing targeting vulnerable”. Besides,The firms even deprives their parents of making consuming choices to some extent, since they manipulate the children to push the parents indirectly to walk into their store. The strategy can be considered more evil since junk food contains high sugar and calories and low nutrition values, which will lead to health problems such as obesity,addiction, etc.