Month: March 2011

The greatest lesson I’ve learned in 299 is to get to know myself in a way to better present myself. I don’t need to exaggerate on my strengths and experiences in order to stand out; but outlining my personality will already bring out my uniqueness to the world. Through strengthquest, I learned to use my strengths to represent myself in a way that no one else could be similar to myself. The resume and cover letter assignment really proved that I’ve done so from achieving less than 10% sensitivity report. The precision and professional representation of myself have built my confidence to the next level. The mock interview was also a helpful practice for me to experience how it’s like to present myself face-to-face to a person I have not met before. These practices are very helpful in a personal way which is the key point of this course because I could not have learnt this only through books and self studying. Interacting with others and presenting myself in the market could me improved through opportunities to practice which this course offers. Overall, I thought this course was relevant and I learnt something that I could not have learnt anywhere else.

Just recently I dyed my hair and I was looking for colour-treated hair products to keep my hair vibrant and nourished. As I was looking through a whole wall of hair products of different brands in London Drugs, I got fairly frustrated by all the different brands, products, packaging, size.. and in the end I came down to purely looking at the prices. Just then, a point of purchase display caught my eye. It had an Aveeno Living Color Hair Care shampoo and conditioner on sale for $5.99 each!!

I’ve always heard of good comments of Aveeno from others of this brand so I decided to give it a try! I had no idea that they even had a hair product line. After using this product for a couple of weeks I’ve noticed that not only has my hair color not faded much but it has also kept my hair soft and nourished. This was when I searched up the Aveeno website to browse around. I noticed that they’re offering a free sample for the products I’m using!! In order to get a free sample of their hair products line, I only had to fill in a little information of my own for them to recognize which of their products would best suit my hair type and my personal information for them to send me the samples and future promotions.

For once, I did not refuse to give out my information online for an exchange of a chance of a company bombarding my email inbox/mailbox of their promotions and advertisements!! Hahaha 😀 Such a promotional strategy was such effective! In fact, that reminds me of the AIDA model that I recently learned in Marketing class. First catching consumers’ attention(awareness), let them TRY your products first(interest+desire), and follow them up with coupons(action). Now i’m quite excited to try more of their products! 🙂

For the majority of the girls, shopping doesn’t necessarily mean we’re looking for something in particular, we just like to browse around, check out on new stuff and have fun! Whereas, for guys, they usually only walk into the malls when they’re dragged in them by their Moms, girlfriends, or when they really, need to buy something. They just think speding time walking around and browsing stores are a waste of time!

Although I don’t understand why they don’t enjoy shopping as much as girls do, companies have improved on their channels of marketing and promotions towards the group that are lazy to come into the stores. Other than making their stores stand out to attract people to come in, companies nowadays want to bring shopping more of a convenient, fun experience.

Channels such as online websites are really popular because not only can they browse around the products but they can also make shopping a convenience for consumers to compare products and order products online. One disadvange of online selling is that it lacks the presence of sales representatives which are really important for the companies to aid consumers to find their perfect products and aid in the decision process.

For the extremely lazy shoppers, subscribing to their websites will get latest trends in emails and mail which are forms of direct marketing. In the increasing popularity of smart phones, some companies are making apps for smart phone users to download for a convenience usage. For example, CIBC and TD banks have apps for consumers to check their balances and do online banking through their phones.

Now that we’re in the value based era of marketing, firms are really working their way to bring shopping closer to consumers, rather than waiting for the consumers to come to their stores in order to check out their products or experience their services.

The greatest lesson I’ve learnt from someone else is…

When I joined the Financial Literacy for Youth team last year, I was in a group of inspiring, brilliant individuals who all came together hoping to make a memorable conference for high school students teaching them about Time Value of Money. I personally went to this conference when I was in grade 12 and I decided to join the team in year 1 because of the impact it has made on me. I wanted to be part of this group to make changes in other students’ lives because I feel that no matter what field of study/career people go into, personal finance is something everyone needs to go through. From this team, not only did I learn the importance of saving up, but I also experienced the feeling of contributing to a group to make a change. Through going to this conference and joining their team, I found my interest in the business field while taking on the leadership role to inspire others. During the whole year, we met up every week setting our mission, brainstorming and executing our plan to make the conference happen. I learnt to take initiatives, take responsibilities and work in groups. Because of this experience, I have learnt something that couldn’t be taught in classes. Being a part of this team has allowed me to grow as a whole to take care of my personal finance while passing on the message to others around me.

Speaking of Promotions in Marketing class, I’ve been receiving some postcards in the mail from retail stores informing me about their new spring collection and inviting me for private sales events. Such companies are using all types of marketing strategies to get their customers’ attention from all the distractions, meaning all their competitors out there. By giving them my email address, they keep me updated with their new collections and sales events. Websites are an extremely powerful promotional tool because many of us spend massive time on the net and shopping online makes things so much more fun and convenient sometimes because we get to play around with mix and match with “see the look” icons when we don’t have to fight for the racks and wait in line for the fitting room..saves soo much time!!

Companies such as Guess and Coach often email and mail me their postcards making it more personal and exclusive. By joining their loyalty program, I’m getting notified and reminded with their new products while they are building on their brand awareness. This clearly shows their advertising plan is successful because not only are they generating more sales this way  by capturing our attention also giving the benefits consumers search for.

Here’s a GUESS by Marciano Fall 2010 campaign:

By doing such campaigns, companies are using emotional appeals to attract customers. It involves no words or brand name, but rather just a black and white video featuring a lady wearing the latest Marciano collection doing a photo shoot.

As we have recently heard on the news, Japan’s earthquake and tsunami have caused the country in a disastrous stage. Due to the nuclear bomb explosion, people are really aware of the radiation spread across the world. Instead of praying and helping Japan, some people are rather concerned about their Japanese product consumption and anything that would prevent radiation poisoning. Once the news announced the effects of the nuclear bomb explosion, immediately, we find crowds of customers purchasing sea salt, Japanese food products such as seaweed and Japanese udon from the supermarket.

As we learned in Marketing class, price is the willingness to sacrifice and the biggest determinant to buy. Despite the high prices bidding online for sea salt, people are still buying disregarding the incredible high prices. In Hong Kong, people are bidding for a bag of salt from $1 hkd to $50 hkd. I found this really ridiculous and just had to blog about it right away. This is a perfect real-life example of price elasticity of demand. Salt is normally a convenience good that people tend to buy when prices are low, but because of the rumors of the radiation, people are becoming less price sensitive (inelastic).

Here’s a picture of people fighting of sea salt in the supermarket in Asia:

Picture taken from: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01851/panic_1851303c.jpg

I’ve always been an “anti-apple” person, and by that I mean, I’ve always hated apple. Their products and systems just don’t match to my needs and their prices are way beyond what I’m willing to pay for. However, after the iphone4 came out since September, I see everyone around me starting to convert their cell phones to this phone. My friends have complemented this product so much that they can’t even live without it anymore. Just during this reading break, I finally walked into the apple store to play around their products to see WHAT is really getting my friends so addicted. Just then, I got caught into it.

I’ve been having the itouch4 on my mind for a while now and finally got it recently. I cannot help but keep it with me all the time!! I myself is a blackberry user, I wouldn’t have given up my berry for the new iphone 4, so I thought if I wanted all the features an iphone has but still keep my phone, the itouch would be my best choice. Just like Cheryl Chan said in her most recent blog, “”This changes everything. Again”…Everything? really? If you say so!”, she talked about her opinion with apple’s pricing. She thinks their products should keep with their current prices because Apple is customer oriented. Yes, I do agree that Apple has a good strategy. When I walked into the apple store, I was so caught onto trying out all their products just because they had so many out on the counters. I didn’t even have to ask for help and I got the experience right away. This trialability strategy is very unique to get awareness because they don’t have to have specific questions or purpose to check out their products, but rather just have them all out on counters for people to play with and browse around whenever they feel like walking in.

I’m a very tech-conservative person but I guess I gave in this time and agreed that the itouch was really worth the money 🙂 FACETIME!!