Category: Uncategorized

I was randomly browsing peoples blogs and saw what Anson Lai wrote about the distribution channels of video games, digital distribution.

Its amazing to see how developed we are nowadays compared to 10 years ago. With digital distribution, it speeds up order processing because it’s sent directly to your computer, saves a lot of costs with a short channel, and allows feedback/responses to be quickly answered because there are only 2 key players in the distribution channel, the producer and consumer. I believe that in the near future, most game companies will defer to a similar channel such as digital distribution because gamers thrive for every last bit of convenience. So the shorter the channel, the more effective your company will be when dealing with game-related products.

BC tourism is a growing industry and the importance of sustaining tourism is crucial for the province.

Here are couple facts about tourism in British Columbia:

• British Columbia hosts more than 22.5 million overnight visitors a year
• Tourism generated $13.8 billion in revenues in 2008
• Tourism returns approximately $1 billion to the provincial treasury in the form of taxes and fees every year
• Tourism is a labor intensive industry, directly employing 131,000 British Columbians, and has been one of the fastest growing industries over the past decade

Here is an interesting marketing video i like to share which was created to attract tourism in British Columbia:

Tourism BC

I realize i knew so little about this province but I sure am proud to be living in BC! Hope you enjoy the video.

I was reading an article earlier today and it caught my attention. Cigarette companies. How are Cigarette companies targeting their market nowadays? Their biggest focus nowadays is to target teenagers which is a huge growing market. Based on a study of 966 students, 53.7% has never smoked, 20.7% were puffers(smoked once or twice in their lifetime), and around 11.5% were regular smokers. This data was all based on how Cigarette companies were marketing their product at retail stores which is known as “Point-of-Sale tobacco advertising”. This type of advertising has been proven to be highly effective for tobacco companies to market their product. Currently, 90% of the tobacco industry rely of this form of advertising to increase consumer awareness. Other than retail advertising, this form of advertising includes price discounts and promotions such as “buy 1 get 1 free”. I believe this form of tobacco marketing should be banned just like how tobacco companies used to use cartoon characters in tobacco advertisments, which later was banned back in 1998. As of today, teens’ exposure to cigarette advertising at retail outlets has increased the rate of smoking amongst teens. According to the study, students who visited retail outlets with tobacco advertisements were more likely to go purchase cigarettes compared to non-frequent smokers. I believe this should be considered an unethical form of marketing even though tobacco companies are argueing that the “purpose of advertising is to encourage smokers to switch brands”, but this clearly shows that advertising encourges this deadly habit. What do you think?

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!