Monthly Archives: November 2015

From salads to kale smoothies, “healthy” is becoming a major trend, even in the fast food industry. Companies such as KFC are implementing changes in their menus in attempt to keep up with the growing health-conscious population. 

Despite so, KFC’s growth remains weak in Canada. On the other hand, Popeyes, another American fried-chicken chain, have experiencing strong growth. What is their secret?

They’re staying with their original deep-fried formula.

As simple as that sounds, I realized it’s actually an important business decision that they’re making. Rather than following with trends, they’re taking the step to evaluate their business model and make the connection between their target segment and their value proposition.

“People are eating a lot of baked and broiled chicken at home,” Bachelder said. “No one makes this kind of food at home anymore. I like to say we eat boring, healthy food at home, and we eat things like Popeyes when we go out to enjoy a special evening.”

Popeyes understands that their food is not meant to be an everyday meal, but rather an occasion treat. In that sense, what their customers value the most is not the ingredients behind the food but the taste–which is what Popeyes decided to place their attention on, and thus keeping with their original recipe. Afterall, it would be extremely difficult for a fast-food restaurant to re-position itself as “health-conscious” in order to win that part of the market segment, as we learned from class 8.

In Comm class, one of the key ideas is how a company differentiates itself. I found this article an interesting read because Popeyes differentiation is as simple as not doing anything, but letting their competitors go out of their way to differentiate themselves in the wrong direction.

Upon reading Anna Zynyuk’s post about the importance of organizational culture, specifically in a retail store, I realized we share the same opinion and similar experience with our retail jobs (my previous employment at LUSH Handmade Cosmetics).

Right off the bat, Lush differentiates its organizational culture with their interview. It was not a typical group interview where we sit in a table and talk about ourselves. Rather, Lush wants to make sure they are employing the right people by asking you to physically demonstrate their product to them. The atmosphere was more like a sleepover party where we shared our love for the products than an actual interview. This atmosphere carried on throughout all my training and shifts at Lush. We were taught to treat our customers like friends, and pay attention to what they say in order to give them the best shopping experience. When we’re not sure about a specific product during work, rather than feeling nervous about not knowing everything, we could easily call our co-workers over and help our customers together. We could even blow bubbles during the shop to demonstrate our bubble bars!

It’s this atmosphere that defines the organizational culture at LUSH, which is what makes the experience enjoyable and welcoming for both the employees and our shoppers,  and keep our customers coming back.

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When browsing through the blogs of my COMM101 class, Rosie Lu’s blog post caught my eyes as I am a personal owner of a OnePlus One smartphone. In Rosie’s post, she wrote “Invitation is also like a baton, it passes on the business from one customer to another.” I couldn’t agree more.

I recall when I was in need of a new phone, and learned about OnePlus One from my friend, I was more than skeptical. First of all, it featured a significantly low pricing of $299 with a quality build equivalent of the traditional $600 phones in the our North American market. This seemed to be too good to be true. Secondly, it’s a Chinese brand that I’ve never heard of. Naturally, my unreliable alert was turned on as I’ve had previous experiences with poor purchases from Chinese websites. Finally, the phone is distributed through invitation-only online sales. This means I wouldn’t even be able to physically examine the phone until I actually make the purchase and wait for it to arrive in the mail. All of these points spelled sketchy to me.

Had it been anyone else who told me about the product, I probably wouldn’t have even given it a second thought. This reinforces the point that Rosie was trying to make in her blog post: as a new, foreign brand and business, the invitation allows customers to share the product with their connections while delivering genuine feedback regarding the product. It’s simply a natural referral system that promotes their brand and credibility in our market through their customers at no cost.

Being a direct online seller, they can also avoid the cost of a store lease while using the invitation to prevents leftover of inventory because one invitation resembles one unit of the phone available. In fact, they recently implemented a pre-invitation option for their OnePlus Two model to ensure sales and and allows them to make decisions on production. One can easily see how the invitation helps sustain the OnePlus business model to offer low product pricing.

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Article focus: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/one-one-business-model-social-impact-avoiding-unintended-consequences/

Anyone who’s heard of Tom’s is probably familiar with their business model–you buy one pair of shoes, they give another pair to a someone in need. At first glance, this may seem like a brilliant idea that allows the buyer to enjoy from the “halo” effect while benefiting another person with a free pair of shoes. When you dig further, there are actually flaws to this model that may create the opposite effect. For starters, giving away a free pair of shoes creates a dependency on the giver, which is never good when you want to fight poverty. Eventually when the pair of shoe wears out, what will happen then? Also, giving away free shoes will also hurt local shoe businesses tremendously.

I believe a better way for businesses to create a social impact is by giving support to those in need by “treating the cause.” Rather than directly giving a pair of shoes, Toms can build a school for every 5000 pair of shoes purchased because education is the most important ingredient in eliminating poverty as well as dependency. In terms of marketing, Toms can still allow the real connection between the buyer and those they’re helping by directly communicating the location and the name of the school they helped to build.

Image source:

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As our society grows more environmentally-conscious, electrics cars are becoming a popular choice of vehicles.

Toyota announced its bold goal to eliminate all gas engines by 2050, shortly following Volkswagen’s emissions cheating scandal. I found this article interesting because Toyota was quick to use this timing for its announcement, which not only allowed Toyota to highlight the safety of its vehicles, as the greenest car company, but also quickly to establish its positioning in the market as the lead hybrid car maker as well.

“They own the green space with Prius hybrid”

– Dennis DesRosiers, head of DesRosiers Automotive Consultants

As we learned in class, it’s not only fundamental for a brand to create a distinct image in the minds of consumers, it’s even more crucial that a brand takes advantage of timing to achieve its position as the leader in a given market. In this case, Toyota is building on its image as the best hybrid car maker, and attempt in expanding into the engine-less market as the leader. It’s an interesting approach to see Toyota expand and position into the electric-car industry, especially given that the company’s original vision was not focused on electric cars in contrast to other zero-emission based car makers such as Nissan.

In terms of feasibility, Peter Cheney, national driving columnist for The Globe & Mail, thinks that if a small company like Tesla can “change the game,” big companies like Toyota would be able to improve the technology and enter the market. On the other hand, Dennis DesRosieres, head of DesRosiers Automotive Counsultants, argues that electric cars are only a small fraction of the market, especially in Canada where the demand for consumers are still relatively low. Personally, I’m not sure whether 35 years is the answer to entirely emission-free vehicles but I am optimistic about the future of electric cars and how companies are focused more on CSR and innovation.

Image Source:

http://images.thecarconnection.com/med/2012-toyota-prius-plug-in_100383571_m.jpg

 

“Today’s customers are time-starved and overwhelmed with information.”

Julia Stanescu’s post caught my eye as it addressed one of the fundamental ideas of brand positioning in class 8: consumers are constantly bombarded with information. This overload of information leaves customers with an unfulfilled shopping experience. Business aside, even in university Facebook groups, I’m sure many students would agree with me that these pages are filled with advertisements regarding events, etc.

Yet, how many of these posts do students actually bother to read through?

Not many.

This blog post provides a solution to creating marketing material that will effectively engage and connect users—UX. As a UX designer, the key question that needs to be asked is “Why?” It’s important that we understand the problem before attempting to solve it, which ties back to the fish-bone tool that we learned in class 5. This allows us to understand everything from a customer’s perspective, and delivering a human centered approach to highlight value propositions that resonate with customer needs.

“UX Design helps us to think less like marketers, and more like humans.”

As a BUCS student, I found this article especially interesting, as it reinforced the importance of technology in the business industry.

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