Kiki Magazine Marketing Research Report

 

Kiki Magazine Marketing Research Report 

According to the overall strategy, Kiki Magazine is aimed at capturing a niche market of girls between ages of 9 to 14. Unlike other magazines target at specific age groups, Kiki’s target market is an age bracket that girls transfer from a youth to teenager. Generally, girls shift their attentions during this period, and they will start paying attention to their own appearance and following fashion trends instead of toys and dolls.

For this complex age bracket, the subscribers’ opinions on each age are equally important; as a result, a focus group or a survey are effectively marketing research strategies to determine the market potential of Kiki. To maintain the reliability of data and participate rate, a focus group will let us learn more about our audience. We need to conduct focus groups on each age, and also another focus group with girls at different ages. This method represents an efficient way to learn how Kiki are actually used in the real life. The panelists’ description will highlight the gaps between each age group, which we can improve in our future publication. In addition, girls’ fashion trend changes year by year, so some new ideas will come out in discussions, which also help Kiki to retain and attract customers.

Kiki faces many challenges and first is about its readers. Because it’s a niche target market, Kiki will lose readers as girls beyond the age and have to attract new customers each year. As a result, the content of magazine will be the key to appeal to readers. Understanding the customers’ needs and the trends at the youth and early teen age will help Kiki to attract more readers. The table of content is the second challenge for Kiki, because of its wide range. It contains all-purpose such as fashion, fun and also education, and how to combine those topics perfectly without conflict is what Kiki should figure out.

Third, the quarterly magazine is easily to be placed by other same purpose magazines. When kids wait for a new Kiki come out, parents may buy other magazines to replace Kiki even though they will still buy Kiki. We will lose the profit and loyalty of those readers. The last but not least, Kiki has a goal to show its profit, but no advertisements will hurt our profit too. Kiki’s philosophy is good that keep the magazine away from commercial; however, the advertisement rate is a big part of magazine’s revenue. The Kiki team may choose a neutral way to present the commercial, such as products review from readers. If Kiki wants to popup its profits, it really should add some advertisements in the magazine.

The very recent history of Wall Street abuses

The very recent history of Wall Street abuses

In a sense, the complaint brought against JPMorgan Chase for bad behaviour in the mortgage market is history. It concerns Bear Stearns, the ill-fated investment bank acquired by JPMorgan in spring 2008 as the financial crisis broke out.

But the suit from Eric Schneiderman, the New York attorney-general, which is part of a broader regulatory initiative to crack down belatedly on mortgage securitisation abuses, is still a fascinating portrayal of how bad things got.

Essentially, investment banks did not care too much about the quality of the mortgage loans they were packaging into securities because they took fees upfront, while not suffering the ensuing credit losses.

As the suit puts it:

“Faced with the promise of immediate, short-term profits and no long-term risks, originators began to increase their volume of home loans without regard to prospective borrowers’ creditworthiness – including their ability to repay the loan.”

In this case, Bear Stearns – known as being among the most footloose and fancy-free of Wall Street institutions – is alleged to have packaged an enormous number of loans that borrowers had already ceased to repay. The losses suffered by investors amounted to $22.5bn – some 26 per cent of the principal.

There are a few lessons here.

One is that financial incentives determine much of what happens on Wall Street and in the City of London. If there is a short-term incentive to mis-sell something, it will happen – a fact that banks are trying to counteract by reforming bonus structures.

A second is that many banks did not feel much compunction about selling securities of this nature because they regarded investors such as Dexia, the European bank, as fair game. They were wholesale investors and the entire market was run on the basis of “buyer beware.”

Last, this disaster was a long time in the making. It started with the invention of the credit derivatives market in the mid-1990s with the reasonable objective of spreading risk away from bank balance sheets. It gradually morphed into a game of banks trying to obtain mortgages purely so they could be securitised at a profit.

http://blogs.ft.com/businessblog/2012/10/the-very-recent-history-of-wall-street-abuses/#axzz28DUI445K

Explore: Real-World Examples of Bad Business Ethics—-McDonald’s

Business ethics are significant to all companies. It relates to not only the benefits and the reputation of one company, but the benefit of consumers. Whether a company can grow up and become flourishing or not sometimes is determined by business ethics. A presentative of bad business ethics in real-world is McDonald’s.

1. In 1972, Ray Kroc, the company’s founder made a rare donation of $250,000 to Nixon’s reelection campaign and in return got a favorable legislation that allowed companies such as McDonald’s to pay teenage employees 20 percent less than federal minimum wages.

—- the basic rights of teenage employees cannot be guaranteed.

2. McDonald’s also doesn’t allow employees to unionize, and in one instance where workers at St. Hubert Quebec did form a union, the company closed down the unit promptly.

—- employees’ right of defending their benefits and claims lost.

3. Activists of London Greenpeace alleged that McDonald’s promoted Third World poverty, sold unhealthy food, exploited workers and children, tortured animals, and destroyed the Amazon rain forest.

—- lots of unethical behavior lead McDonald’s to be sued.

 

Original Text:

Reputation is a company’s biggest asset and bad business ethics invariably result in loss of reputation and credibility. Yet many large corporate also find themselves caught red handed indulging in shady conduct. Read on for some real life examples of bad business ethics.

  • McDonald’s

    Examples of Bad Business EthicsVery often, a company’s relationship with its stakeholders defines its ethical values. McDonald’s, despite its global success, remains the target of a vitriolic public backlash owing to what many perceive as bad business ethics in its relationships with employees and other stakeholders.

    This bad business ethics example by McDonald’s is what is known as the “McDonald’s Legislation” in popular parlance. In 1972, Ray Kroc, the company’s founder made a rare donation of $250,000 to Nixon’s reelection campaign and in return got a favorable legislation that allowed companies such as McDonald’s to pay teenage employees 20 percent less than federal minimum wages. Most observers consider this a typical case of corporate influence on lawmakers to enact legislation that serve their selfish ends and harm society.

    McDonald’s also doesn’t allow employees to unionize, and in one instance where workers at St. Hubert Quebec did form a union, the company closed down the unit promptly.

    The McLibel case ranks as McDonald’s most disastrous cases of bad business ethics and spawned tons of negative publicity. Between 1986 and 1990, activists of London Greenpeace distributed pamphlets with the title “What’s Wrong with McDonald’s? Everything They Don’t Want You to Know” and the wordings “McDollars, McGreedy, McCancer, McMurder, McProfits, McGarbage,” alleging that McDonald’s promoted Third World poverty, sold unhealthy food, exploited workers and children, tortured animals, and destroyed the Amazon rain forest. McDonald’s sued the group for libel. The court, however, held McDonald’s guilty of exploiting children through advertising tactics, serving dangerously unhealthy food, paying workers low wages, indulging in union busting activities worldwide, and ignoring animal cruelty perpetrated by its suppliers.

     

    • Reference

      MSN. “The Bad Boys of Business.” http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/the-bad-boys-of-business.aspx?slide-number=1. Retrieved April 22, 2011.

       

      from http://www.brighthub.com/office/entrepreneurs/articles/115557.aspx