Finally, we finished the video project, which took all of us several days to do it. During the whole process, everyone pay lot of efforts, and it is quite interesting. We go through the process that we think making a video is easy at first. Then we found that there are many things that we need to think about. At last, we made everything on time. During the whole process, I have learned two parts of experience.

On one hand, this project helps me to have a deeper understanding of marketing. When we prepare the script for the video, we have to write down all marketing mix and 4P for the new segmentation. The most important thing is that we have to convince ourselves that this new segmentation is good. Thus, we have lots of discussion, and everyone shows their own ideas. After that, we can make sure our new segmentation is reasonable. At the same time, I realize that marketing is important for modern companies. A successful companies not only have to produce the products people need, they also make sure that customers can approach their products.

On the other hand, I learn more about the teamwork and the basic procedure of making a video. It sounds easy, but when we try to make it step by step there are many micro steps. We divide our work to each team member so everyone can mainly focus on their own part. We all enjoy this process that we recorded each other, and for some parts we tried many times.

I do enjoy the process of doing this project, and I learned a lot from it.

As we know, there are five main ways of entering an oversea market: export, franchising, strategic alliance, joint venture or direct investment. There are lots of factors, which may influence companies’ choices. For example, how many investment budget the company has, what kind of products the company produces and the strategy position of the new market are quite important aspects that companies should pay lots of attention to.

I agree with Yui’s claim about the Papa John’s in China. In my mind, we can analyze Papa John’s strategy in China by the three aspects we mentioned before. First of all, how many investment budget Papa John’s has. Papa John’s is the third largest pizza restaurant chain in the US with 61 million net income in 2012. As the CEO of Papa John’s said, they target China as one of its main market. Based on the cash flow and strategy, Papa John’s should have enough budget for their expansion in China with different methods like franchising and direct investment. The second one is that what Papa John’s sell. As a pizza restaurant, it provides food for eating in store, take-out and delivery. For this kind of business model, location and effective marketing methods are quite important. However, Papa John’s rent out the authorization right of the brand to another company in Shanghai. In this case, Papa John’s lose control of the selection of the store location, the uniform marketing strategy and core brand value. The worse thing is that the company in Shanghai does not check the ability of franchiser in order to make more money. The result is that more and more stores closed because of operating deficit.

I believe that every measure of entering a global market is useful for specific situations of companies. Thus, companies should analyze its own statements before choosing the method.

In Response to  Hannah Clark Steiman’s blog “Apple’s iWatch Will Need Killer Apps” in the management blog. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-06/apples-iwatch-will-need-killer-apps

As Hanaah talked in his article that many evidences shows that Apple is working on it iWatch which is known as the smart watch. The most obvious one is that Apple applied the copyright of iWatch in many countries.

First of all, I agree with the author’s idea that Apple need some killer Apps for the iWatch. As the iPhone series come to the 7th generation, the smartphone market has been well developed. Apple is forced to introduce cheaper products like iPhone5C in order to compete with companies like Samsung. Apple cannot enjoy the high margin profit again like when it is a pioneer in this industry.

In this case, Apple need some new production which can make them as a pioneer again. The smart watch market is a good choice. Although lots of companies have get into the market already as well as Samsung, the selling performance of these products are not good. These products are only suitable for some electric guys rather than everyone. Smartphone owns most functions of smart watch. That is why the author think iWatch need killer apps which can only be used easily in smart watch.

In the marketing area, this is called the diffusion of innovation. As we know, most of innovations are stopped at the innovators and early adopters stages. As I know, some companies started to develop some smart watch devices years ago. But none of them can reach the majority stage. One of the main reasons is that they can produce interesting things but people do not need it.  The same story happened to iPhone before. Before iPhone, many companies like HTC introduced several touch-screen cellphones, but the selling performance is bad because of the bad user experience.

Thus, I believe that any new products should meet customers’ needs otherwise they maybe cool but useless.

Marketing strategy in the globalization: the case of Starbucks and Levi’s

 These days, there is a popular news in China that the CCTV (Chinese official television station) compares the price of Starbucks coffee around the world.  Then the reporter made the conclusion that the price of a medium size Starbucks coffee in China is one of the highest prices in the world and even higher than the America. However, I believe the cost of labor and raw material in China is much cheaper than in America. Based on these basic conclusions, why Starbucks sell higher price in China than in America where people have a much higher average income.

In my memory, when I was in a university in China, I think people who are willing to go to Starbucks have middle or higher income and like the style of America. They may not really like coffee, but they like the feeling of drinking a cup of latte and reading a book. In my opinion, this is kind of a psychological need as not everyone can afford a coffee which cost them 3 hours salary. However, when I studied in UBC, I found that compared to people’s income, the Starbuck coffee is cheap. And people here do have culture of drinking coffee. Another example that comes into my mind is Levi’s. When I am in middle school, students who wear Levi’s jeans were quite proud. At that time, about ten years ago, a pair of the classic Levi’s 501 is about 800 Yuan (about $120). At that time, the price of similar products from a Chinese brand is about 140 Yuan. Then I believe that Levi’s is a high level brand. However, I went to the outlets in Seattle a few days ago, the price of classic Levi’s 501is about 50 to 60 dollars.

In both cases, the targeting and marketing strategy play an important role in companies’ global expansion. A company should find out who are the main potential customers and what they really want from the products. In both case, the psychological need is quite important. Thus, high price may not be a problem. In other word, high price may be a essential element.

In these days, I found a very interesting phenomenon when I view two Chinese websites called Weibo and Taobao. Weibo is a famous Chinese microblogging website, which is used by over 30% Chinese internet users and has 503 million registered users at the end of Dec 2012. Meanwhile, Taobao is the large website for online shopping in China with more than 50% market share.

The interesting fact is that every time after I search a product in Taobao, I can see lots of ads about this kind of product I just searched in Weibo. This kind of situation never happen before so I try to find out the reason for this. It is easy to found out the reason online that Taobao just brought 18% shareholding of Weibo. Both companies call this decision as the strategic cooperation. This makes me worried about the security of data we left on these websites. At the same time, I do not think it is ethical to exchange these data among companies and use them to do the marketing.

The main reason why I think this kind of marketing behaviors is unethical is that all these data belongs to customer themselves. Without customer’s permission, companies cannot give them to others or even sell these information. I admit that companies can use these data to analyze customer’s potential interest trend. However, they cannot show the exactly record for each customer. In case, it is obvious that Taobao give Weibo the information of what I just searched. It makes me feel quite annoying. In the future, if lots of internet companies share their information with each other, they will know any details of my online activities, which is terrible for us.

Thus, in my opinion, all these kinds of behavior should be supervised by government. Otherwise, People cannot have any privacy when they view websites in the future.

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