Month: October 2010

There has been an ongoing debate amongst corporate tycoons as well as the society on the cause of 2008 financial meltdown.  Some say that it was caused by the “unreliable” investment banking firms, some say it was because of the foreigners, and some say that it was caused by the individuals who could not return the money that they borrowed from those banks.

Everyone has the right to argue with each other. The 2008 financial meltdown did not only affect the Americans, but the affect was or maybe is globally. In America, billions of jobs have been gone “down the drain” due to this devastating occurrence.

“Chapter 11”, a term that indicates bankruptcy, has been filed by several major companies such as Lehman Brothers, Merryl Linch, and Goldman Sachs. Those three financial institution has gone busted probably due to the greed that people nowadays have. They want to have everything, but paying everything as the least they can do.

Now the world has been trying to get on its original track, waking up from a very devastating nightmare. How you might say? The answers, we should leave it up to those who are in the financial institution sector. As part of the society, the only thing we can do is not making the same mistake that we did.

The never-ending competition of the two beverage companies has growing immensely over the past years.  Two of these giants have been trying to bombard the market by intense marketing manipulation and advertisement. These can be seen through the product line that both companies provide to the market.

For example, coca cola has (so far) come up with product line such as Coca-Cola Classic, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, and the list may go on. This way, Coca-Cola has the advantage to attract customers with different preference of the coke beverage. This method as well is somewhat efficient to attract potential customer where presumably, there are customers that have become more aware about their health, thus Coca-Cola may offer product such as Diet Coke and Coke Zero, where in the advertisement said that it has “zero” sugar.

Then, Pepsi suddenly came up with the similar product line similar to Coca-Cola’s. There are Pepsi, Pepsi Max, and Diet Pepsi. Those brands has the same purpose as Coca-Cola’s, which is to cater the needs of different customer’s preference.

Thus, up to this point in time, those 2 beverage giants are still competing against one another in order to gain the biggest market share.

This is an advertisement made by one of the biggest cigarette manufacturer in Indonesia called Gudang Garam or in English, it means Salt Warehouse. This company has established its brand in the Indonesian market as well as in some Asian countries.

By law, it is prohibited in a cigarette commercial to show men, women, or both smoking. Thus, the ads show implicitly that smoking is “cool”.

The commercial above shows one of the most talented soccer player, Fernando Torres. In the advertisement, it basically shows on how he can do anything imaginable under the huge pressure.

This advertisement thus implicitly wants the audience to have a perception that if someone consume nicotine, that he can do “anything” possible. It means that the company wants its consumers to have an impression that smoking is a way to relief your stress, pressure, and burden. Without having to tell the consumer explicitly that smoking is – lets say “attractive”, the consumer would already have the impression that smoking may release you from any physical and mental pain… where as in reality, it may be the opposite way.

Justin Sullivan / Getty

http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2010/1001/toyota_recall_0127.jpg

Recently Toyota Motor Corp. has been facing negative publicity due to the fact that they had to make “call-backs” of their products. This Japanese car manufacturer had to recall more than 2 million of its cars. This create both internal and external problems. These problems will definitely affect the brand loyalty of Toyota in the consumer’s perspective.

One of the biggest external problem of this issue is that it would give this company a bad image both in front of the competitors and the loyal customers. Competitor will try to innovate and improve the own products in order to avoid such issue, one of them being the usage of quality control and quality assurance.  In the eye of the loyal customer, Toyota has already have a bad image – as the car that does not prioritize on safety regulations.

In addition, the major internal problem that Toyota could be facing is the financial issue. Since they are calling back their products, requiring extra repair or changing extra parts could  cost them millions of dollars. Due to that effect, it will affect Toyota’s liquidity or acid test ratio, as the stock could not be sold to the market due to the call-backs.

Hence, Toyota should implement a more appropriate quality control management in order to assure that there would be less or if it is possible no products  that are defected.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1957039,00.html