Recently, I bought Amazon’s flagship E-book reader, Kindle Voyage. There were two prices $199.99 and $219.99 USD. So what is the difference? Well the cheaper one has advertisement as screen saver, while the expensive one does not. For the $199.99 Kindle, there is no way to change or remove the advertisement, unless you contact Amazon.com and pay the $20 USD to remove it.

Picture on the left is $199.99 Kindle with Ad, and on the right is $219.99 without AD

According to Amazon, they stated that you get $20 discount (from $219 to $199) on the cheaper one because the sponsors pays $20 USD for you. Therefore, if you don’t want to be sponsored by ads for your device, you can pay that extra $20.

I find it very effective, because either way the customers are happy. Those who bought the $199.99 cannot complain about the ad because they made the decision to be sponsored by ADs. Those who pays the extra $20, don’t have the ADs. Either way customers are happy, and can’t not complaint. Also either way, Amazon makes money or gets free ADs. What do you think? And which one will you choose?

I know this is a blog for marketing class, but its near the end of the school. I want to post something fun and share with the rest of the class! There is an online mini game that are addictive and fun to play. It is easy play as well. The game is call Agar.io
Here is the link,
http://agar.io/

Objective,
You are a little bacteria, and you need to eat other bacteria to grow. However, you can only eat other bacteria that are smaller than you in size. To control your bacteria, just hover your mouse to the direction that you want to go. You split your bacteria to speed up and capture other bacteria. But you will end up into two equally sized bacteria, and put yourself in danger. You can also feed other bacteria to show friendship or lose your size. Keep in mind the bigger you are, the slower you move.
To split – space
To feed – w

Now for the Marketing time!
When you first open the webpage, there are ads! And there is internet market!
So this post is still about marketing 🙂

I came a across this interesting community website that targeted for Chinese community living in Vancouver. This site is very interesting because it is horribly designed. Even for those who understand Chinese, you might get lost in their website.  For comparison, I decided to find a similar Vancouver community website. The two website are very different. Their difference are almost polarized. I am not sure if it the Chinese Culture to have tons of messy ADs on their website. It is up to you to decide, tell me what you think 🙂

I have posted their link and pictures below, go have a look!

Chinese Vancouver Community (Van People)
http://www.vanpeople.com/

West Vancouver Community

Home

Chinese Vancouver Community Website

West Vancouver Community Website

Most of Youtube’s videos have advertisements, and you can usually skip them after 5 seconds of watching. For me I always skip them asap. Two weeks ago, while I was browsing on Youtube, I saw this A&W advertisement. As usual, I was going to skip the advertisement, but right before I click “skip”, I changed my mind and watched the whole Ad.

So what makes A&W advertisement so effective that made me watch the till the end? The advertisement begins with an A&W manager saying, “Some people might skip this Ad and never find out that the chubby chicken burger is only $3 at A&W.” While he was saying this, my mouse was waiting for the “skip” bottom to appear. When I heard “some people might skip this Ad”, it caught my attention and made me hesitate because I was going to skip this Ad. Therefore, I continued to watch the whole Ad, and find it funny and interesting. Later that night, I bought a $3 Chubby Chicken Burger to see what it taste like. A&W’s commercial is the only commercial that made me took an action. A&W won this time!

The key difference between A&W’s advertisement and other advertisement on YouTube is that A&W foresees audiences’ action.  It knows that the audience will be skipping the Ad, therefore, it mentioned “Some people might skip this Ad and never find out…” This creates a two way engagement between A&W and the audiences subconsciously:
Audience – I am going to skip this Ad.
A&W – Skip this Ad and never find out…
Audience – Find out what?
A&W – Chubby Chicken Burger is only $3
As you see, A&W is making an conversation with its audiences by talking about what audiences are doing at the immediate moment, which is skipping the Ad. This is what makes this ad unique and effective when compared with other advertisements, where they simply try to persuade you to purchase their product/service, and hoping that you are interested. These advertisement hardly grasp customer’s attention from the beginning because there are no two way engagement. Even if there is an engagement, its not about what audiences are doing at the immediate moment, like skipping the Ad.

P.S. You should really try the Chubby Chicken Burger. It is delicious, and it only costs $3 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHvDOaVM6ZA

This post is continued from earlier post “Making your customer a brand advocate”. Please read it before reading this. 🙂

I have replied to Power Theory regarding my thoughts and experience of their portable charger. They have replied back to me as soon as I emailed them. I am very impressed on how much effort they are willing to have the best customer satisfaction. They not only addressed my concerns for their product, but at the same time being pro-active to bring this satisfaction to the next level.

One of my difficulty of using their charger was that there is not a power (battery) level indicator. I have difficulty using knowing how much charge is left in this charger. Matt Dreier, the co-founder, explained to me how to find out how much charge is left.

More importantly, Dreier took a pro-active action to insure that I am satisfied with their customer service. When I purchased their power charger it was at full price of $39.95. After few days, it was on sale for $23.95. Without request, Dreier gave me a refund on the difference of $16. This is the first time ever that a company gave me a refund on the difference without me asking! It made my day!!!

Many websites provide free content, and they profit from number of views on advertisements. This kind of business model is reasonable. But today, I came across a website that shows top ten (topic) website, basically, it provides top ten or top twenty of any various topic, and provides pictures of it. The layout of website is very hard to use. I am not sure what this layout is called, but I call it “Multiple-page slideshow website”. It means that there is only one picture per page. To see the next picture, you will need to click “NEXT” which takes you to another webpage. In other words, you need to go to 20 different webpage to see all 20 images of that topic. www.pixte.com is a perfect example.

It makes the website really difficult to browse, because your browser need to reload a new webpage every time you click “NEXT”. Why do these website do this? Why don’t them put all the content on one single page, instead of multiple pages? Upon a quick research online, the answer is simple, to gain more hit-rates and/or advertisement views. In theory, it can increase the hit rate or view rate of an website by ten times if it splits the content into 10 webpages. For instance, if an one webpage content had 500 views, it will become 5000 views by splitting into ten pages. This will also increase it’s advertisement views by 10 times.

But is it really worth it for owner of the website? In short-run, yes it is worth it. It increase your view rate or click rates by as many times as you divide the content. But, in the long-run, it is your number of unique customers that counts. The reloading of a new page may be painful for your users, and they might end up going somewhere else.

Recently, I bought a portable charger from Amazon for my Note 5. The portable battery was made by Power Theory, and there was no review on Amazon.  After I have placed the order, I received an email from Matt Dreier, Co-Founder of Power Theory. The email contained a PDF version of the manual just in case I have difficulty reading the tiny manual that comes with the portable chareger, and some suggestion on using the portable charger. I thought, “what a nice customer service there.“ I quickly glanced through the email, and did not bother with it.

Another few days has passed, Matt Dreier sent me another email. He wants to see if I have any feedback on the portable charger.

Hi,
How are you Leo? I hope you are having a lovely week.

I just wanted to follow up to see if you have received the PowerJet portable charger from Amazon.

I would really love to hear your feedback and find out what you thought of it. Please reply to this email and let me know. Every email comes straight to my inbox and is read personally by me.

Your feedback will help us understand your needs even better and also reach more people. If you haven’t received it yet, please let me know so I can take a look at your order and I will track it down from here!

Regards,
Matt Dreier Co-Founder, Power Theory

P.S. We are a small business and your order means a lot to us. I just wanted to say: Thank you!!“

After glancing through this email, I was somewhat motivated to provide them some feedback. The words they use and how they use it makes a huge difference on how I perceive this company.
1. “How are you Leo? “He mentioned my name, it makes me feel that it is not some computer generated email.
2. “Every email comes straight to my inbox and is read personally by me.” Since the Co-Founder approached me and wants to start a conversation with me, It makes me feel that I am a valued customer. They really do care about me.
3. “We are a small business and your order means a lot to us.” Since they are a small company, maybe a start-up, I feel empathy for them, and want to help them out. This gives me a reason to help them.

After reading his email, it made me become their brand advocate. Maybe not everyone will feel the same way, but at least I did feel attached to this brand. If I can feel this way, then someone else might also. And that makes a difference.

I will be replying him, and update the conversations in this blog. So keep an eye on my blog. Have a great long weekend 🙂

Here is the first email

Social media has a strong impact on consumer shopping behaviour especially for on-line shopping. Other consumer’s review is something other consumers will look at before they enter in their credit card and make the purchase. I was very fortunate to find a review that revealed the dark secrete that can potentially exist on reviews of other products.

On Amazon.com, there is a $300 USD light therapy eye glass called “re-timer”. It is used to improve sleeping related disorders. Its average customer review is 4 out of 5 star, which is a pretty high rating. Upon reading the reviews, I discovered that a customer gave it a 2 star with an eye-catching title, “Re-Timer offered me $50 to change my 3 star review“. The review said that originally, this customer gave this product a 3 star review because it was not comfortable to wear and use, and it is way more expensive compare to the alternatives. Afterwards, Marketing Manager at Re-Timer offered him $50 rebate to change the 3 star review. The customer updated this conversation into the review, and demands Re-Timer to honour the $50 rebate otherwise he will drop the review to 2 stars. In the end, the review is 2 stars.

Looking at this review, I am quiet confused regarding the intention of Re-Timer. Was this $50 offer meant to improved customer sanctification? Clearly, he was complaining that the alternative are “way cheaper”. Or was this rebate meant to bribe this review, so this review can be a 4 or 5 stars instead of 3 stars? Either way, it is detrimental to the function of customer reviews. If a company can offer rebate in exchange for higher rating review to a customer, what is it to prevent this happening to another review on another product? Can we still trust the review that we are looking at?  

Re-Timer on Amazon

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