Month: October 2010

Despite how well a marketing strategy might be, I think what matter the most is the people that are actually carring out the strategies. This is especially important for a brand name and for supermarkets. I myself would actually evaluate the satisfactory level of customer services provided by a store, which I believe represents the opinion of a fraction of the population. Now I am going to share some true stories that happened to people around me.

Jojo likes to and has the ability to shop at high quality cosmetic departments, but the fact is she appears to be very young and small in her appearance. When she is shopping at some counters selling brand name products, not in Canada though, she always gets ignored or suffers from contemptuous attitude of the sales person. She is so upset that she would rather go to a more expensive store to get the same product but with the service that she deserves.

My sister was viewing some products one time while talking with her friend on the phone. The sales was impatient about waiting  and started complaining to her colleague. When the phone call is finished, my sister got in an argument with the sales person and I talked to the manager of the store about the inadequate serving attitude we got. Even though that was something that my sister liked about, she didn’t make the purchase. After that event, we never went into that store once more.

When I get fliers in my mailbox, I tend to throw them out. By the way, I think this is an ineffective promotional method, and it is unfriendly to the environment as well. But if I got one that’s handed to me by a person, I will give it a look and give it back to save some trees from being chopped up if I am not interested at all.  Most of the time, I took action in response to the ones handed to me because they are either appealing to me, or it was relatively easy for me to do something about it in terms of time and location. I found this to be better than some junk in my mailbox.

Afterall, marketing is a human-oriented study which marketers try to understand their customers better, then, shouldn’t they put more effort into serving them better as well? It is so important that customers get treated nicely and respectfully, because a bad experience gets propagated 10 times faster than a good one.

This is foursquare’s commercial. I think foursquare is a brilliant idea. It is fun, attractive, easy to do, and it’s got some very important marketing aspects in it. For small businesses and especially local businesses that do not have a big brand name, becoming partners of foursquare and offering special discount to foursquare users is going to increase their businesses and popularity in its community. It is a really great promotional tool for small businesses. It is also making observations of consumer spending habit by making users check in at stores they go to, so it can analysis the data and sell the data to companies that are interested. More importantly, consumers offer the data volunteeringly for an exchange of discount at specific stores, which does not cause foursquare anything. At the end, back to the question I asked: “Could Foursquare be the next most popular promotional tool for small businesses in the world?” As it was founded in 2007, and only in 3 years it has attracted 3 million users worldwide, I think it is quite possible.

Hi everyone, back with some interesting things up there. The official site is www.foursquare.com , so check it out and  tell me what do you think about it. I personally think that it is pretty cool, and the video in this post and on the official website will tell you how it works.

I am not sure if any of you are already foursquare users, but I am going to join. In a nutshell, foursquare is an online social interface where you can find tips and advice for things you must do and things you should avoid when you are going to stores, restaurants, and other locations around the city. You can also connect with old friends and find new friends go to your favourite stores.

To use its service, you need to sign up for an account, which is free, and have a mobile phone that can access the internet. It then automatically links your account with your facebook and twitter account so you only need to share your tip once if you are going to do so. Later on you can start checking in locations listed on foursquare using your phone and the foursquare account will use the GPS system to confirm your check in. You can read tips written by others regarding that location so you can have a better experience. By checking in enough times, you unlock badges, so it is like an adventure game that you got to play in person and the mission is to unlock the city. If you become the person that checks in most often at a location that is linked with foursquare.com, you become the mayor and can enjoy discounts at certain store. You can also establish new locations that people can check in later.