My team chose Caffe Artigiano for our project. Throughout the term and with Assignments 1, 2 & 3, I got to know much more about the Vancouver-based local premium coffee house. I have learned about the company thoroughly by not only reading information but also doing analysis on it. For example, by looking how successful the company has become in recent years and the fact that Canada has the second highest coffee consumption per capita, we can conclude that it is one of the fundamental macroeconomic factor for Caffe Artigiano to succeed.

I enjoyed doing all the assignments because all of them provide opportunities for us to learn analyzing a company and its business environment, followed by a marketing aspect. During the production of assignment 3, I was fascinated by the fact that our team was able to find some critical and obvious recommendations on the marketing mix for such a successful company. For example, the company website reconstruction and public tasting events. I also enjoyed working with my team for all the assignments since I got very very nice teammates. The working environment was relaxing and productive for my team.

Although I am not going into the marketing option, by taking this course and doing all the assignments, I was taught how critical and important marketing is to any businesses. And marketing is certainly one of the more interesting aspect in the business world. I am content with this opportunity to learn fundamental business environment analysis and marketing such as the marketing mix – 4Ps.

http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2013/04/05/USDA-Names-Beef-Pork-040513.aspx#continue

This post is in response to the post above.

USDA recently approved the pork and beef industries to rename more than 350 different cuts of meats to make them more accessible for customers.

I think the idea is good as I do find myself in a lot of time could not figure the differences between different kinds of pork sold in the supermarket until I asked. The idea of renaming these meats to “porterhouse pork”, “ribeye chops” is to familiarize customers with the similar names they see on restaurants’ menus. Since a new packing will also come with the new naming to show which part of an animal’s body the meat comes from, it will also be more educational for customers when they are shopping for their meat. The decision is supported by a two-year study in which customers respond the confusion on meats when they are shopping.

I believe this event is a great example of showing how marketing can improve a society. By doing the marketing study/research and coming up with this conclusion/decision, meat-shopping would be more educational than ever before. Less customers are confused when buying meats, more are getting what they really want. Although “Bloomberg notes that other food industries have tried to rebrand their products before, but haven’t made it through successfully.”, I believe this time it will be different. I look forward when Canada follows this change then I can get the pork that I had last night at the restaurant.

http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/pizza-hut-sketches-art-masterpieces-pizza-boxes-live-youtube-148379

This post is in response to the above post in adweek.com. Personally I found this marketing strategy to be really nice and creative. Instead of directly marketing/promoting the product that Pizza Hut sells – pizzas, it uses the packaging that comes with it for this marketing strategy.

Pizza Hut hosted a livestreaming event of an artist drawing different images that are suggested by internet users on the pizza box.

This strategy is very creative to me because it provides fresh and fun interactive opportunities for its potential customers by allowing them to “order” the drawings that they want on pizza box. I found this to be a very clever and effective strategy as well. The fact that there are so many competitors in the pizza market for Pizza Hut, it may not be the most beneficial for them to spend resources to further advertise their pizza since it can only differentiate to a certain extend from the competitors. However, by doing this advertising event, it can build its reputation while providing entertainments/joys that aren’t from their direct products, giving a fresh perspective of the company from its potential customers. The livestream lasted for seven and a half hours, if I were watching this livestream, I would certainly order some food from Pizza Hut and I believe many people had done that while watching the livestream. I strongly believe this has been a very successful advertising event!