Month: December 2010

In the currently technological age, consumers are able to receive marketing messages through remarkable amounts of media. Major sporting events, such as the Olympics or World Cup Soccer, have significant viewership across the globe – those who don’t watch sports regularly will even tune in to join the action. Events such as these are valuable to companies, as they offer an opportunity to market to a wide audience. However, sponsorship of large sporting events is a significant investment, and potential sponsors must ask themselves: “Is it worth our money?” Needless to say, sponsors want a return in their investment, which could come from a variety of areas.

Bell invested over $200 million into the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, over ten times the amount VANOC expected from its Premier National Partners. With such a tremendous contribution, it should be expected that VANOC reciprocate Bell’s support by helping to maximize its returns, with specific attention in the areas of market share and financial profit.

December 1st, 2010 was World AIDS Day. On that day, a number of celebrities sacrificed their digital lives in order to raise money and public awareness for HIV/AIDS in Africa and India. They will not access Facebook or Twitter until one million dollars is raised by fans. To donate, all you have to do is pop a quick text message, ‘BUYLIFE’ to 90999.

For this campaign, viral marketing is being used via social media to attract attention from the social-savvy segment of the population. Viral marketing is only a recent thing, considering that social media hasn’t been around for that long. And boy oh boy, is it working. The website for Digital Death, buylife.org, crashed due to too much traffic.

Marketing messages such as this creates a lot of buzz, causing word to spread quickly. For example, I saw this video through a link on somebody’s Tumblr feed, and I (as well as many other bloggers) am reblogging it, conveying the message to more and more people! Such effectiveness could not be achieved without so many outlets of social media.

I believe viral marketing is pretty awesome, especially for awareness campaigns such as Digital Death. To see how the campaign is coming along, click here to visit the buylife website.

So this year, my parents made the foolish decision to give me a VISA card. and SINCE it’s linked with my parent’s account, the limit is a lot higher than it would be if it were my own account. What does that mean? Credit card abuse! 🙂 December is here, and we all know what that means: Christmas shopping. Already, the malls are bustling with holiday shoppers. Store windows are decorated with fluffy fake snow, shiny tinsel, and enormous holiday ads. Ahh, the holidays. Consumerism at its best.

How does Christmas affect our economy? With all the spending and purchasing, one has to wonder. Temporarily, the economy will be given a boost. Also, it generates more jobs, as retailers need extra hands for the big lineups during Christmas rush. But with the current world economy being so unhealthy in recent years, how will consumers react? A survey by Deloitte claims that this year, forty-two percent of shoppers will spend less than they did last year. So what does this mean for retailers? Personally, I hope that they’ll lower prices…SALETIME! Since many consumers are lower on their budget this year than previous years, they’ll be attracted to the lower prices, which may definitely help retailers increase sales. But would that be a smart thing to do? Hmmmmmmmmmm. I guess we’ll just have to see.

But for the time being, I’ll just abuse my credit card until my mother gets angry. Hooray!

Since the development of the internet, a great number of daily activities have become much easier. One of those activities is shopping. More and more people are online shopping every day, and a recent poll said that 61% of Canadians want to do their Christmas shopping online this year.

Benefits

With online shopping, consumers are able to stay in the comfort of their home AND shop, all with the click of a mouse. Buying products online allows consumers to browse through large categories and numbers of products at a time without having to visit separate stores in person. It saves a significant amount of time spent travelling to/from the stores, leaving the consumer with surplus time to spend elsewhere. Furthermore, by simply entering a credit card number, consumers can have the products they purchased delivered right to their doorstep. Convenient, right? If the online store is successful, business owners also receive positive benefits. They are able to save money on rent to spend elsewhere in their business. This is the reason why purchasing items from sites such as eBay is so much cheaper than buying items in the store.

Problems

Online shopping also creates some problems for both consumers and businesses. One major problem is that with the new technology, companies don’t have to hire as many workers. This decreases the number of jobs available. For consumers, there are a number of issues that may arise. One major problem with online shopping is that customers don’t get to see the actual product they are ordering in person. Thus, what they receive may not be what they had originally expected. This may result in the customer having to return the product, which means a lot of wasted time.

In the end, it is up to the customer whether or not they want to purchase online. Personally, I love online shopping, and think that the benefits outweigh the problems. Since online shopping is still a relatively new concept, it will be interesting to see what kind of new ideas companies will come up with to increase profit via the internet.