Samantha Dodson's Blog

One of my favourite stores to shop at is Nordstroms,  an upscale department chain store located in the United States. Nordstroms is a one-stop store and sells clothing, shoes, make-up and accessories for women, men, teenagers, and children.  This store has always been my favourite because of one of its departments: the shoe department. The shoe department is run efficiently and has great customer service. There is a floor manager who circulates throughout the department and is connected by headsets with the many sales associates who are working.  Once summoned by the manager, someone arrives quickly to assist the customer. Nordstroms focuses on having quality service throughout its departments since its targeted customers are usually people who are expecting more customer service throughout their shopping experience.

As a result of being an upscale store, the department store has seen a decrease in sales because of the poor economy in the United States. Consequently, Nordstroms has been looking to expand its chain into Vancouver since Canada’s economy has not been as affected. Scouters for Nordstroms have been searching for a location in the downtown Vancouver area that could accommodate the store’s normal size, which is a lot bigger than most stores currently located downtown. Unfortunately, for that reason, the chain will probably not come to Vancouver for a few years as it wants to find the perfect location for its store.

Nevertheless, I am still excited for the department store to head north and am anxiously awaiting its arrival.

I was reading Debbie Yeh’s blog which featured a post about Groupon, a company that sells discounted items/services over the internet in a form of a certificate. Both my mother and I are Groupon addicts; we are constantly looking for deals that the site has to offer. The website is especially attractive to consumers these days because of the recession, since everyone is trying to find more value for their dollar.

Groupon is particularly successful when it is able to sell discounted products or services that have a well-known name. This is because they are expenditures that individuals are more likely to pursue whether they buy the Groupon or not, which makes the item more appealing. For instance, Groupon’s Vera’s Burger Shack and Quizno’s Sub deals both sold out quickly whereas Groupon’s Verace Pizzeria deal took a longer time to sell out. This also has to do with brand awareness; individuals that aren’t able to recognize a brand as easily are more hesitant to purchase the product or service because they are unsure of how much value it has to them.

Furthermore, Groupon is able to help businesses as well as consumers. Businesses that are not as distinguished are able to showcase their name through the website and, consequently, are given the chance to gain loyal customers.

All in all, Groupon has been able to successfully utilizes technology and social media sites (ie. Facebook) in order to target its market. Groupon has acknowledged the fact that the internet is becoming more and more of our everyday lives and is using it to their advantage to gain sales.

Groupon UK Commercial:

Groupon Website

I found an article on the blog, BrandChannel , which introduces Neiman Marcus’ 2011 Annual Christmas Book. Neiman Marcus is an exclusive department store that targets individuals with a higher income. As a result, the store creates a “Fantasy Christmas Book” every year that includes items/experiences that are beyond the vast majority of individuals budgets (hence the word “fantasy”). So why would the company create a gift book that includes items that most people can’t afford? I’d say that it’s a mixture of catching the consumer’s attention and maintaining their brand image.

Victorias’s Secret (VS), a company that sells women’s wear, lingerie, and beauty products, has its own fantasy gift: a multi-million dollar bra. Despite the fact that these fantasy bras have not been purchased for years, the company continues to produce the luxurious item. Victorias Secret showcases the bra in its annual fashion show which features the company’s products in a high-profile environment. Moreover, the show consists of well-known and beautiful models that lots of women and men are drawn too. The whole package of the fashion show is used to aide the brands image of being fun, sexy and full of high quality products. So even though the multi-million dollar bra doesn’t make direct profits, it helps make indirect profits by gaining publicity as well as maintaining the brand image of Victorias Secret.

Moreover, after watching the VS fashion show, many women fantasize about being a VS model which can cause them to want to possess VS merchandise.

Urban Outfitters, a successful clothing, accessory, and apartment furnishing store, uses Social Media, to try and boost their sales in numerous ways. Firstly, each of their products has a review page that gives consumers feedback from people who bought a product. Their review pages allows positive as well as negative comments, and this is an excellent strategy that allows product owners to post positive and negative reviews, thus consumers feel reassured that they are reading uncensored reviews. Urban’s belief is: what you see is what you get. Moreover, each comment features icons like Twitter, Facebook, and Stumble It which permits individuals to share their review on these more diverse social networking websites,and this gives Urban free advertisement. Additionally, their website features their own UO blog that represents the ambience of the company as well as spotlights new trendy items. These strategies are a good way of reaching Urban’s target consumer as well as keeping their company status in their market.

Urban Outfitter Blog

UO Facebook Page

As I read Sean Goodall’s Blog on Kia’s new marketing strategy for the Kia Soul, which includes LMFAO’s hit single “Part Rock Anthem”, it got me thinking deeper into celebrities and their role in the business world.

Celebrity endorsements have been a widely used marketing and advertising tactic for many years. This is due to various studies that have shown how celebrities have a strong and positive appeal to consumers when it comes to choosing between products. All in all, it has been proven that celebrities are an excellent marketing tool for products that are produced by an established company;however, are celebrities as successful endorsing their OWN products as they are endorsing others’? The answer is…yes.

I looked into the fragrance industry and found that celebrity perfumes make up a majority of this market, which is traditionally targeted towards teens, tweens and young women. It seems that true fans can’t get enough of their favourite celebrities. For instance, teen sensation, Justin Bieber, has his own perfume, “Someday”, which has become a huge success. Some of his customers have made comments like, “When I use the perfume, I feel him!” and some look at his perfume as “hope in a bottle” since Bieber was able to shine in the music industry even though he started from nothing. Other artists as well as Bieber, like Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez, have been particularly prosperous with their perfume products. Consequently, many celebrities have realized that there is a huge market in the perfume industry for the rich and the famous which has caused a major recent spike in the emergence of celebrity fragrance products.

It’s no wonder that firms utilize celebrities in advertisements: celebrities sell.

This last summer I vacationed in Kona, Hawaii and visited a Macy’s store expecting to find the usual Seattle and California merchandise. To my surprise, the entire store was “Hawaiianized”; the store mainly consisted of bathing suits, sun hats, sunglasses, Hawaiian jewelry (e.g. pooka shells), and the tacky tourist Hawaiian shirts. I then remembered reading an article in Bloomberg Businessweek that revealed Macy’s new marketing strategy to “cater to regional tastes”.

Macy’s, one of the oldest and most established department store chains in the United States, realized there had been a decrease in customer spending since four years ago. As a result, Macy’s came up with the “My Macy’s” program in order to gain back their popularity and profitability. The “My Macy’s” program is a strategy to modify and customize store merchandise to individual markets. For instance, the store realized that there was a “demand for separately sold pieces of women suits in Washington D.C.”,so stores in D.C. adjusted merchandise for their clients.

This realization helps the company profit by targeting different demographics (specifically by location) so that they can maximize on their wants and needs in order to become more profitable and popular again. Moreover, it also helps increase their profit by stocking up on items that will be more appealing to customers in a designated area as well as eliminating excess and irrelevant inventory from that store.

According to various sites (e.g. Reuters) the “My Macy’s” program has been viewed as a success in raising the company’s shares and profits.

Hewlett Packard, a company that specializes in printers and computers, has recently introduced its new marketing strategy: printers that feature a removable tablet PC. The printer’s user interface is removable from

the printer and becomes a functional tablet PC with a touchscreen. The concept of this strategy is that by buying one of their printers, the buyer will receive a free tablet with their purchase. This could be a game changing marketing strategy as competitors like Dell, RIM, and others try to introduce their own tablet PC’s. The printer and tablet combo, which is predicted to sell at $399.99, could be perceived as a bargain since the buyer will receive a printer, mobile tablet, and a stationary home organizer/browser all for that price. HP’s tactic has set themselves apart from their competitors, and it is a tactic that has been mentioned in class. However, it’s up to HP to make sure that the tablet can compete with other products like the iPad in order for this to be a successful strategic plan.

Most of us have heard, either through the news or through conversations, that Nike employs underage and underpaid workers in China. Nike has been caught falsifying factory documents and has used hiring practices that do not make sure that minimum age requirements are met. Despite being one of the world’s largest sneaker and sportswear makers, they have created the possibility of tarnishing their brand name by allowing customers to question their business ethics. Nowadays, people correlate the words sweatshop and Nike together. As a result, it makes me question whether or not I would want to buy a pair of Nikes. In fact, I don’t own any. As mentioned in class, there are few brands that have been able to associate their name with their products, and Nike is one of the few companies that has been able to associate its brand with its product. When individuals go shopping for sneakers, they say, “I’m going to go buy some Nikes”.

-Shark Club waitresses

There are several restaurants in Canada, including Earls and the Shark Club, that are known for their good looking staff. Moreover, some restaurants have gone beyond hiring only attractive people and now enhance their employees’ sexiness with a provocative dress code. The Vancouver Sun has looked deeper into this issue and has come to the conclusion that, “Provocative clothing has become a social norm and attractive servers wearing skimpy outfits are commonplace in many sports bars and restaurants”. Should employees be forced to wear form fitting tops or skirts? This idea challenges people to question certain ethical standards, a concept mentioned in class, concerning restaurants and their employees. While many people consider this an unethical business practice, it is a strategy that companies are continuing to use because of its success. As a result, many companies who have found this technique successful disregard the notion that it may be unethical and simply think of it as good business.

Article from The Vancouver Sun

These Slimfast advertisements depict brides who should have lost weight before their wedding day. Despite being humorous, I came to the conclusion that it’s unethical especially in this day in age because of the increasing number of people who have eating disorders. I think this because the advertisement’s target audience is young women who are insecure about how they look. They specifically chose to prey on brides- to-be since they know that, usually, women who are preparing for their big day want to look their best, which generally means that they will go on a diet. I was watching TLC’s show, Say Yes to the

Dress, which featured a young woman who was very sensitive towards her weight. As a result, she didn’t find a wedding dress because she didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin. It’s women like they who will view this ad as a message to take SlimFast in order to lose weight. Despite Slimfast’s target customers being people who want to lose weight,and the fact that they targeted brides in this situation is unethical because they are a vulnerable group of people. But in Slimfast’s defense, it is a strategic marketing tool. As mentioned in class, both ethical and unethical companies are successful in business. Therefore, sometimes companies need to be unethical in order to profit.