Billboards, television commercials, pop-up ads – there are numerous ways that a company can advertise to consumers. Mobile marketing, also known as text-message marketing, is one of these methods. In this modern era, consumers are almost never without their mobile phones to stay “connected”, which makes text-message marketing so appropriate. But is it effective?

Text-message Marketing

Have you noticed how more and more retailers are beginning to ask you to sign up for memberships, free of charge? Don’t you find that rather odd? Of course, giving out free memberships is beneficial to the retailers themselves too, as they gain access to your personal information, such as phone number and email address. As John Jantsch had listed, text-message marketing makes consumers feel valuable, is easy to setup, and is relatively cheap. (Check out his blog, Duct Tape Marketing! It offers insightful information on marketing in a witty way).

Think about this: do you check your phone or your email more often? As a teenager, I would say we access the former more often in a day. Statistics from Business News Daily have shown that 98% of SMS and MMS messages are viewed, whereas most business-to-consumer emails are ignored. This points to the idea that text-message marketing offers significantly higher value and return on investment (ROI) than most other forms of marketing.

Does text-message marketing work on you, or do you think it’s just a waste of time?

Resources:

http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5416-text-message-marketing-boost-sales.html

http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2013/10/24/text-message-marketing/

Starbucks’ use of information technology demonstrates how technology can be used across all industries, even the coffee market. As Jessica posted on her blog, “Starbucks also showed that it understands their segments’ needs very well”.

Through the use of technology, Starbucks not only put extra value to its name, it also serves as a form of marketing. Alongside of launching an app, Starbucks has also recently started a Twitter campaign, “Tweet-a-Coffee”. With the vast network on Twitter, Starbucks is trying to reach a large platform, encouraging spontaneous gifting on Twitter.

Tweet-a-Coffee

This e-Gifting platform makes Starbucks more readily available to an online market, a market that it has never been big on before.

Resources:

http://news.starbucks.com/news/starbucks-launches-tweet-a-coffee-encourages-spontaneous-gifting-on-twitter

Buyer power is certainly not the only factor that defines the success of a business. Just as Andrea had said in her blog, “the average Chinese consumer has buyer power against the supermarket giant”.

Having lived in China for the past decade of my life, I can say with certainty that Walmart is not a key player in the supermarket industry in China as it is in America. With such a large demographic and so many supermarket options, most Chinese housewives and supermarket-goers would pick alternatives such as Carrefour and Century Mart due to familiarity and brand loyalty.

Even so, it has been aggressively opening stores in China since 1996 with its abundant resources. To set a point of difference apart from other supermarkets, Walmart frequently donates money to charities. But while Walmart is surviving in the immense market that is China, it is not flourishing.

China has been a greatly coveted market to enter in the past few years for many multinational companies, but it takes more than just great finances to thrive there.

Resources:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/walterloeb/2013/11/06/how-walmart-will-fight-to-be-successful-in-china/ 

People writing about clothing and what’s “in” is kind of a big thing now. Since the inception of LOOKBOOK.nu back in 2008, the popularity of fashion blogging has intensified.

Following fashion trends or creating your own identity through how you dress has become a big part of teenagers’ lives. So has blogging. But while blogging was once simply for expressing oneself, it has now become a full bloom business – that is, if you become a successful blogger.

Many Lookbook users often link their outfits to their personal blogs, helping them promote their own websites. Take Chiara Ferragni and Ebba Zingmark as examples. Having started their careers as fashion enthusiasts on Lookbook, posting outfits weekly, they have now become international models and entrepreneurs. Through their popular blogs, The Blonde Salad and Ebba Zingmark, respsectively, they have gained international popularity and made thousands of dollars as more and more fashion brands approach them to advertise on their blogs.

Goes to show even the easiest of tasks can become profit-making, doesn’t it?

Resources:

http://www.wwd.com/media-news/digital/a-closer-look-at-the-business-of-blogging-5942163

Technology is used in essentially every industry today, be it to produce outputs or to organize data, and the healthcare industry is of no exception.

Any large medical would use technology such as Management Information Systems not simply because it is helpful, but because it is necessary. With technology continuously advancing, upgrades in important facilities such as hospitals should be made as quickly as possible to provide more benefits to society.

One of the main tasks that professionals must undertake in hospitals is do routine checkups on their patients. SmartRoom, one of the most recent innovations for the medical industry, offers to do just this. Smartroomsolutions has also added some business rules that aid practitioners in prioritizing tasks by developing a workflow analytics module to “let clinicians and managers know if and when staffers are falling behind”. SmartRooms have also guaranteed higher ROI’s for hospitals as they will increase patient satisfaction, and help nursing unit with workflow balancing.

This piece of technology belongs in more hospitals, and is much more effective for the always tired nurses, don’t you think?

Resources:

http://www.informationweek.com/healthcare/clinical-systems/hospital-rooms-get-smart/231901129