Don’t you feel special now?

Don’t you feel loved when advertising speaks right at you? The things you love right on the homepage, your google search or even email.

Collecting data is a company’s most crucial tool in order to satisfy customer’s needs and wants; this is done through IT and Information Systems. Following the Norman-Longworth-Information ladder companies turn data, collected by Management Information Systems (MIS), to wisdom, applying the collected data for decision making about unique marketing strategies, also called Business Technology Management (BTM). It’s so important, Sauder has a MIS Division, recognized as one of the world’s leading programs.

Many, many companies are using this tactic to build a more personal relationship with their customer; it’s obvious that a firm can’t send an employee to your doorstep to discuss your preferences, however through collecting data, firms are able to have an indirect conversation with you. Have you ever wondered what use your postal code could be to a shop? It may seem nothing to you, but a huge information base to the company, in order to group customers into different categories. Here, Apple gives a detailed outline what information they collect of users.

As mentioned on Poeny Au‘s and Tiana Mea‘s blog post, Pinterest uses this tool particularly to feature similar products that have been liked by the user.

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Apple fails to address Chinese market effectively

The global smartphone industry is growing at a rate of 50% a year, whereas the chinese smartphone industry has a growth rate of 108%.

Apple has recognized this opportunity of expansion by showing interest through the release of the iPhone 5C and official launch in Beijing. These are small steps. But are they effective?

A chinese handset provider, Xiaomi, is following Apple’s design, however runs on Android and sells at a price of $330, while iPhone5C is priced $733, the difference in price makes the iPhone unattractive to China. Also, Xiaomi sells to costumers online, rather than through a distributor like Apple, which incurs more costs. The Direct Buying Model helps Xiaomi establish demand information more quickly and provide access to customization. Another competitive advantage, Xiaomi customizes it’s own software, adding Chinese apps that are legalized by the government, where as AppleApps such as GoogleMaps is unavailable in China. Apple is facing a rivalry, only owning 4.8% of the chinese smartphone market share, where as Xiaomi owns 5%. The image of low-price-high-quality Xiaomi has established even edges out HTC.

Xiaomi vs Apple video- Discussion of the differences and similarities between the two companies. Very interesting!

Article source: “Taking a bite out of Apple“, published September 14th, 2013 from: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21586344-xiaomi-often-described-chinas-answer-apple-actually-quite-different-taking-bite-out