In a fresh way to attract attention to the Swedish funiture giant, they have adopted a new marketing campaign, Cats. With the help of the renowned British Marketing agency Mother, IKEA has created a new commercial in which one hundred cats are let loose in one of their trademark stores.  The quite entertaining piece which was filmed in the Wembley, London IKEA location comes with the slogan “Happy Inside”. This move on the marketing front is quite smart for IKEA for a number of reasons. First, the cat craze has already been a popular formula to attract attention. With sites such as “lolcatz” and “icanhascheezburger” already showing similar content and drawing in millions of people to their websites, it was only a matter of time before someone copied their winning formula. Also, the format in which the advertisement is being watched is quite important. In addition to being played on television it was immediately posted to youtube where it has garnered millions of hits in a matter of weeks. This format of advertisement will help IKEA in catching in the mind of all ages, as it is a family friendly and enjoyed commercial.

http://business.financialpost.com/2010/09/10/fp-marketing-ikea-and-a-store-full-of-roaming-cats/

Making of the advertisement

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced that it was purchasing South Africa’s Massmart Holding’s Ltd. In a deal worth approximately $4.6 billion Wal-Mart is making its first foray into Africa. Massmart is South Africa’s second largest retailer and primarily focuses on food sales. With this deal it will mark Wal-Marts biggest deal since its purchase of UK supermarket chain Adsa for $11 billion.  This move is quite smart on Wal-Marts behalf, as stated in the article they have been slumping in the US market due to the recession. This diversification of markets should help Wal-Mart retain a strong share price. As well this move helps for future moves into the growing market of sub-saharan Africa, which is virtually untapped by western retailers. In addition to this move Wal-Mart also displayed great interest in moving into other foreign markets such as Columbia and Japan. Overall, this move and possible future moves into foreign markets should help Wal-Mart greatly as it will allow for Wal-Mart to weather economic storms much better than their competition.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-27/wal-mart-offers-to-buy-south-africa-s-massmart-holdings-for-21-08-a-share.html

http://www.thestar.com/business/article/861311–canadian-tire-chief-shuffles-management-tells-employees-to-shape-up

The article I read is about the changing attitude of Canadian Tire. Currently their business is being beaten by fellow competitors such as Zellers and Walmart. In this article the Canadian Tire CEO Stephen Wetmore is calling on his employee’s for a change in attitude, in the midst of poor numbers and a shake-up in management. This article relates to what we are learning in class because althought Canadian Tire is not adding food to their stock they are trying to make a drastic change. As well this change is necessary to stay in competition with Wal Mart and Zellers.I personally think that this is a smart move in order to rally his employees to improve their work. In the near future, however I do not beleive that this will be enough to sustain their company and a more drastic move will be in order, whether that be adding fresh food to their stock or something else to attract a new customer base.