Jonathan A Cheng Marketing Comm 296

As Amazon.com is the company which my marketing project is researching about. Amazon.com is one of the largest online retailer in the current market. I personally think that Amazon.com the best because of its variety of products and simple payment. Based on the researches my marketing group did on the STP of Amazon.com, we agreed that college/university students is the major segment that Amazon.com is targeting at. For example, its Kindle, the E-book market by Amazon.com, is apparently targeting to students. Students in college usually worry about their expensive textbooks and are scared away by its crazy weight. With an E-book, students no longer have to carry the thicks and could look at it anytime, anywhere. Furthermore, the old textbooks resell is quite successful on Amazon.com either. As I had a little with my fellows this afternoon, we were talking about how to resell our old textbooks. We all agreed if none of our friends want to buy our textbooks, the first way we came up with is Amazon.com. Amazon.com’s image of textbooks resell has already implanted in most of the students’ mind, everything they want to sell would first goes to Amazon.com. All in all, I believe Amazon.com has a very clear and sharp strategy in targeting in the student market , and also possesses advantages in this segment.

Earlier this week, I read a online marketing blog called Top Rank, and there was a post, Essential Mobile Marketing Resources. According to Lee, “Mobile phone usage goes far beyond making calls and texts. There’s been significant increases in mobile social networking activity, the use of mobile phones to send email and other social/geo apps like Foursquare.” I totally agree with this statement. In the past, the mobile phone market is basically a pure competition model, however, the mobile phone market is entirely different. Almost everyone has a smart phone nowadays, Iphones, Blackberry and etc. I think it changed the whole mobile phone market. Smart phones almost completely replace the market values of other ordinary mobile phones. Some may say that, smart phones is then a new market, it should no longer be in the mobile phone market. But, I think it is just a new line extension which is in its growth. They are still quite a amount of people still using ordinary phones, however, I think the ordinary mobile phones are in their decline stage. There isn’t any ways to make it popular again. For now, I would say ordinary mobile phones are for people who does not talk much on the phone, does not use their mobile phones much and does not pay any attention to the modern technology.

Lee further posted some other mobile marketers’ websites to show the popularity of mobile phones in the modern world and there are always tons and tons of new applications coming out from mobile phones. for example, games in mobile phones is legitimately a superb growing market. I would say most people would check out the games in their mobile phones when they get bored on transportation, in class, at work and even in the bathroom.

Today, I was checking out the course blog and some of my classmates’ blogs. Amongst, I found Beverley Cheng’s blog post about Amazon.com’s supply chain very interesting. She bought a pair of soccer cleats on Amazon.com and is very excited to its arrival. According to Beverley, “Amazons supply chain is so tightly integrated that customers who order an item know almost immediately how long it should take to ship, how many pieces there will be, and any other relevant information. They rely heavily on their technology, and much less on actual human resources to fulfill any inventory issues”, I do totally agree with her, however, the shipping cost is somehow the largest resistance for customers to click the “confirm order” button. It is because loyal customers of Amazon.com are usually looking for something cheap and fast on Amazon, let’s say a Blackberry phone rubber case. A phone case is usually costing 5 bucks and the shipping cost would be around 1-2 bucks. It is almost half of the price of the phone case itself and customers have to wait for a week for its arrival. So customer would think, “why not I just go to a convenience store right the corner so I don’t have to wait and pay shipping fees!” Therefore, I think Amazon.com and other major online retailers in the market should really come up with a better solution to not scare away customer by the shipping costs and attract more business opportunities.

Just now, I was reading Eugene Tan’s blog and I found his latest post is pretty interesting. He talked about Malaysia, the country he was born in. He mentioned that he was told Malaysia has always been a sin country, “girls get raped, men get robbed and killed”. I do agree that every country has a dark side, but we should not judge a country by just a little information. The video is showing some attractive tourism spots in Malaysia. The purpose of making such video is to attract more people from all around the world to visit Malaysia and boost the economy there. I think the government of Malaysia could be exaggerated a little in the video but this is the only way to improve the country’s economy and bring the a better future to the next generation.

Just like Malaysia, I think Mexico has the same situation as well. It is known as one of the countries which  has the highest murder rate in the world. However, there are still thousands of tourists go to Mexico for vacation every year. For example, Cancun is one of most famous city for its beach and sunshine. Some of my friend just went to Cancun to spend their reading week and they came back safely.

I believe most people would have the urge to go to Mexico immediately when they see this picture.

Therefore, I think that countries like Malaysia and Mexico actually did a pretty job to advertisement their beautiful beaches and tourism spot. They should keep it up and try to boost their economy with their strengths.

clean your balls

Today, my friend showed me this video and I found it very funny, so I decide to share it here. This video from Axe is trying to sell a cleaning product for any kind of sports balls. It sounds normal, however, the ladies in the video were playing with the word “balls”. By just listening to the what they say, you might imagine they are talking about something inappropriate. But in fact, they are just demonstrating sports balls cleaning.

The strategy in this commercial is pretty interesting. When people sees this video, they would definitely remember it. nevertheless, parents might complain about the wording, containing unethical content in a public commercial. However, I think it is interesting and effective in arousing people’s attention to Axe.

From the picture, we can see an American dreamed family, family of four dressing nicely, walking down a beautiful street with a Tiffany & Co bag. The Tiffany & Co bag locates in the middle of the whole picture, indicating that buying or owning products from Tiffany & Co is the symbol of being an American dreamed family.

I think Tiffany & Co uses a very clever way to advertise their own produces. They specifically cater for the consumers who want a “perfect love” feeling out of the cosmopolitan city.

Again, Tiffany & Co uses their bag in the middle of a picture of a newly married couple  These kind of advertisement wants to create a picture of the happiest love in consumers’ mind. Therefore, consumers would think of tiffany & Co when their desires of pursuing the  love comes out, or some consumers may want to experience this type of happy couple or family life by buy Tiffany & Co’s products. For example, a lady saw one of the above pictures from Tiffany & Co in the street, and she got attracted by the feeling of “Love ” created by the picture. Then, she would mostly come to her boyfriend and ask for a ring from Tiffany & Co. Even though her boyfriend does not like products from Tiffany & Co, he would buy one for his girlfriend because he wants her to be happy. By inserting certain kind of happiness pictures in consumers’ mind, Tiffany & Co enhanced and improved their brand image and reputation for a really long time.

During Christmas, everyone would love to get a hot drink in such freezing weather in Canada. I believe most of you may notice Starbucks has its special drinks in every Christmas. To me, I really enjoy having a Caramel Brulee Latte in Christmas time. The special taste and cup make me feel excited and happy about Christmas. It is very clever to advertise a special product only in festivals. That special product could remind people of their happy memories in the past years. Besides, people would be happy to try new flavors of special drinks because of their fantasy mood in festivals.

Plus, having Christmas drinks could further attract more customer. In Christmas time, people would try to do something or buy something make themselves feel that it is Christmas time. When people see these advertisement of new coffees in Christmas, it would trigger people to buy one to actually make themselves feel like they are on holiday.

Moreover, establishing promotion like “buy one get one free” would be a very effective way to attract more customer. Since people would always go out with friends or their other half in Christmas, they would be very happy with a good deal like “buy one get one free”. Thus, customer loyalty could be increase with sales as the same time!

I found this video is really interesting although I am not a big fan of Adidas’s soccer products. They hired a bunch of famous soccer players to film an action soccer tournament. Players are playing on very thin steel tracks and trying to score goal. This video is implying that even in terrible situations, Adidas’ products could still assist you to play well. This also matches their mission statement, “Impossible is Nothing”.

The marketing strategies used in this video are basically aspirational and cognitive component. Hiring famous players and ask them to perform their tricks and skills. Plus, filming the players playing on rough surroundings, thin steel tracks. In this video, adidas is trying to persuade customers that they would still be able to play well in rough environment as long as they own a pair of Adidas soccer footwear. Thus, customer would believe Adidas has good quality and might want to try it on.

lastly, using mission statement “Impossible is Nothing” further triggers customers’ passion and big heart in soccer, and makes them imagine themselves playing good soccer in a pair of nice Adidas footwear.

Pepsi and Coca colo have long been competitors in the industry. I found this commercial video from Pepsi which has been banned because it is sort of degrading Coca Cola in it. Pepsi tends to use Cola’s products in its commercials and always trying to imply that people love them more than Cola. However, I do not think this is a good way to advertise. It is because pepsi is advertising for cola at the same time when they put coca cola in their commercials. On the other hand, Coca Cola never try to persuade not to buy Pepsi in their ads. To me, the first reason comes to mind would be Pepsi is not as good as Coca Cola, so they have to ‘insult’ or ‘degrade’ Cola to get more customers. So when I go to the supermarket and I see Pepsi is on sale while Cola is not, I would think Cola has better quality while Pepsi does not.

Besides, I found another advertisement video from Pepsi published few years ago.

In this video, Pepsi hired a lot of famous soccer stars to film its commercial. This is aspirational effect. Using famous stars to arouse people attention to its advertisement. Compare to the one discussed above, I found this video is more interesting. This video has short story and has some funny scenes which could attract more people to watch it. Apparently, the cast and cost of this video are pretty huge. However, I think this is worthing. This video is a good use of aspirational marketing strategy.

last summer, I went back to Hong Kong for vacation and I saw this Diesel Jeans Ad posting on a building. The moment I saw this poster, I thought it is very sexual and not ethical. For some conservative chinese people, they would most likely be disgusted and feel uncomfortable with this poster.

However, this ad is  useful and effective in terms of marketing. I did arouse the public’s attention and making people talk about Diesel jeans. I heard  a middle aged lady talked to her friend when I walked along the street, “What is this ad about? Why is there a half naked woman on it?” And her friend replied, “Oh…it’s Diesel jeans, their Ads always like that. They have nice jeans though!” This illustrates that crazy advertisements like that would really get more attention, thus, people would want to know what it is and find out what it is trying to express.

To conclude, this Ad is bad ethically, but it is helpful in marketing.