Due to the fact that different people tend to have different ideas about the assignment, therefore, conflicts have been generated within our group. Thankfully, these “conflicts” didn’t cause any negative effect to our group.  On the other way around, the “conflicts” made us become a better team. As a team, we all contributed equally on the assignment. This marketing group assignment is one of the most interesting assignments that I have ever had in UBC.

Rather than submitting the whole big assignment at the end of the semester, our professor separated this assignment into three different parts so that we could do it part by part. Even though we made some mistakes in the first part of the assignment, we could correct it before we did the second part and the third part of the assignment. I personally think that this is a good way to learn since we could see things more detail if we do it part by part. Moreover, I think the deadline for each part of the assignments was quite reasonable. Basically, we had around half month to deal with each section of the assignment which was more than enough time.

In my opinion, the most exciting part of this assignment was the video part. In this part, we need to figure out how to make our own video by our self.  At first, we didn’t have any knowledge on video making, so it was quite hard for us to build up our own video. If we were given more lectures on teaching how to make video, I think it will be great.

Overall, I really enjoy this assignment. I found that using video to share our ideas to people is way funny than doing the actual presentation. In the process of making video, we can learn things together as a team.

Due to the economy recession, many companies want to save sources to open new channels. Therefore, rather than spend a huge amount of money on Television advertising, they change their strategy, which is to do the advertising on YouTube. In this way, they not only can save a lot of money, but also can extend their customer base from YouTube since YouTube is now generally used by people for watching video and it is super popular. Since YouTube is getting more popular, as a result, many of the other companies will do their advertising on YouTube as well. According to Bloomberg, “Google Inc. has boosted the number of advertisers using display ads on its YouTube video site 10-fold in the past year.” All these advertisers can give a huge profit to Google. Therefore, there is no reason for Google to reject these “clients” to use YouTube as a platform to do the advertisements. However, from the audiences’ point of view, that was not a good phenomenon. Some of the YouTube fans actually found that this advertisement is so annoying. Part of the audiences was even said that they will never ever watch video on YouTube again because of the “annoying” advertisement. If Google do not limit the advertisement on YouTube, the audiences’ loyalties will definitely decrease. Remember that if all these YouTube fans gone; Advertisers will no longer have motivation to do advertising there since they know that no one is going to watch their advertisement. In another words, the audiences is indirectly affecting Google’s profit. In order to retain the audiences’ loyalty as well as advertisers, Google should limit the amount of advertisement displayed on YouTube.

There is no doubt that packaging has played an important role as a medium in the marketing mix. From my perspective, as a consumer, when I enter a shop to but a cereal, if I have no idea which brand of cereal should I buy, then I will just simply choose the one with eye-catching appearance. The reason is that there is a potential psychological impact on my buying behavior, which makes me think that the packaging and quality of the product have a positive relationship. In another words, good packaging will always come with good quality. According to the research, “Good starting points for improvements, changes, innovations which optimize the features of packaging that determine buying decisions and thus generate new potential market”.  Basically, it means that if the products is able to present effectively will be easier to attract customers to buy so that sales will be increased.  Another supporting points given by UDO, “psychological effects of packaging on the product can greatly enhance the sales”. Therefore, we can clearly know that it is very important for manufacturer to make a good packaging for their product if they want to attract more potential consumer.

sources: http://www.scribd.com/doc/29839115/Role-of-Packaging-and-Design-of-a-Product

Dennis Wilson founded Lululemon Athletica in 1998 in response to increased female participation in sports and in accordance with his belief in yoga as the optimal way to maintain athletic excellence into an advanced age.

Wilson opened the first Lululemon store in Kitsilano, a Vancouver neighbourhood. It included a design studio, a retail store, and shared space with a yoga studio. Lululemon operates approximately 201 stores, with the majority in North America.

Customers

• • Mainly focus on women whose of all ages who are looking for stylish active wear for specific sport such as yoga.
  • In order to expand company’s customers base, Lululemon starts to target male and children as their customers.

   

• Competitors
• • Nike
  • Adidas
  • under armour

      

  Even though Lululemon has a lot of competitors, it did quite success in the clothing industry. The reason is that Lululemon differentiates itself from the other competitors by providing friendly service, well organized studio like store and free fitness classes.

Sources: http://shop.lululemon.com/home.jsp

Mercedes-Benz Advertisement

As all you can see in this recent Mercedes-Benz advertisement, they have used a dancing chicken to demonstrate the stability of its “Magic Body Control” suspension system. At the beginning of the advertisement, a whole bunch of chickens were shown on the screen. Their bodies have been moving around, but we can clearly see that their head didn’t move. The reason here is because chicken lacks of an ocular system, which let humans see objects in a stationary way even if their body move. Mercedes- Benz used this phenomenon to illustrate an idea to consumers, their car just like the chicken heads, no matter how fast the car is moving, it will also stay at the most stable way.

In my opinion, there are both pro sides and con sides about this advertisement. For the pro side, this is a creative advertisement. When people first watch this video, they probably have no idea of what this advertisement is trying to say. Therefore, they will stay in front of the TV and watch till it ends. When the advertisement is about to finish, they will realized that the chicken is actually representing about how stable is the Benz suspension system, as a result, this advertisement will give the audience motivation to try the car. Another pro side is that the cost of this advertisement is quite low, but they can let people know how stable the Mercedes-Benz is. What they use in this video is only chickens, people and a camera.

On the other hand, this advertisement does contain shortage. Mercedes- Benz is a luxury brand, but in the advertisement they used chicken to represent the car which could make people think that Mercedes- Benz is something cheap. And also, the value of this brand will be depreciated.

In 2008, it was a tough year for babies and their parents in China. Sixteen infants, who had been fed on milk powder produced by Sanlu Group, were diagnosed with kidney stones and many of them were dying. After investigated by police, they found that the producers had illegally added a chemical substance called Melamine into the mike powder. After adding Melamine into the mike powder, their apparent protein content will be increased. Therefore, the producer can make more money on it.

In my opinion, I think the milk powder produces must bear the legal liability in this case. In order to maximize the profit, they did not care about people’s health issue. It is true that they will have a huge profit in short term since people actually believe that their product was good. However, if the illegal manufacturing process has been disclosed, the consequence will be very serious. To marketing, I believe that people will never ever buy their product and the company’s reputation will be bankrupted. To consumers, they will not only lose confident on Sanlu Group’s dairy product, but they will lost confident on all of the dairy product in China. This is the main reason of why milk powder in Hong Kong always in shortage as most of them was purchased by people from mainland China. To society, both parents and infants were suffered after using their products, which will raise a sadness atmosphere around China, and some of the people might even think that China is no longer a livable place.

To conclude, if Chinese government wants to prosper the dairy industry in China, they must establish a strict policy for the producers to follow and also children need to be educated to be an ethical person when they were young. 

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