What did you learn about teams, yourself, and marketing?

• I learned that communication is really important when working in teams.
• I learned that marketing is more than just advertisements and promotions. The other 3Ps are also very important.

What skills did you enhance or develop, if any?

• After working on these assignments, I think my researching skills have improved.
• I also have a better understanding about the components of marketing plans such as defining target segments, stating positioning strategy, applying the marketing mix, etc.

What would you do differently next time?

• Our groups was deducted some marks for not closely following the rubric, so next time I will make sure that the whole team is clear on what is expected and make sure that are contents match what the rubric is looking for.

Connie’s post The Fall Of Groupon discussed about how Groupon is struggling to stay profitable and relevant in people’s mind.I agree with her that Groupon is in an “low-entry-barrier industry” and that the industry also seems to be in the declining stage. However, I don’t really think that Groupon will be able to reposition itself “from a transaction-based business to a long-term relationship-oriented one”. I think that Groupon’s business model of offering discounts makes it hard to develop and maintain strong customer loyalty, for people that use Groupon focuses more on deals than  on who is providing them the deals(in this case Groupon). As long as another website is able to offer better deals or that Groupon is no longer able to offer deal they are looking for, these customers will move on.

Nonetheless, like Connie said, Groupon has a strong brand name and “is very well-known in North America and almost synonymous with ‘daily deal websites’”, so as long as there is still a market for discounts and as long as companies are still willing to work and partner with Groupon, I think that it will still stay around for quite a while.

Recently in UK, HTC is forced to delay the release of their newest flagship phone, HTC One, due to deficiencies in its supply chain management. Considering how the smartphone industry is be coming out with newer and better products every other month, this delay is certainly going to cause some consumers that have pre-ordered the HTC One to consider switching to other phones.

I think supply chain management is especially important in the consumer electronics market. For example in HTC’s case, the delay has opened up opportunities for its competitors to get their product in consumers hand before HTC does. For consumers, an important consideration of buying a new phone is the specs of the phone. If consumers have to wait for a longer time to get a new product, then the product might no longer be as “new” and might not be the most innovative product out there. Also, considering how the prices of phones drop quite quickly after it has been released, the delay will definitely have negative impacts in not only HTC’s market share, but also its profit margin.

Prior to taking COMM 296, I thought that marketing is all about how to come up with a product and how to promote it and increases sales. I never really thought that supply chain is actually also a quite important element in the world of marketing. Now I understand that no matter how well a company has done in designing it’s product, pricing the product, and promoting the product, it all becomes a waste of effort it the company can’t get the product to its customers.

In her blog Why Starbucks’ Customer Loyalty Is More Lucrative Than Any Ad Campaign, Sheila Shayon talked about how Starbucks is more than just a coffee shop. The brand value and power of Starbucks is so strong that it is seen by customers as more of a lifestyle.

Compared to most companies are putting in more effort on marketing and making connections with consumers through social media such as Facebook, Starbucks seems to be taking a more laid back approach. Despite not being as active in social media interactions, Starbucks is actually one of the most “liked” brand, and receives much more “likes” and comment on posts when compared to its competitors. I think that today, social media has become a benchmark of how relevant or how well liked a brand is in consumers’ life. Therefore Starbucks’ results definitely shows how well received the company is by the people.

While other companies such as McDoanlds entering the coffee market, I believe Starbucks is able to protect itself from competition through it’s sustainable competitive advantage of having very strong customer loyalty. Starbucks can also protect itself from price war going on in the coffee industry due to its differentiation and image of being more than just any other coffee chain.

Last year Samsung came out with an TV ad. attacking iPhone 5 around the time where the phone is about to be launched. I find this ad. quite interesting because it is not only promoting and telling viewers the value of the Samsung Galaxy S3, but also attacking the phone of its competitor (although not clearly stated, it is not hard for people to realize that Samsung is talking about Apple’s phones). I also find the part at 1min. 30sec. interesting because instead of comparing the specs of phones, it is saying the the iPhone is something that older people would want to buy. In marketing terms, Samsung is trying to make the iPhone appear as a phone for older generation, which would make them a dissociative reference group and that some younger customers might not choose the iPhone to avoid from being seen as part of the group.

This Samsung ad. also reminds me of the famous PC VS Mac ads. Although I personally find these kinds of ads enjoyable, I think they are a bit childish at the same time. These types of ads remind me of when two children gets into an argument and they start talking about how themselves are better and the other person sucks.

According to this article, it seems that forums and blogs, a platform where people often use to share their true thoughts and opinions, are being “polluted” by companies through a marketing technique known as stealth marketing. An example in the article is about rigged reviews from Tabelog, Japan’s largest restaurant review service. As stated in the report:

…Tabelog’s reviews have been manipulated by third-party agents who receive payment from restaurants who want better ratings, or even to give rival restaurants bad ratings.

Similar incidents also happened in one of Taiwan’s most visited forum Mobile01, which is most well known for it’s electronic products section. Some of the writers were called out for posting products reviews that are biased towards Samsung. When comparing the camera function on Samsung’s S3 and HTC’s One X, the reviewer chose to take pictures using the S3 on a bright sunny day while using One X on a cloudy day, then continue on to claim that S3 is much better than One X. Not only so, writers also photoshopped pictures so that the screen on Note 2 looks better than it actually is. The forum’s obvious favoritism towards Samsung has also led netizens to come up with a satirical name for the site: Samobile01.    *click on image to enlarge

                 link to source                                link to source

I find this type of marketing unethical because people usually go to forums or blogs for reviews because they want to hear about the product from people that are not affiliated with the company. However, users are actually still being tricked and manipulated by the company’s stealth marketing technique. What is worse is that some companies not only have writers write biased reviews that promotes their products, but also at the same time degrades products from other companies.