For our term project we decided to choose Mountain Equipment Co-op.  We were led to this decision by a simple google search that showed us that MEC had recently changed its logo by dropping the mountains.  As seen below.

The news articles associated with this search showed us that there was some public outrage from this change and our group could only ask why?

After doing some research we found out that MEC was reinvigorating itself with a completely new business strategy and we know that this was the company we wanted to choose.  Our first assignment focused on MEC’s roots.  A place for outdoor enthusiasts to find sustainable products for almost anything associated with the outdoors.  This was the MEC we all knew.  However, we found out that MEC, financially speaking, was not doing to well.  In order to fix this MEC was planning on repositioning itself in the market while still remaining loyal to its current member.  With the increased Urbanization of the Canadian population MEC is starting to carry yoga, cycling and running gear more useful for its new demographic.  All this is associated with new products and promotional strategy which we found incredibly useful and interesting for our project.

Overall, our team was very good.  We all participated equally while everyone was welcome to facilitate conversation while brainstorming for our project.

Today the world of Marketing is much different than it was a decade ago.  Now companies have multiple platforms to reach their consumers these include tv spots, billboards etc.  In this new age companies are now more frequently using other platforms such as twitter, facebook, instagram, google + all other forms of social media to reach their consumers.

Personally, as a person who does not use these sites or visit them often I have alway questioned the value of this type of marketing.  So this blog post will try and summarize the benefits of social media marketing.

The main purpose of social media marketing is to gain website traffic or attention through different platforms of media.  The strategy behind this is quite interesting as efforts are focused on created content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it.  If this is successful a corporate message can be sent from user to user and resonates stronger as the message comes from a third party source as opposed to the company itself.  Similar to the old word of mouth technique, social media marketing is a form of earned media.

One of the strongest arguments for social media marketing is that it is accessible to anyone with internet.  Also it is a really inexpensive way to implement marketing campaigns.  Finally and most importantly is the fact that people love using it and will continue to do so as Lance Brown outlines in his blog.

This is why people value these social media sites so much and why their IPO’s have been so successful.

Market research is a key pre requisite to any marketing decision a firm makes.  In the past marketing research was mostly conducted through focus groups, looking at census’s, interviews with individuals and surveys.

Later, with the progression of technology it moved onto scanner data and loyalty programs which enabled firms to recognize what their consumers were purchasing.

More recently, over the past few years technology has dramatically increased and now a lot of market research can conducted without any knowledge of the consumer.  A good example of this is Google as it is able to make a profile of you based on what you have researched on the search engine.   One of the issues I have with this is that there is no trade off of value between consumers and marketers.  For example, when looking at scanner data or loyalty programs at a grocery store, the consumer is trading his or her information for cheaper prices.  With google the consumer is not receiving any benefit but Google is able to create an in depth profile of its user.

Moreover with technological change we now have consumer information stored electronically and its security can be questionable.  An example of this is Playstation as in 2011 over 77 million consumers personal data was “breached” by an external source.  Luckily credit card information was encrypted however all other information about Playstation users would be accessible by these hackers.

Technology has made it easier for marketing research.  Still there are a few ethical questions that do arise with how consumer information is obtained and the security of that information .  I feel that consumers in general need to be more informed about todays marketing research techniques in order to understand what information they are giving to these firms and how some of their personal information is stored.