In general, the marketing plan assignment is a greatly helpful part of this marketing course. It leads students to learn the marketing process of a company step by step: first, analyze the current situation of the company; then, interpret the segmentation, targeting, and positioning of the company; finally, include the previous two parts and also suggest the company’s future plan in a video. By doing the assignment, students apply what we have learned throughout the semester to each single part of this assignment. From my perspective, this is something I would never learn from the textbook, and by doing this assignment, I have learned all the knowledge points by heart. What’s more, I also suggest this assignment to cover more of the course content because marketing isn’t all about learning from the textbook and class; it is more about doing and participating. For now, it has only covered CDSTP, SWOT, STEP, and etc. Nevertheless, I believe it will also be much more helpful to cover the 4Ps, customer behavior analysis, company’s product analysis (e.g. type of the products), etc. Then, the project will of course weigh more and contain more parts.

My group is a very productive group made up of five girls from different faculties. However, we all speak Mandarin and have Chinese backgrounds. As a result, when we are doing the assignments, we tend to understand each other more quickly and easily. The disadvantage is that we couldn’t get a better mix by including more people with various cultures. We always split the tasks equally; everyone does her parts, and then we combine all the works together. Our group meetings are always efficient as well. We also chat on the phone (we have created a chatting group using the cell phone application called WeChat) and get prepared before we meet.

Below is a picture of our group members:

Heidi Cohen is an actionable marketing expert who updates her marketing blog everyday Monday to Friday. Her blogs provide marketing related insights and information about direct and social media marketing. One of her blog topic was “5 Things Marketers Can Learn From High School Students“. Below are the five tings that Heidi listed:

1. Teens love to communicate with their BFFs constantly.

2.My smartphone is always there for me.

3. Who needs cable? Not teens.

4. It’s my social media – Adults keep out.

5. The future of Christmas: Today’s letter to Santa.

I found the first two points very interesting. It is obvious that those two points are about connections and social network. In my opinion, Heidi is absolutely right about this.

Marketing helps to build business, and marketing is based on relationships. Business is something that is done between you and me, it is not something that someone could do by her/his own. For example, one can never sell a product to himself/herself; one can never purchase something from himself/herself. Every business is done after building relationships with others. The relationships can be transactional and relational, however, it can never be done without the relationships. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that marketing helps business based on implementing relationships.

Teens are usually more flexible with their time and they do have more spare time than adults. Therefore, they connect constantly with their BFFs and they talk on their phone, text on their phone, go on Facebook on their phone, send emails on their phone, etc. What’s more, since their smart phones are always with them, it is also much more convenient for them to connect with each other. Hence, teens, sometimes, are doing much better in terms of maintaining relationships. This is definitely what we need to learn from them from a marketing perspective.

One of Ophelia Fang’s blogs is about the beauty market in China.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/fcophelia/2013/11/08/beauty-market-in-china/

I highly agree with her that women doesn’t care too much about beauty back during the Mao time. There are several reasons. Firstly, it was a hard time for China after having the World War II and the civil wars for about 12 years. People were poor and women had to farm at home. As a result, women were at the physiological and safety stages in the Maslow’s Hierarchy, and they would never think about dressing themselves or spending money to be prettier. Nowadays, people have come over the stages and now at the love, esteem, or self-actualization stages. Hence, people in China started to consider how to dress up, how to do make up, and how to be more beautiful.

Also, she commented that for women in western countries, being beautiful is usually a desire related to one’s emotion. Whereas in China usually pursue beauty to get a good job or the addition in salary. It makes sense to me. However, my reasoning might be different with hers. Compared with Chinese culture, western culture is more about individualism and Chinese culture is relatively more about collectivism. As a consequence, women in western countries tend to obey and listen to themselves more than Chinese women do, rather than considering the affects and consequences to other people. Nevertheless, China is a much more competitive country due to high population and few job opportunities, women must care more about how other people see and think about them. They never want to create a negative impression so that it influences their job opportunities. Therefore, Chinese women is more likely to stylish themselves based on whether the new style or look will get her a better job or an addition in salary.

Companies can never avoid competitions in today’s extremely competitive market. In order to stand out among all other competitors, companies must first know how to position themselves clearly and uniquely before they can succeed. Below are some examples of how competitors position themselves differently from others.

McDonalds vs. KFC

McDonalds and KFC are two famous world fast food brands. They compete in each and every way in today’s fast food industry. However, they position themselves differently. McDonalds primarily sells hamburgers, cheese burgers, breakfast items, etc., whereas KFC primarily sells chicken pieces, wraps, sandwiches, etc. McDonalds brand’s core is to provide cheap and fast food with a high level of service, whereas the brand’s core for KFC is to provide tasty chicken for acceptable price.

I found this very interesting picture above from this website: http://www.sodahead.com/fun/mcdonalds-or-kfc/question-2147821/?page=4&link=ibaf&q=&imgurl=http://images.sodahead.com/polls/002147821/kfc-vs-mcdonalds-kfc-mcdonalds-55614575767_xlarge.jpeg

Scope vs. Listerine

Scope and Listerine are two brands that sell mouth wash. A lot of researches have been conducted in investigating the different positioning of the two mouth wash brands. Scope’s mouth wash is relatively tasty, whereas Listerine’s mouth wash lakes flavor. Scope delivers a message that tasty mouth wash can definitely kills germs as well, whereas Listerine tries to convince customers that non-tasty mouth wash does a much better job in killing germs in the mouth.

WestJet vs. Air Canada

WestJet and Air Canada are two major air lines in Canada. WestJet offers more national and short-distance flights, whereas Air Canada provides much more international flights. WestJet is a problem solver; they are willing to help people and make people happy and satisfied, whereas Air Canada focuses on connecting Canada with the world.

Overall, each company has different positioning, which makes it perform better in one or more particular fields. Customers choose the company according to how they value the particular fields that the company is performing well at.

Before customers make a purchase decision, they usually recognize that they have an unsatisfied need. This need can be functional and/or psychological. A functional need example may be that Tom ran out of toothpaste and he went out to buy a new one; Tom bought the toothpaste for its functional use. While psychological example might be that Katie has a lot of skirt and she still bought a new one because it is very pretty.

Of course, if a company knows how to maximize current and potential customers’ functional and psychological needs, it would definitely increase its sale. Nevertheless, what I have observed is that the more luxury the product is, the more it is to satisfy customer’s psychological needs. For instance, when a female customer buys a Chanel bag, she most likely owns a lot of bags home; and this new Chanel bag is not her only luxury bag. Plenty of luxury brands are doing very well in satisfying customer’s psychological needs. If we think about Hermes, lot of Hermes bags are in limited editions and only VIP customers have the opportunity to see the actual bags. On the other hand, when a female customer buys a cup, there is a greater likelihood that this customer actually needs this cup to drink water at home. A cup business company designs the cup pretty and handy so as to attract its customers.

Certainly, there are some exceptions with this tendency. What we can conclude, however, is that people buy because of their functional and psychological needs. Either one of them or both of them will make customers purchase. If a company wants to increase its sale, learn whether its products are of psychological and/or functional needs, and work towards those needs.

On September 30, 2013, Apple took over number one spot in the world’s 10 most valuable brands and this result was published on the Forbes website. Why is Apple doing so well in today’s extremely competitive market? One of Apple’s secrets to success is that the company is an expert at delivering customer value which includes customer excellence, locational excellence, product excellence, and operational excellence.

Apple has one of the best customer services. There are always 5 to 10 shop assistants working in each apple store every day, so you will for sure be helped at once. If you are not satisfied with Apple’s products, you could still return or exchange the products even after a few months. Whenever there are any problems with your product, they will always try to fix it for you at no cost, even though the product is not under guarantee. Hence, Apple delivers high customer excellence.

I’m a Samsung cell phone user. However, it is not easy to locate a Samsung store if I have any questions with my cell phone or if there are any problems with it. As for Apple, it is always easy to find an Apple store in all major shopping centers; you can simply visit the store when you are doing some shopping. This is Apple’s superior locational excellence.

Besides customer and locational excellence, Apple’s product has the best quality as well. I used to buy a new laptop every year because there would already be plenty of problems with the laptop after a year. Nevertheless, the laptop I am using now is MacBook Pro which I have already used for two years, and I will do not think I need to buy a new laptop in the near future。

Finally, Apple has a high standard of operational performance. Its product line is sufficient and it has one of the highest employee satisfactions.

Overall, Apple is very good at delivering high customer value. This is why Apple has become the world’s most valuable brand.

Nowadays, increasing numbers of companies look for celebrities to endorse their products at all costs. Of course, it is a way to reap huge rewards for a brand. At the same time, I started to think if today’s celebrity endorsement has gone too far.

Many celebrities may be overexposed as they endorse too many products. As a result, customers might question the credibility of these celebrities. Tiger Woods, for instance, has been called the world’s most marketable athlete. He endorsed more than 10 brands at once. In 2009, Forbes stated that Woods was the first athlete to earn over a billion dollars in his career (before taxes). Will the customers first consider the high popularity of Tiger Woods? Or they may first think about the creditability of Woods, and so, the credibility of the brand endorsed by him?

What’s more, celebrities can overshadow the products. Thus, customers tend to focus on the celebrities, not the products themselves. Skin Care industry, for example, is wise in overshadowing their products. The models or celebrities always spend hours and hours to apply nude makeup before shooting for the products. Hence, the makeup does seem heavy, and it even presents a perfect, gorgeous, and non-makeup skin. This misleads the customers to consider that the flawless skin is due to the product. However, customers never know if these celebrities actually use the products that they endorsed, even if they tell customers that they do use them. In addition to that, customers may also buy the product just due to the influence of the celebrity, and indeed, they ignored the actual effects of the product itself.

Business and Ethics can often contradict each other. Should merchants target those customers who are not aware of the serious consequence of their product?

For example, selling cigarettes to someone who does not know about the consequences of smoking may be one of the ethical issues. Rwanda is a developing country, and the target market in Rwanda is not aware of the facts that smoking is addictive and will result in health problems in later life. Thus, to my perspective, it is indeed morally wrong to sell cigarettes in Rwanda.

First of all, I feel wrong and would never work for a company that sells any harmful products such as cigarettes. Nevertheless, if such market brings up huge profits, and the merchants would never give up this market, I suggest the company to popularize the serious consequences of the product before selling them to customers. In such case, it is completely up to the customers to decide whether or not they would like to take the risks of buying and using the products. What’s more, government or related public organizations must step out to ensure that its people are aware of the consequences before consuming any of such products.

Below is advertisement promoted by Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. This video tells about how a lady gets ready for a day after the effects of cancer throat caused by smoking. This video was posted on YouTube last year and received almost 3 million view counts until today. This is a successful example of how the public company is involved in popularizing the consequence of one product that could harm one’s health.

Anti-Smoking Ad by CDC

Below is another anti-smoking video presented by the Department of Health, UK. It is also a great example of how the public company tells the hidden harms of cigarettes.

Anti-Smoking Ad by Department of Health in UK

Last but not least, I feel the below anti-smoking commercial is extremely touchy, and I just really want to share with you all…

Quit Smoking Commercial

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