When thinking about rescission, one sees the society as
whole battling with economical down turns. It is the general perception that
rescission leaves its negative marks on all levels of society. Interestingly enough,
there are many businesses who flourish at rescission periods. The blog,
Renovating McDonald’s Brand Image, by Heena Ahuja briefly looks at one of these
businesses and explores their new plan to maximize the benefits of rescission. To
better understand McDonald’s new strategies we must better understand the
customers’ behaviour when it comes to their daily delights! To simplify this we
can look at McCafe’s biggest competitor, Starbucks. There are two reasons why
people spend so much money at Starbucks, they are either addicted to certain
quality that Starbucks provides or they are addicted to the trend of holding a Starbucks
cup. When rescission hits, both groups will need to make adjustments. The group
addicted to the trend will be the first looking for an alternative as trends
seem to lose their sparks in rescission periods. The group addicted to the quality
will fight longer, but eventually even they will find it hard to spend over $5
on a caffeinated beverage. McDonald with its McCafe line up is trying to be
that alternative. Without challenging any of its main competitors over quality,
it has directly focused on what matters the most to people these days, LOW
PRICES. The massage is loud and clear: buy your daily delight from us, the
quality might not be the best, but for the money you save it’s more than enough!

In Mass Customization, Claire Brayshay takes an interesting
look at market cycles and the movement from mass marketing to high
personalization and alternating to individual needs.  The importance of personalized products and services can be easily seen looking at the cell phone or in particular
smartphone industry. When IPhone was launched, Apple enjoyed high sales due to
its many competitive advantages such as early entrance. Soon after many companies followed and created products that were extremely similar when it came to hardware. At this point the needed competitive advantage could only be created by designing a superior software. In 2008 Apple, Blackberry and HTC started a new battle over the control of the smartphone market. Apple launched the IPhone 3G, BlackBerry Launched the Bold 9000 and HTC launched Dream and Magic that were based on Android platform.  I, as Rogers’s sales representative (Rogers was the only company that had all three phones) at the time, used to make the following distinctions:

1. Blackberry is highly personalisable, especially
   in areas important to business users, but it’s hard to use.
2. IPhone is extremely entertaining and simple to
   use, but not personalisable.
3. Android is highly personalisable and easy to use,
   but it is very new and glitches are not known.

To no one’s surprise Blackberry and IPhone dominated the
sales that year and left the Android devices in dust. Despite this failure, many
other cell phone producers such as Samsung and LG became intrigued with Android
interface as it was extremely user friendly (what Blackberry was missing) and
highly personalisable (what IPhone was missing). Three years later, in 2011,
Samsung Released Galaxy S II which was called the world’s first super phone and managed to sell ten million units in 6 month.  Anroid Platform as of Last month has gained higher market share than both BlackBerry and Apple.

Finding the secrets to a successful business has always been both, intriguing to my curiosity and the centre of my attention. . Working in many different fields throughout the years has enabled me to gain perspective on the elements that cause businesses to be successful when it comes to dealing with customers. “Do you take yourself seriously?” by Drew McLellan is a blog that caught my eye recently. After I read the blog I came to the conclusion that his point of view was quite agreeable. In his blog, he explains that the key to success in direct contact with a customer is to have fun with what we are doing and not to take everything so seriously. I experienced that first-hand while working at Starbucks. We had more returning customers at our store than any other store in the area and the reason behind it wasn’t that we gave people the fastest and best service. We displayed interest in what we did and allowed customers to join the comforting, family like environment we had created. Moving to a sales job, I thought the same rule would never apply, but to my surprise I was proven wrong. After a close look at many other businesses, I must say that being calm and content in one’s work environment, and showing that we take pleasure in doing our job is the key to success with customers.

Working in the wireless industry, I have seen my share of different marketing campaigns, both successful and unsuccessful. In such a competitive industry, marketing is in the center of attention of all major players and significant amount of resources is allocated to it. One of the most interesting techniques that recently has caught my eye is an inverse allocation system. Using this method, rather than providing the marketing team with a goal and a budget, the marketing team is asked to estimate the cost of a campaign that would achieve the desired result by the company. The estimated cost provided by the marketing team is then compared with the company’s allocation plan and if needed, necessary adjustments are made, and in some extreme cases the plans are completely modified. This system is proven to work best for launch of new products. The added benefit of this method is that it puts the product into a preliminary test by the marketing group, showing their predictions of how it will be received in the market, if the company’s prediction are realistic and finally if major changes are required. This decreases the possibility of releasing a product or launching a marketing campaign that is doomed to fail and helps to make the whole process more efficient and successful. The main draw back of this system is its lengthy process which makes it impossible to use for products that race against time is essential to their success.

Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!