Month: November 2010

According to this Vancouver Sun Report, the majority of products marketed as green have been attached to corporate greenwashing. TerraChoice – an environmental marketing brand based out of Ottawa launched an investigation of over 5,200 products. The investigation resulted in findings that over 95.6% of the products contained at least one misleading green claim.

The finding also contained dramatic results for children’s toys and baby products in particular, with 100% of children’s toys and 99.2% of baby products containing a misleading claim about their environmental impacts.

Greenwashing is defined as “the act of misleading consumers about the environmental practices of a company, or the environmental benefits of a product or service”. It is a problem becoming increasingly rampant along with the wave of environmental hysteria (warranted and otherwise), with 30.9% of all products carrying a “certification-like” logo, leading consumers to believe the product was approved by a green third-party – a figure up from 23.3% last year.

With this news, it is clearer than ever that finding environmentally friendly products is really quite unclear. Without better regulation of such advertising and promotion, consumers may continue to support non-environmentally friendly products unknowingly, despite their good intentions.

Engadget is a technology weblog centered around consumer electronics. Launched in 2004, Engadget is updated several times a day with news on current and future gadgetry: ranging from cars to cellular phones. Engadget is an entrepreneurial group as they are pursuing a business venture by changing the way information about consumer electronics are communicated with, well, consumers. They, and other blogs such as Gizmodo, are making money by hiring (or being) gadget gurus to express their opinions on these consumer electronics between posting insider and/or first-run information to the public.

Weblogs are a low-risk, high failure rate industry, but Engadget and other such sites are making a good run at it by executing the idea of providing consumers with expert-like opinions on a more personal level.

High profile clothing designer Derek Lam recently announced that he will be collaborating with online shopping giant, eBay, on his next line of clothing. The former Michael Kors assistant stated that he will be revealing a full line of clothing during New York’s Fashion Week in February. Online shoppers will then be invited to vote on the specific designs they’d actually pay for. After vote collection, Lam will send the designs to production and will be available for purchase next summer at “accessible” prices. Lam is touting this strategy as “crowd-sourcing”; a term normally used to describe business strategies including consumers submitting their own created designs. Analysts say this strategy is more “crowd-curating” than anything else.

This strategy will be good for both consumers and business, says Lam, as it calls for a “direct and intermediate” dialogue between the two. In a press release, Derek Lam stated “eBay’s technology offers me a unique and innovative opportunity to reach new and existing customers directly, and to create fashion they desire.”. While some middle-man businesses fear that this will eventually cut them out of the picture when consumers purchase clothing, most analysts believe that it will take some time before designers and consumers will consistently have a direct interaction exclusive of the traditional store-front.

The line will be exclusive to eBay.

Apple’s iPad has been receiving tons of praise for it’s revolutionary, change everything take on technology. And according to a recent Nielsen Company report, it generally has. The report is based off a 5,000 strong sample size of the tablet’s owners and has revealed some promising news: people use their iPads to access media.

As it turns out, more tech users are using their iPad for content like books, TV shows and magazines on the device than their iPhones. This is mostly due to the iPad’s larger sized screen, likely giving users a more enjoyable viewing/reading experience. This is great news for movie and book companies as it means more people are paying for this media content. Before the iPad’s release most people would be illegally downloading movies or borrowing them (along with books) from the library. These actions left serious dents in the revenue streams of said companies.

The next step for Apple and the companies who create apps for the iPad is to push app downloads even more. Surprisingly enough, only about two thirds of the iPad’s owners have downloaded apps. If Apple can increase this number to over the 90% range, Apple and it’s Apple Store constituents can see even higher amounts of print and video content will be accessed legally.

Nielsen is a marketing research company, and as we have discussed, their findings are very important to finding areas of weakness in business climates or situations. Clearly in Apple’s iPad situation, they’d like to make a huge push towards app sales, a notion largely thought to be hugely successful for Apple. At this time, for the iPad, this is not the case – showing the importance of marketing research.