Branding is a very important component of a company. When you think of Nike, you might think of ” Just Do it.” When you think of TOSHIBA, you might think of ” Leading Innovation”. The fact that you know the brand and can associate positively with the brand will enhance the value and satisfaction you get from using the product or service. As a result, almost every firm spends a lot of time and money on branding.

To earn a good brand name, strong brand service is needed. McDonald’s, for example, is very well-known for its fast service, consistent food taste and quality and consistent pricing.

Another very important point for good branding is to understand the hidden valuable attributes and ideas that are different from the majority of the similar business.  A special branding is also the key to successful branding.For example, Lululemon is using a very unique branding method. Nike and Adidas want their consumers to associate words like“speed, comfort and high quality“with them. Lululemon also builds its brand as high quality  sports wears. The special part of Lululemon, however, is to let consumers to associate the brand name with a healthy and active way of living. Lululemon has successfully achieved this by letting its staffs work out every morning before starting to work in Lululemon retail-stores, which is really unique among so many famous sports brands.

Searching for information is the second step of consumer decision making process. If a person what to buy skincare products, it is very probable that he (she) will search the websites of different skincare brands, trying to evaluate between the alternatives.  According to the blog, color is a very important factor to make a website visually appeal to a company‘s target audience. “Color instantly sets off visual triggers that point to a big yes or no in the mind. That means color alone can make or break your marketing. ” 

I cannot agree more. In a time-poor society, people usually judge the value of a website based on their first impression. Different colors give people different feelings. Since a different color can change a person‘ s feeling towards a website in a few seconds, companies should do more research about their potential consumers and choose the most suitable color for both their products and web page. From my perspective, the demographic background plays the most important role in this  decision making process.

A successful marketing campaign needs a lot of research on the target market. Although color is a very important factor for marketing, there are still a lot of other elements too. I believe that  marketing is like a communication between buyers and sellers. If sellers are able to let the buyers feel comfortable and satisfied, then buyers are more likely to purchase their products.

Link: http://eleventygroup.com/site/2013/04/09/6-reasons-color-can-make-a-big-difference-in-your-marketing/

Although market search is wildly used before companies develop a  new product line, there are a lot of disadvantages associated with this method.

The first disadvantage of market Research is that this method usually consumes a lot of time. A typical market research takes up to six to seven weeks. Whether a company is using existing employees or hiring a company to conduct the market research, it is easy to assume that the research is very costly due to the big amount of salary and other required payments caused by the long research period

Moreover, sometimes the market researches conducted can be misleading.  For example, people usually walk into Walmart and Best Buy to see and try what they want to buy and use Best Buy as products‘ showrooms. However, they actually buy it in another online retailer(usually via Amazon). It is really shocking that Best Buy even creates new store formats to combat this “showrooming”. This is caused by A study by comScore in April 2012 shows that 35% of respondents claim that they have bought products in Best Buy because of the showroom.  However, how much are they doing this? The respondents simply avoid to say that they are taking advantage of Best Buy to embarrass themselves during the survey. The market research above, apparently, is very misleading.

Therefore, companies need to be careful and try their best to choose the best market research method in order to reduce market research disadvantages. Hopefully in the future, some new market research methods will be created which are faster, cheaper and better.

The development of social media has changed marketers’ behaviours significantly. Before the popularization of the Internet, a lot of marketers were able to take advantage of social media to control potential consumers’ views about their products. However, with the development of social media, especially the Internet,consumers are no longer receiving information passively from marketers. Instead, they start to share their opinions towards different products by commenting on various brand’s official website, blogging, etc.

The conversation for marketers turned from the one-way nature of traditional media to a two-way dialogue that could not be ignored. Social media has shifted the conversation so forcefully that consumers have an unprecedented level of control over brands, rapidly turning themselves into a brand’s best advertisers.

From my perspective, “consumer-advertisers”  are way more powerful than the real advertisers. The first reason is that “Consumer-advertisers” are more objective towards the products that they have used. There is hardly any mutual benefits between them and the producers. The second reason is that”Consumer-advertisers” are consumers who have used the products themselves. Therefore, they tend to be more convincing and are regarded as more trust-worthy.

Since what consumers think really matters, I think that the new marketing trend should be focusing more on the searching engine optimization (since most consumers usually just read the first web page), instead of just paying attention to better TV advertisements.