In response to Joshua Brustein’ blog “ What do Instagram Advertisers Actually Get  for Their Mondy” in Social Media. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-02/what-do-instagram-advertisers-actually-get-for-their-money

After read the article by Joshua, I recognize that there is a new trend in online  B2C business. People or companies sell and introduce their service and products to their  fans who like these kinds of companies’ page on facebook or Instagram. Same  thing happed in China.

Taobao which is the largest online shopping store platform in China, they share  more than 50% oline market. In recent years, the market on Taobao become more and  more competitive because there are more hundred stores sell same products. At the  beginning, the management group use customers’ feedback to rate all of store on  this website and customers can choose the stores they think are reliable. However,  nowadays, the owner of these stores change the information of customers’ feedback  and rating by using some heck software. Thus, people always think it is dangerous  to choose a store refer to those rating stuffs.

Some of these owner found they need a new way to reach their customers and build up  relationship with their customers. Then, a lot of owner start to introduce their  products on Weibo which is a famous microblog in China. These kinds of owner also  post picture or story in their real life on same Weibo account. So, customers can  communicate these owner like a real friend. On this way, customers found they can “ touch and follow” the stores and feel really safe to purchase goods online.

In my opinion, this is a really effective way for companies to introduce products  and gain more potential customers. Because since a person like a company page on  facebook, he might not dislike this page without specific reasons. So he will  continue receive a lot of information from this company. Also, this company can  save huge amount of advertisement fee.

Finally, we finished all of the recording tasks for the marketing plan assignment. At the beginning, we try to film the video looks like a A&F new segmentation commercial because there are a lot of boring and super long talking part.

Then, we wrote down the story and tried to make it funny to impress instructor and classmates. However, we found it is too hard to make the video funny while we also tried to explain our ideas clearly. Thus, we keep the boring part in an ” interview” and use several scenes to make it look nature.

My job in this assignment is editing. I found I became really time sensitivity after I started my tasks because I spent my whole Sunday to cut cut and cut…… Rui give us 7 minutes which is already ten times long as a regular commercial, but I found the core idea and boring part is 7 minutes already. I guess there is not a company is willing to afford a 7 minutes video commercial fee.

In my opinion, I got some point about marketing advertisement strategies. A good commercial should catch people’s eyes and push people to learn more about their products and services. A good commercial cannot direct push people to pay but can increase the chance to attract more potential customers.

I read the John’s post about ethical issue in company share customers’ information and data without customers permit. I also found this interesting phenomenon when I use facebook and other websites that I think pretty closed to Google. When I open Chrome browser, I always being asked to login my gmail account, the reason they gave is I can review my data like youtube searching results easily. Thus, I thought they used customers’ Gmail accounts to gain, sort and sell or share customers’ purchasing behavior and data  like wish lists.

First time I found that is when I wanted to buy a gopro sporting camera. Before I make the decision, I just search a lot of video about gopro on youtube and watched it. So, when I hesitate to buy it or not, I open my facebook and found there are some advertisements about gopro at the side of the page. I thought, oh my god, I should go to buy a gopro because it seems like everything push me to buy a gopro. Then, I did it.

In my opinion, it is hard to say this behavior is unethical or not because it depends on these kinds of company how to use it. If Google sell the information data file to other companies which means other companies can really read it and know detail information of a certainly person, it is unethical because customers will worry about their private. In opposite, if google has a automatical system to post relative ads refer to customers’ searching result, it is good because it is a more effective marketing strategy.

Nowadays, a lot of international companies are trying to expand their business to foreign countries. Some these kinds of companies are really successful in other countries because of special global marketing strategies in different culture environments while some companies are totally failed in their new markets. I want to discuss two improper marketing strategies of two companies for their China market.

 As we know, IKEA is one of the largest furniture manufactures in the world, their products are really famous in North America because of their fancy design, low price and convenient. Compare to other same level furniture companies, IKEA’s price of their products are lower than the average level. It is the result of their ready- to – assemble furniture and charged shipping. This model is successful in North American because North America people prefer to pay less and enjoy the process of furniture assembling. However, in China, in customers’ opinion, they never think they should assemble and ship their furniture after they pay for it. Thus, IKEA failed in China because they use the same model they used in North America.

 “Eat fresh” —- the core idea of Subway which also failed in China. In Chinese tradition, the vegetables must cooked in boiling water before eating. They think fresh vegetables are dirty whatever you wash it how many times. Therefore, “eat fresh” did not fit the habits of Chinese and failed.

 In my opinion, culture and marketing research is really important for companies to expand their business to a foreign country. Because customers’ demand are also different countries and these kinds of companies should always follow and understand it

Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Marketing is everywhere in our life, marketing can help companies sell more products and serves. However it is easy to find lots of unethical marketing issues. I found some companies try to show a really low price in their posts or advertisements. However, the amount of final payment is actually higher than customers learned from the company because of lots of extra charges that customers were not aware of.

I worked for a moving company this summer, I found the company posted lots of advertisements on different website like Vansky, Vanpeople and Craigslist. The description of charge in the advertisement is: 1. Less than an hour, charge $50 in total. 2. More than an hour, charge $60 per hour. Compared to other companies in Vancouver, our company seems like providing serves with lower charge. While customers saw the advertisement and call my boss, my boss always only provide same simple price information. I never heard my boss discuss extra charges with customers. So, what are extra charges? The extra charge means customers need to pay for gas (depends on distance). And if we worked more than half hour even it is 1 minute like 1:31, we charge $120 (2 hours) from customers. Customers are always not willing to pay the extra charges. However, my boss said, “ Hey, it is unwritten rule for moving companies, you did not hired a mover before? If you do not believe it, you can ask other companies.”

This is an example of extra charge, we can find more in our life. Companies hide lots of extra charges and try to let customers feel the price is low. In my opinion, it is cheat, because customers cannot learn the amount of final payment before they get the bill. The result is these companies never gain loyal customers.