In this post I will be referring to Rupinder Ahluwalia’s post entitled ‘Starbucks is going to India!’, I will try to answer the questions he asked.

Starbucks will finally be coming to India by the end of October. The company, named Tata Starbucks, is a joint venture between the American Starbucks and the Indian Tata Global Beverages. A lot of Westernized coffee brands and shops already exist in India so we can wonder if Tata Starbucks will find its way in the market. Another issue is the current slow in India’s growth, which could lead the market to be less profitable. However, Starbucks is a worldwide know brand, which reflects the Western World and a certain quality of coffee.

The target market basically is educated young Indians, working or students who travel abroad and have seen or tried Starbucks in other countries. This can be considered as a competitive advantage.

We see more and more alliances between Western and Indian companies. Tata Starbucks is a 50:50 joint venture, which means that none of the two companies is taking over the other. It seems like Indian companies are getting more and more power over Western ones, as the takeover of the French steel company Arcelor by the Indian Mittal Steel in 2006 or the buyout of Jaguar cars by Tata in 2008 show.

Additional sources:

http://www.thehindu.com/business/companies/tata-starbucks-to-open-first-caf-by-endoctober/article3945405.ece

A French dating website called ‘Adopte un mec.com’ (literally ‘Adopt a guy.com’) launched the first store in which women can come to shop for a man. It is a temporary store that opened in Paris in mid-september and has been travelling around France, Belgium and Switzerland since then. The store targets young and single women, over eighteen years old. The principle is that men with certain characteristics (for example Mr. Muscle or Mr. Adventurous) stand in Ken-doll-like boxes all day long while women look for the perfect match, interact and take pictures with them.

The website always uses unexpected advertising strategies but this is the biggest communication ‘coup’ it has made so far. The organizers say that the concept has to be taken with a grain of salt. Some people found it degrading and unethical.

It is a pretty risky strategy because it can create strong reactions, although it seems to have increased the brand’s popularity, with over a thousand people coming to the Parisian store.  It can also be argued that if women were in the boxes instead of men, this would lead to a big controversy, harming the brand’s image for good.

Companies are constantly pushing the boundaries of what can be advertised or not, they change over time and according to cultural and social values. The limit is very thin between a daring strategy and an unethical marketing move. Internet-based companies seem to be going further and further, for example ‘Gleeden’, which defines itself at ‘The first extramarital dating site made by women’. Can companies cross every ethical and moral limit in order to make profits? To what extent should ethics be leading their marketing strategies, and even the product or service provided itself?

[A short video to have a look at the store]

Sources :

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2201753/AdoptAGuy-French-dating-site-launches-travelling-store-women-men-literally-shelf.html

http://www.lepoint.fr/insolite/adopteunmec-com-ouvre-une-boutique-ephemere-avec-des-hommes-en-vitrine-11-09-2012-1505171_48.php

Facebook launched a video commercial to celebrate the fact that it now has over a billion users worldwide. Its marketing strategy can be considered as unusual, since the social media itself is an usual type of businesses.

Facebook hadn’t created video advertisements but the brand’s name and logo are visible everywhere on the Internet. Its target market is one of the widest possible since it is available worldwide; all the people who use the Internet can have access to it without any cost to register or any complicated process to complete.

It is interesting to see that although Facebook is such a popular media, its financial viability and profitability isn’t so secure. Facebook’s IPO and break into the financial markets wasn’t as successful as one could have expected, regarding its huge visibility and brand awareness.

Ads on social media websites are not considered potentially very profitable by the markets. Facebook, like the video games that we talked about in class n°8, is not a media in which people are receptive to ads, it is used for entertaining purposes only.

Therefore, one of Facebook’s challenges in the future will probably be to figure out how to use such a broad users database in order to make profits and attract investors.

[Source here]