Month: September 2010

So I was browsing the web looking to purchase a new laptop and suddenly a pop-up caught my attention, QuiBids, a penny auctioning website. So for those people that don’t know what penny auctioning is, its when an auctioning site offers high consumer demand products (laptops,MP3s, Televisions) for just pennies!  The way it works is that consumers place bids which drives the auction price to go up by 1 cent. In most cases from what i’ve seen on the website is that MP3s usually end up being sold for $5, but…. Here’s the catch! Each bid a consumer places will cost them $0.60. Each time a consumer bids an extra penny, the auction is extended for 20 seconds. For example, a MP3 that was sold for $5 would end up to be ((500 cents * $0.60) + $5) = $305 spent by consumer bids. Lets assume the cost of the Mp3 was $100, so that means the auctioneers would gain a profit of $205 as a result of this. What a great way of selling products for 2-3 times the actual cost !

 In general, the auctioneers can either gain big money or lose big money depending on the consumer competition. There is no guarantee that after spending $200 on bids that you will get the product you want. As a result, there is high risk, high gain involved, but heck what if you get lucky? You might just be the lucky person placing 1 bid and ending up with a $11 MacBook Pro.

        Hello COMM 296 ! I like to share with you a movie that i highly anticipate and recommend others to watch if your interested in the financial markets. The movie is called “Wall Street 2:Money Never Sleeps”. This is a sequel to the first movie which was released in 1987, which the plot revolved around a corporate raider who undergoes insider trading and makes a big fortune off of it.  Even though this should be a marketing blog, but the film has really grabbed my attention for the last few weeks. But of course, i will relate this to marketing later on in this post. For those of you who never heard of this movie and its prequel, its definately worth watching if you plan to become a stock broker in the near future. In this sequel, the plot focuses on the recent market recession that happened 2-3 years ago with the housing crisis in the United States which caused major bank instituitions to go bankrupt and also caused one of the biggest umemployment increase since the great depression. I wouldn’t want to critique this movie yet as i havn’t seen it, but seeing how well it’s prequel played out, i wouldn’t doubt that it would turn out to be a great film. The prequel which came out in the 80’s focuses on the 80’s notoriety which was an era where corporate investors were infamous for their insider trading scandals. An example would the junk bond king “Michael Milken” who was caught for insider trading after climbing his way to the top being one of the wealthiest man in his era. The 80’s mentality was that “greed is good” as long as you profit regardless of how you got that money and it’s consequences. This was what investing was all about back in the 80’s which really motivated me to go towards the path in becoming an investment broker. Anyways, back to marketing. During the last few weeks, the movie has gained major publicity through posters and online trailers which really brings out the power of marketing. The trailers can be found on youtube, facebook, and twitter which nowadays many companies do to gain recognition from the public. Another thing the movie producers did was create multiple TV spots to create a sense of originallity instead of playing the same ad over and over again. Anyways, that pretty much sums up what i wanted to say and go watch the movie!