rebecca yang

Nike, the American multinational cooperation which is mostly engaged in footwear and apparel has recently introduced a Nike+ FuelBand, which shares the point of parity, allowing users to measure their workouts. However, what makes this product stand out among all the fitness trackers such as Fitbit is its point of differences. Firstly, FuelBand provides a universal way measure all kind of activities including yoga and bicycling which are not able to be tracked by other tracking wrist bands. Secondly, in order to encourage the health conscious consumers to stay active, the company has added hourly reminder asking you to move around for five minutes. This also enhances the nike’s value proposition by adding more features and attributes to the existing products.

In addition to presenting its point of differences, Nike company also devised a brilliant way to retain and expand the customer base. One of the most exciting news for Nike are Apple, which dominants the US smartphones industry with an increase to 43% market share in 2013, said that its new iPhone would have sensors to allow people keep track of their Fuel points. Partnership with Apple not only enables nike to retain its customer but also expand its customer base by taking advantage of the popularity of new iPhone. As more people measure the activities in Fuel points and the more dependence people have developed on them, the less possibilities for the customers to switch into other fitness trackers due to the confusion of different units,which always gets the consumer to come back to Nike’s products. Therefore, in order for the universal Fuel points, Nike is also trying to partner up with more companies especially the well-established.

Source:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-15/sorry-nike-youre-a-tech-company-now#r=nav-f-story

http://www.nike.com/ca/en_ca/c/nikeplus-fuelband?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.ca%2F

Subway,started as an ordinary submarine sandwich shop by a student who is motivated to make some money and pay off his substantial amount of tuition fee for medical education.Currently there are 40394 Subway outlets around the world, impressively exceeds the number of Mcdonald’s worldwide outlets, which has been positioned as one of most famous and successful fast food restaurants. How did Subway create this miracles and and went top of the fast food chain ladder?  Here are some couple examples demonstrating how quickly Subway has adapted to the change in the market and offer customers more values with same price as other fast food stores.

– Introduction of a variety of heart-heathy meals which have less calories and sodiums, positioning itself as the first fast food restaurant to earn the American Heart Association.

-Promotions for its 5dollars footlong sandwiches cater for its target segment —  health-couscous customers but in low budget.

-Launch the egg white bread sandwich that is lower than 200 calories each

– Resign the soft drinks cup and napkin, presenting a “greener” look of the meal.

The changes above suggests how quickly Subway has reacted to the market and successfully positioned itself as ” the healthier, the fresher and the better” in the fast food chain by highlighting its points-of-differences. At the same time, subway still does an excellent job of maintaining and improving its point-of-parity such as convenience and reasonable price.

Sources:

http://www.subway.com.au/content.asp?

http://www.subway.ca/Menu_And_Nutrition/MenuCategoryItems.aspxCC=CAN&LC=ENG&MenuTypeId=1&MenuId=2#

http://theweek.com/article/index/212902/subway-the-worlds-biggest-restaurant-chain-by-the-numbers

“Our aim is to make any advertisements you see feel as natural to Instagram as the photos and videos many of you already enjoy from your favorite brands.” — Instagram blog post 

One of the most popular photo-sharing app Instagram is bring ads to your news feeds after accumulating its user more than 150 million people and selling to Facebook Inc. for 1 billion dollars. Beginning in the U.S. the next 3 months, users of instagram will start noticing that there will be some random brand pictures and videos that they don’t follow on their newsfeed. However, they are still allowed to close the ads if they dislike the pictures. In other words, in order for the effectiveness and sustainability of the advertisements, the marketing team of Instagram is aiming to make the advertisements as enjoyable and high-quality as many other photos and videos that are favored by numerous users.

what will an Instagram ad look like?  (video)

Although the Facebook change in the term of services sparked some revolts from the users, this is still a great time for Instagram to start making money from the paid advertisements because firstly it has built a solid and strong relationships with the users. One of the major concerns that a lot of social media companies might have about the paid pop-up ads are the users’ complaints and boycotts. However, this will not be an issue for Instagram because it has grown its customer base to a vast amount of people who are literally depending on Instagram to update their lives instantly to their friends who are also loyal users. Personally, I will not stop using instagram when all my friends are the loyal users. More importantly, if the marketing team successfully implements their plan of making the ads less commercial but more like enjoyable picture, which is a brilliant idea of marketing integration without jeopardizing instagram’s awesome factors, the advertisements on newsfeed will be gradually accepted and eventually “blended in” other pictures and videos followed by the users.

Sources: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324577304579059230069305894.html#articleTabs%3Dvideo

http://money.msn.com/technology-investment/blog–instagrams-time-has-come

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-03/facebook-s-instagram-to-add-advertising-amid-revenue-push.html