@w@

The Japanese Kit Kat promotion that Tamar ntroduced in the last lesson has really impressed me. I see it as a very successful global marketing example which I should take it as a reference whenever I need to do global marketing in the future.

I am sure it has done a lot of research on the Japanese culture before launching the campaign in Japan. Indeed, culture understanding should be the most important element in doing global marketing. Different cultures lead to different understandings and meanings of the product to the country. A new positioning strategy needs to be made according to the country’s culture. However, it should be quite challenging to make a new positioning strategy which can compromise with the organization’s culture.

Last week, as all of you know, it was the time of first snow in Vancouver this year.

When I was waiting for the bus to get home after school one day, this is what I did on the ground with my feet. Then, my friend, who was also taking marketing, said, “Oh! This is outdoor promotion!” after she saw what I did. When she said this, it shocked me. Oh yeah! I didnt think about promoting UBC when I did this. But I am actually promoting UBC to others!

This has inspired the following thoughts in my mind: For many outdoor advertisment, we never think about really promoting something but we just do it (maybe intuitively) and we’re actually helping others to promote!!

Today I would like to comment on the blog post named “Lemons. The Lulu Kind.” in the Canadian Marketing Blog.

In this post, it has remind me of the importance of how a company’s image can be affected by its actions. Although many people said that they will not be influence by the action that Lululemon has done, many others are not satisfied of it and said that they would stop buying from Lululemon.

Those who are not influnced are most likely the die-hard fans for Lululemon while others, which is the large majority of consumers, are not. This can indeeed greatly affect how others think about the company’s image or what the brand’s motto is. Only one wrong action from the company can damage the image of itself which had been built for years.

For me, who is not a die-hard fans of Lululemon, surely has been affected by what it has done. I think that they should actually just take the failure of GAP as an example and learn from it that what they should or should not do. Now, instead of doing this, the make the news as a sarcastic issue, which I view as taking a revenge when its rival is already in a trouble.This makes me believe that the company’s underlined motto is take revenge whenever you have the chance and the chance is best when you’re rival is already in trouble.

For me, I hope to make my rivals as friends in the future. I do not want to have any rivals in my life if I can. The action that Lululemon has taken definitely cannot bring about this. So, I am in the opposite side of what it has done. Also, becuase of this, I think that wearing clothes of Lululemon does not represent the true me! I think I would not buy any clothes from them anymore.

I’ve read the blog post of Vanessa Chung’s posted on Nov 10, named “Wait- the relative cost and product quality of McDonald’s Big Mac is not the same worldwide?”

I was really interested in this post of her and have inspired me. I would like to share a bit about what I think of this topic.

First of all, I think not only does the Big Mac in McDonald’s has different prices and sizes around the world, also the prices and sizes of other products in their restaurant. For example, a whole value meal’s price and size also differ among different countries. I believe this must have something to do with the macro influences such as price of delivery, amount of competitors and living standard in certain country.

This brings me to think of some other worldwide corporations’ product prices and I am quite certain that not only does McDonalds have such a feature, other worldwide corporations also do have this same feature. In my opinion, this has a big relationship with how the people living in certain country or city see your products or more specific–your brand.

For example, back in USA, Abercrombie & Fitch is a very popular brand and actually doesnt cost much for each of their hoodies. However, when they started their business in Hong Kong, they can raise their price to more than 1.5times comparing to those in USA but still have many customers. This is because people living in Hong Kong see this US brand as a luxury brand in their city and that if they can have one piece of fashion from this brand, it means that they have a higher life standard and a higher social status in their own city. Therefore, they will strive hard to get themselves at least one product from A&F. According to this psychological requirement, A&F can charge higher price in Hong Kong than in USA.

This is indeed one of the pricing stategy which we have learnt in class in the last few lessons. And I think the blogpost from Vanessa was one of the examples. Now I can think of many of the real life examples after reading the post. Maybe I should say thank you to Vanessa! =] I understand more of what I learnt in class!

What’s after iPhone & iPad

This is a video by the TAT of Sweden describing the future of Screen Technology. It is a video which hopes to innovate the businessmen and engineers mind so that they can provide more advanced technology products for humans in the future. The year that they hope all these technologies sugggested can be launched in the market is 2014.

The ideas in the video are very innovative. I wonder can this really happen in 2014. But as I know many corporations are trying to do these, I do hope I can see this by 2014 or even before 2014!!

The previous assignment which we have to hand in was about primary research. We need to do our own research by writing our own questionnaire and interviewing people. In this experience, I really do find that making a survey is not that easy.

Interviewees easily misunderstand what the questions are asking even when you and your groupmates think the question is obvious. Besides, sometimes when we expect the answer to be closed ended for that question, the interviewees actually want to write something for the question as their answer, vice versa.

This leads me to think if there is any techniques which can truly solve this problem. However, I believed that there isnt any. But I think that we can eliminate the chance that these problems happen by understanding more about the psychological aspect of our interviewees.

Especially if we can understand how they perceive things surrounding them, we can do a lot better in designing a suitable and useful questionnaire.

After reading Wong, Elaine’s blog post — sPhone 4, I would really want to make some comment on her post.

In Asian culture, mainly Chinese culture, people believe that what they burn is what their ancestors can get in heaven, thus they burn paper-products to their ancestors time to time to make their ancestors’ afterlife more wealthy and happy. This has given many opportunities for the businessmen to earn profit. In the video businessmen has made paper-sPhone 4 and sPad. The products is actually a imitation of the iPhone 4 and iPad. Even when the white color version of the iPhone 4 and iPad is not released in real world, you can already buy its paper-products and burn it to your ancestors. So your ancestors can even use the white version of iPhone 4 and iPad earlier than you in real life!

This post in fact inspired me about the problem of commercializing everything in our lives. The most frequent issue happening nowadays is that businessmen always find an excuse by claiming that it’s holiday to sell their special made product for that holiday.

Holidays true meanings  are not clear for many people now. For example, many people in the world today actually do not know the true meaning of Christmas and Easter. They have no idea why there are these two holidays. They only know what they need to do in these holiday such as buying present for each other on Christmas and eating those chocolate-made eggs on Easter. These are indeed what the businessmen have done to promote their special-made products for these holidays. However, these ideas are overwhelming everyone’s mind and they just relate the holidays to these activities.

For example, I met a Japanese friend last year in Vancouver. She was an exchange student from Tokyo. She was in Vancouver during the Christmas holiday, however, when I told her about what Christmas really represents. She was so surprised about it. She said that she never heard of Jesus! I was stunned at that time when she said!

I believed that this is because the overwhelming commercializing of business approach used all over the world. So, in my opinion, the marketing department in each company can actually think of how to include more of the true meaning of the holidays in their promotion of special-made products. And I think this is indeed an important issue!

As my group is now working on Amazon.com, I started to be more aware about e-Commerce. This is what I saw on my friend’s blog, and I found this topic quite interesting!The name of it is called Digital IQ Index: Luxury. You can read about it here in this website: “http://www.l2thinktank.com/luxury2010digitaliq/luxury2010digitaliq.pdf”

This is a research done by L2 Think Tank about the use of digital methods for luxury brands in their marketing approaches. As can be seen from the research, more and more luxury brands are starting to enable onlilne sales for their product. This has lead to a great growth for their business and dividends to shareholders.

However, the most interesting part for me is the part about the Big Winner category in the digital IQ index and the Big Loser category. The biggest winner category is the Fashion and Shoes & Leathergoods brands and the biggest loser category is the Watch & Jewelry brands. I would want to look into why the Watch & Jewelry category doesnt treasure it’s online business as much as the Winning category.

In my opinion, the main problem for the Watch & Jewelry category is that mostly the people who buy luxury watch and jewelry loves to have a close look at the product before really purchasing them. Buying watch & jewelry from luxury brands can be almost 5 times more expensive than buying a shirt from a fashion luxury brand. Customers tend to think twice before purchasing it. They would like to compare different products on their own hands than just comparing them online. Therefore, distance purchasing the product online through e-commerce method is not likely to happen in this industry.

Also, I think customers in the market segment of the losing category is far more lesser than those in the market segment of the winning catergory. People who follow the trend for watch & jewelry is more less than people who follow the fashion trend for clothes,shoes or bags. People like to let others know when they are using luxury brand. This can build up their self-confidence. Clothes, shoes or bags can be easier for others to see when you put in on yourself. However, how many people will really come very close to you and look at your watch or what jewelry you’re wearing. So the market segment of customers who buy watch & jewelry is already smaller than that of the fashion, shoes & leathergoods. Besides, for watch & jewelry, you can and will use it for a long long time until you purchase a new one. However, for clothes, you buy new style of clothes which you think is up to date each year. The need for purchasing products in the losing category is far more lesser leading to a smaller market segment than the winning category.

Because of these two big reasons, watch and jewelry brands do not put much effort in their online marketing approach leading to a low digital IQ index. For me, I think this result is rational and I predict that the digital IQ index for this luxury category may not have big rise in the near future.

However, this leads me to another quite interesting and challenging question–“Can this category ever make online sale more valuable in their industry? and how?”

A good brainstorming question for me to end now! =]

I was just surfing the net to find something for this week’s blog, since I dont wanna do YouTube clip this week.

And.. I suddenly have in mind, instant media network–twitter,facebook,Sina-WeiBo, is really a very good place to market your product and yourself.

Why did I suddenly think of this was becasue I am going to the website of Sina-WeiBo. It’s a instant media network which you can update your news and follow other’s news just like twitter but Asia based. I have followed many artists and whenever they update their status, I can check it out online!

Then, I suddenly found out(or suddenly became aware indeed), the artists all made very good use of this network to promote their new released CDs, upcoming movies, upcming TV shows etc. They can keep everyone aware of their news! Just like they’re actually promoting themselves online through these network! Not only that, they can also get more marketing information through these networks!

An example is that an artist posted a new status saying that she will be having a new CD release later, she is now still choosing the songs for the CD album and she has 2 songs which she’s now picking either one to put it in the CD album. She’s asking comments from all her followers about which style of song do they want her to choose. This is a good marketing skill! She can know her audience taste beforehand and choose the best that suits their taste so that more people will buy her CD later on!

Totally never thought of that before, but WoW! Boom! This should be a good idea for the upcoming Primary Research Project!

After quite a long time discussing the company which is the best for our project, 3 votes for Amazon, 2 votes for Lululemon and.. 1 vote abstention (which is my vote) haha so We’ve chosen Amazon and we would like to focus on the Kindle product.
However, since I’m dont really know what this product is, so I need to do some research online to get more familarize about it before doing any other work with my groupmates.
At first, I was just curious if they have any ads for the Kindle. Then, I found this on YouTube!
This ad is really hilarious. And after watching it, I totally understand the main differences of it with other similar products.. and the main point is CHEAP! haha Maybe I should really give up buying an iPad but think of a Kindle for reading books.. when I already have an iPhone.