Month: October 2010

I am here to talk about last lecture content, product life cycle.

One of the PLC which I want to talk about is Textbook. So it is basically affected by the content and most importantly the edition of the textbook. Well, UBC always changes new textbook edition every two years I think. This really cost burden to students and education is supposed to be something that benefit ppl but it is turned into profit organization. When new edition comes out the older edition enters the declining stage as some students still tend to use it. Then the new textbook turns into growth stage as well.

What about UBC university brand? Or its courses？ I believe it is in maturity stage as there is no significant growth of the number of students enter UBC. Well, it is due to its limited capacity as well.

Then there is the iphone. Again new product is always launched after the market become saturated. There will always be some ppl haunting for it once it comes out although it is of little difference.

I guess that’s all for now. Have a great weekend everyone!

Just wanna share some experience with everyone. I believe most people are currently doing the marketing assignment number 2. The method which I am using is online survey. So, in textbook it is mentioned that internet survey has higher response rate. However, I find the contrary is true.

Me and my group members have posted the survey on our profile page and there are only about 22 ppl responding out of the 1000 over friends that we have. To be frank, I think only those who are my ‘real’ and ‘close’ friends would go and do the survey, the rest find no incentive to do it. In chinese, we call that ‘guanxi’ relationship, which determine whether do people go and do the survey.

If I have done a paper survey, it would be much faster as people tend to do the survey for we ask them to do. Most importantly, they would feel bad for rejecting us. Haha.

That is why UBC always offer Starbucks giftcard etc for those who are doing the survey. But it is only the chance to win the card. Well, a good tactic to attract ‘materialistic’ people for me to do it but not tempting enough. In fact, the gift card company like Starbucks would gain as people tend to buy more than the value of the gift card as consumers assume they already earn the value of the giftcard!

So I would suggest prof Tamer to rebut the content of the textbook. Perhaps my blog post can be used as clarification. Haha =D

One of the most important component of wedding is the dinner. I believe this holds for most people. A perfect wedding dinner would mean hosting the dinner at 5 stars hotel where there are great foods, most importantly, look presentable. However, recently, MacDonald has targeted on the wedding dinner for its market. Yeah, I know it sounds very weird for a wedding to be hosted at MacDonald but you can read what is happening in Hong Kong at here.

I would say this is an innovative idea came up by MacDonald. So what would be served? Fries for starter and apple pie as wedding cake. Ewww, for me I still could not accept this idea. I believe most people do. If the target market is youngster, perhaps it would work, but definitely not elderly people. Plus, it is unhealthy and it seems informal.

But but but, it gives economical sense. It offers cheaper wedding dinner option for couples. Hosting a wedding dinner at MacDonald is much cheaper than holding a dinner in traditional restaurant.

I believe MacDonald would not have sustainable competitive advantage in it. If it works out, the next thing you would see is all those fastfood restaurants would hold wedding dinner for couples as well. KFC, Pizza Hut, MarryBrown, Burger King will then organize wedding dinner. At the thought of it, I would like to emphasize that I would not for such dinner, only if they are my really close friends.

I have to admit it is a creative idea, but it won’t last long. At least culture won’t let it be sustainable. I would say it is more like a fad. What do you think?

I believe that everyone, if not most of us have Facebook. It is currently the largest social networking website. According to statistics, if it is considered as a country, Facebook is the third (or fourth) largest country in the world with the amount of users reaching 3 billion. Well, my statistics might be wrong as I regurgitate everything out from my rusty memory.

Does anyone heard before Facebook is actually the agent of FBI? I am not sure whether if this is true but it is from what I have heard.  Chris is absolutely right to point out that the information in Facebook is hardly private. Who knows Facebook works for FBI(an assumption) and provide information to them? Facebook can also serve as the platform for consumer database since it has so much personal information about the users. Yes, there is the privacy settings but wouldn’t you be suspecting that the Facebook would use our information to certain extent. Of course, not all the information we put in Facebook is the truth.

Also, we have a lot of advertisement on Facebook. I believe those advertisements are targeted to us because of our internet domain or based on the information of our account. A country’s product advertisement wouldn’t simply appear in another country’s user’s account. Sometimes, such advertisement are just annoying but I understand Facebook depend on the revenue to sustain its operation. Not only Facebook, every single online website has advertisement! Marketing is really invading our life! Hotmail, google, Yahoo, News Website all do this!

Have you ever seen someone trying to market their products in Facebook? Do you think that is an abuse? I seriously hate those people advertising products on Facebook. To me, it is akin to you are trying to make advantage of your friends to persuade them to buy your products. I don’t know how others feel but I do feel it is a disrespect towards me if my friend keeps posting the advertisement. I have deleted a friend who did so because I am fed up with her advertisement keeps appearing in my news feed. I do feel irritated by such people. But fortunately, most of my friends are not like her. 

As the title suggest, I am going to discuss on the post purchase dissonance experienced by most people. This is especially so if you see the similar product with better price at other place. Or you might just regret buying it later because you became obsessed with the products when the salesperson promoting the product to you? All these do happen and despite priding myself as smart consumer, I do fall for it.

I actually like Canada’s policy for sales which enable the consumers to return the products bought within a certain period. Back in Malaysia, where I hail from, you would have to argue a whole day for the products to be refunded. I believe this a good policy that benefits the consumers as well as sellers. Why do I say sellers? The sellers can establish its credibility because they are not afraid of you returning the product to them. Some irresponsible sellers who are short sighted only care for short term profits but ignore their long term reputation。

So any ways to reduce such dissonance. I like the idea of surrounding the consumers with similar people. This would be something like group decision which makes one thinks that ” Oh, he made the same decision as me! So, I should be right on buying this!”. However, to create such community is a challenging task. Probably, more and more advertisements are needed to reinforce the idea that the product is good to consumers.

Oh yeah! Free maintenance and departments handling complain. I once complained the poor tuition teacher which I was taught by and this gives me satisfaction. Other than I have the avenue to address my grievance, I was compensated handsomely, 6 months tuition fees. This strategy is better in the long run as it would let the consumers to be satisfied rather than having them to go around and complain how bad your product is, thus inadvertently spoiling your reputation. Also, I found online that we can develop more follow up programs or events so that the consumers don’t have this feeling of ” oh, this is a bad company who just care about earning the money but does not care about the welfare of the consumers”.

Reputation for a company is extremely important. When I bought laptop, I did not give a thought for Acex at all because they have the reputation of being spoiled. The choice is immediately cancelled out from my list.

That’s all for now for this busy week. I hope everyone can cope well and yeah, this is a long weekend!

So this is the  my Negar’s blog regarding online advertisement.

http://negamiri.wordpress.com/2010/11/13/online-advertisements/

We have heard of the popularity of online nowadays among people especially the youth. More companies are investing in online ad and that is why google and most search engines revenue are going up.

Seriously, I hate online advertisement. It is simply annoying when you want to watch a Youtube video and you are ‘forced’ to watch the advertisement. This is actually infringing consumer’s rights to some extent although this is a grey area legally. Those advertisements are irrelevant most of the time. For instance, Viagra etc.. My senior announced in facebook that he was researching about viagra and then he receives an email regarding Viagra. Somehow, this has infringes on our privacy. Some of the advertisements are literally irrelevant and foolish as what is mentioned by Negar.

So, is it an ethical advertising? Nobody can gives definite answers. But if I were the authorities, I would require those irrelevant advertisements to be removed because they are simply annoying. Don’t you all agree?