In this article, “Restauranteur adopts ‘pizza box of 21st century’ “, the owner of Ali Baba Pizza has innovated the pizza box that is not only made from recycled cardboard, but also solves the problem of eliminating the “need for disposable plates as well as plastic wraps”. This new design for this box offers customers who purchase Ali Baba’s pizza to utilize the box for plates, because the top of the box “breaks down into plates while the bottom folds into a convenient storage container for leftovers”.

This packaging used by Ali Baba is very sustainable and appeals to customers who care for the environment and along with that the company is capturing this segment of consumers. This innovative design for the new box allows Ali Baba to establish a point of difference and although at the beginning the cost may be higher, in the long term the pizza company will be successful; this is true because it will be providing customers with additional benefits from the actual packaging. No other pizza place is currently doing this because they believe it adds more cost, however the benefit exceeds the cost for the customers and the overall value is higher in the end. This is a sustainable competitive advantage especially if it is patented.

I am responding to Robby Gill’s post “COMM 296 Ethics in Marketing: Inflated MPG Numbers”. To start off, this post was very interesting. I would like to bring the aspect of brand image and customer loyalty into attention. Robby Gill stated that Huyndai and Kia will have to adjust their marketing strategy in order to solidify brand image; in fact at the moment Kia and Hyundai definitely need to reacquire customer trust in order to gain customer loyalty in the long run. Offering credit to whom they did wrong to may be one way as stated in the post, however they need to develop a key marketing strategy to change up how consumers are currently viewing the Kia and Hyundai brand.

Offering credit would just be a short-term solution however these brands need to consider a new approach and developing a new marketing strategy that would be sustainable and would give the companies a long term competitive advantage over competitors. It will be difficult because they have not established themselves in the automobile market, however if the money is spent in the right places while using a strong long term marketing strategy, then the company may be able to see success in the future. As for now, they need to regain customers’ trust and a quick fix will only last for so long…