Liz Da Wiz

“Neo Wiz Games” is targeting young women market with the old games nowadays. They are using the old games which are like cash cows from the Boston Consulting Group product protfolio analysis such as “BogleBogle” and to attract young women. They are using the same characters from the game but with more varieties. I think it is a great way to extend the product life cycle because consumers can feel the childhood memories again, but still enjoy the games with the greater varietis. Also players can now play the game online so they can play the game with other gamers (which wasn’t possible in the past). Also I think  “Neo Wiz Games” was able to advertise new games successfully when throwing an event to promote the old games with the newer versions because consumers were already aware of the brand and interested in the old games.

I was hanging out with one of my freinds during the weekend at the cafe near my place and found this drink named “MASH”. My friend and I decided to try it because it looked very new and tasty. (also it was grapefruit taste, and my friend loved anything which was grapefruit taste!!!! ) But after we tasted it, we both were so dissatisfied with it. it was nothing but just a grapefruit taste soda, and the taste was so diluted. And we suddenly start to think about what just happend to us related to marketing. We bought the drink because the packaging was nice, and the packaging gave us a nice image of that drink without we noticing. But when we checked the ingredients and all the information on the bottle about the drink, it wasn’t 100% juice, soda pop, nor the drink which we can get energy or vitamins. And on the bottle it said that it is “something to drink other than just water”. I think this drink succeeded to attract customers, but failed to satisfy them. People may buy this drink at first because of its nice look, but it is less likely to buy them again.

Many loyal consumers of Apple in Korea were waiting for November 9th to come.

But on November 9th, Apple dissapointed and failed to satisfy their loyal customers.

Apply was suppose to start selling ipad on November 9th in Korea, but they delayed the sales date to 20th due to the pricing problem. Apple wasn’t so sure about the price of ipad.

It wasn’t their first time to delay the date due to the pricing problem.

Some of the Apple’s loyal customers even got the day off at work so they can get ipad as soon as they can,

and now it seems like they are really angry about the delayed date.

I think this delayed sales date will affect Apple’s image a lot.

Now many of Koreans think that Apple is playing with them and not respecting the Korean customers.

I knew that the pricing is very important before, but I did not know that pricing can cause such a big problem.

But from the Apple’s delay, I learned that pricing is actually more important than I thought.

Apple lost many of their Korean loyal customers due to this problem, and I think it will effect their sales of ipad in Korea a lot.

A famous Korean singing group, Girls Generation is getting more and more popular in Japan nowadays.  In Korea, Girls Generataion has an image of more like as young, cute, and good looking female singers but not that talented in singing. The picture below is Girls Generation in Korea.

And the picture below is Girls Generation in Japan.

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In Japan, Girls Generation has a total opposite image to Korean one. Their image is more mature and true artist like. And you can see the difference clearly from the picture. In Korea, Girls Generation is a teen idol and they were targeting the teenagers, but in Japan they targeted older consumers rather than teenagers because Japan is already full of teen idols and there is no more room for them. I think this is the reason why Girls Generation was able to succeed in Japan.

 Generally, products selling at homeshopping channels have image of poor quality in Canada, but not in Korea. Homeshopping industry is huge in Korea. And three years ago, few foreign car companies like Chysler and Ford hired some of homeshopping channels in Korea to sell their cars. The sales was poor, but they are still hiring some of home shopping channels due to other reason and not because of selling the cars through homeshopping channels. It was because of the advertising effect. Usually, it is hard to show all the qualities that a car have in a short advertisements which are usually less than a minute. But through the homeshopping channels, car companies can advertise their cars with professional for about an hour, so it increases the brand awarness of the car companies very affectively. One of the car companies said that they can only sell less than 5% of their cars (in Korea) through the homeshopping channels but they still hire them due to these reasons.

I was surfing the net and found an article about the personal electronic device cases. The article said that the sales of personal electronic device cases has increased 65% more than the last year due to to increased popularity of smart phones such as iphones and blackberry.  Afer reading the article, I thought that personal electronic device cases can be a good example of creating new wants. People who made the digital camera cases, cell phone cases and other electronic cases created the new wants from new products. In the past  when there were no smart phones, digital cameras and other elctronic devices, there was no wants for electronic device cases. And people nowadays tend to have stronger individual characteristics and like to express themselves. And choosing the cases that describe there personalities became a fashion like choosing what to wear.

Dayoung Youn got the first place at the “2010 SBS Super Model Contest” on October 5th, 2010. Many people were suprised by the result due to her height. She is 168.4cm and she is the shortest super model in the history in Korea. I think she was able to get the first place because she knew how to promote herself and changed her demerits into merits. Many judges gave her the highest score among all the participants of the contest because of her confidence even if she was very short as a model. She got the first place among 1400 models. And at the end of the contest, when she had interviews with press, she said that actually she wants to be an actress or a singer instead of model. She also said that she just wanted to do some modeling jobs before she become an actress. I think she is using the noise marketing so she can be an actress and get famous at the same time. Because 168cm tall super model can be a hot issue to talk about.

     Every summer, I go back to Korea to spend time with my family. And when  go back to Korea, I usually buy my clothes at online shopping mall. The online shopping mall industry in Korea is getting bigger and bigger dramatically. And sometimes when I shop online, clothes that I ordered doesn’t fit me well becase I am shorter than average Korean women height. And this summer, I found out that there are several online shopping mall only for short people like me. At first, I thought that those shopping malls wouldn’t make much money, but actually most of them made more money than normal online shopping malls. It was because they were using the advantages of niche market well. Those online shopping malls for short people sold clothes with higher prices but people were still buying their clothes because it fitted them well. Some of them even had their unique designs of clothes which make short people look taller. They knew how to satisfy  minor people’s needs and wants.

   In February 2009, there was a series of advertisements which was very popular in Korea. It was the series of documental advertisements about one family. The first episode was about the pregnancy of a baby, the second one was about birth of a baby and the last one was about the baby’s first birthday. They were advertisements of  water purifires of a  company named Woongjin Coway. In the first episode, the advertisement emphasized that it only takes 5 minutes for the water that the mother drank goes to the baby during the pregnancy. The second one said that when the babies are born, 80% of their bodies are consisted of water. And the last one showed that how much the baby who drank the water from Woongjin Coway’s water purifier grew so well. All three episodes put emphasis on the effects of Woongjin Coway’s water on  new born babies.

   It seemed like everyone in Korea loved the advertisement because it was documental. They were about the real family and it was a real story, so it was  more influential an engaging  than any other normal advertisements. I think it was a great idea to make the advertisements with a real strory, but I didn’t really like the advertisements because it was using guilt appeal to every mother. The advertisements moved peoples’ (mostly mothers’) minds very well, but as much as they moved people’s minds, they also made them feel guilty about not using their products. I think Woongjin Coway made very smart choices on making their advertisements, but I think it would have been better if they did not use the guilt appeal.