Month: October 2010

I hate what this picture depicts, but it’s a real fact about women…

http://primepuzzle.com/leeslightest/shopping.html

After some meditation, I still have no clues why women tend to shop and buy more than men do, even though I am actually one of them. To answers my question, I went to google “why women shop”.

From Girl.com, I knew that women tend to shop more nowadays because they are more financially independent, better educated, and I think most importantly, they are better in being able to make their own decisions. But men have those characteristics too! Men have been financially independent, educated and able to make their decisions, but why they tend to do shopping a lot lesser than women? I went on to continue searching the answer.

Then I have found an article in Businessweek.com talking about the rising female consume power. It says that even though women earn “only 78 cents for every dollar a men gets, they make more than 80% of buying decisions in all homes. Unlike men, women incline to do more research, shop more and are less likely to be influenced by ads.” This surprised me a little because I always thought women often do impulse buying; but instead, they don’t. As women always play the role of caregivers, it is no wonder they make mostly all the buying decisions at home. It could be that men are too lazy to look for goods that they always rely on women to do shopping for them, the “desire” to shop has been declining from day to day. So I took men’s laziness as one of the answers.

Also, I found that men don’t actually value the shopping experience like women, because they always think they have something more important to do (like playing video games since they wake up till they sleep on weekend). That in fact is so true because I once asked for my housemate’s help to carry a big bag of groceries and he handled that back to me after a while, and the stunning reason he gave me was he felt embarrassed to carry that around. Women view shopping as something interpersonal, engaging and satisfying, but apparently men don’t see it that way. The different perspectives that both genders have greatly contribute to the reasons why women shop more – imagine they still have to shop on behalf on men!

I found this!

Why??

Curiosity drove me

to flip the sheet

Perhaps it’s not something new on newspaper

But it gave me a little fun and smile while reading!

Ever wonder what Big Mac is in other languages?

McDonald’s: BigMac is BigMac

The message: Despite the differences in culture, languages, traditional values, demography and etc., Big Mac remains to be Big Mac. =) Simply but salient, Mcdonald’s positions its products to be irreplaceable in the market, not even its product names. Want to get Big Mac? Go Mcdonald’s!

It is one of the thousands interesting and insightful advertisements I found in “I Believe in Advertisement” advertising blog. Not much words you could find in the blog, it’s all flooded with advertising pictures and videos from the globe. It serves mainly as a reference point for advertising professionals. I would strongly recommend this blog to people who don’t like reading (like me)! =D Get a blast with ads!

The first thing that “pop” in my head when I read an email from my friend :  I want to have those bags!

Do you feel like getting one (or few) of them as well? You will realize that those companies not only create the desire to purchase their products, but also the desire to actually get their bags! Because the marketers make the bags so nice to carry around, it does provide some sort of post-purchased satisfaction to customers. I would certainly love to shop at those places if they do provide me those cute and funny bags.

Also, making the bags hilarious and funny to be carried around is one of the brilliant ways for companies to advertise on their products as it is way much cheaper to advertise on bags than on television, newspapers, magazines, billboards, etc. The coolest thing of adopting this advertising strategy is that they actually make customers speak for them by carrying the bags around! How simple it is to distribute powerful messages to potential customers who has similar tastes as the purchasers (people with similar thoughts, values and thinking styles will most likely work or get along, don’t we?) in a low-cost yet effective way.

Some interesting comments about bank marketing in Xiang Rong’s blog I have just found. He commented on the student-friendly services that TD bank provides and thought it is so worthwhile to open a savings account in TD because of the $50 incentive (and he did encourage me to get it!). And one year earlier when I first came here, I recalled one of my friends also recommended me TD due to the “juicy” offer it gives and also the friendliness of staffs.

In my point of view, TD’s marketing strategy works pretty well on students. It attracts students through the back-to-school offer and charging them ZERO annual fees, which I see is a critical step in getting new customers. What TD aiming for is not students’ tremendous savings (as I don’t think students would save a lot), but a new, potential long-term customer pool. Students may not invest or purchase funds during their school years, but they will when they are part of the workforce a few years later. In other words, the core idea of the back-to-school incentive and student-friendly services behind is having the young customers to try its services, love it, and are slowly converting them into loyal customers. At the same time, it also tries to create peer influence especially in colleges and universities. When students feel good about their services, they will actually share that with their friends (just like what Xiang Rong did =D).

*Frankly speaking, I did feel a little bit remorse for missing the chance to get that as I see more and more poeple around me are so excited in getting that 50 bucks!