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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?

Hi, everyone, back to my weekly marketing blog post. I do write private blog but I would like to share my opinions on the method of bank marketing.

Up to now, I have 3 bank cards, RBC, BMO and the latest one, TD Trust. I opened an account in TD Bank due to the promotions it had for students. Guess what? I can receive 50 CAD for opening an account, applying Visa and use the service of Simply Save (which transfers money to saving account automatically every time you use money from chequing account.

So what do I do with three banks? Let me list out the benefits of each bank and why do I open account in the following bank?

BMO: This is the 1st bank I had in Canada. For some reasons, I don’t know why I choose this bank. It is probably due to the convention that all my seniors having accounts atBMO despite the low interest offer. But the only attraction is the 2 free interact emails that it offers to account holders. Seriously, interact email provides a lot of convenience to users. I applied for a SPC Mastercard at BMO too. Mainly it is because it is the bank where my sponsor deposit most of my money in BMO as well as the convenience of having CC.

RBC: I wanted to have GIC initially or term deposits but all the banks offer so so rate. RBC has an high interest saving account is 1.15%. Because I do not have SIN, I can’t have TFSA (Tax free savings account). But the 1.15% is as good as it with the difference of 0.1%. In short, I love the high interest rate offered.

TD Trust: It offers great Visa card cash rebate rate. It is 1% for 3000CAD worth of purchase above otherwise 0.5% instead of BMO’s 0.5%. Well, this is only 0.5% but for people like me who use CC to pay residence (here goes most of my allowance) and it definitely makes a lot of difference on that. Well, I am attracted to the marketing of TD bank. I felt the 50 CAD  is most attractive of everything. Which bank can offer that? Other banks can only offer competitive advantage in terms of different services but nothing is more practical than 50 CAD. It entails the students to apply for VISA card but I feel it offers the best rate among all oother banks. Most importantly, it is without annual fees which is very practical for students like me. I am actually enticed to switch my main bank to TD but some bureaucracy prevents me from doing so.

That’s all for now. TD bank is really great. I encourage everyone to apply for TD’s bank account and receive the 50 CAD!! It is a really successful marketing strategy, what do you guys think?

watch?v=yatSAEqNL7k

Hi everyone. I believe everyone was crazy with the iPhone 4 that is just released by Apple. So what so special about iPhone 4 than iPhones from other generations? The main selling point of iphone 4 should be the front view camera and its 3g function as displayed by the firm.

The ad seems quite interesting to me in the beginning. But it failed to sustain consumers’ attention. I guess this is the con of the advertisement. To me, advertisement should be brief and interesting enough to capture audience attention. Merely repeating the specialty of the phone is not enough. What do you guys think? Do you like this advertisement?

Anyway, I heard from my friend that Apple’s strategy is to sell less than what the market demands so that consumers will crave for me. That is iphone can be out of stock and it is not that Apple does not want to make money!

Hi everyone,

This would be my first post for marketing blog. It would be basically introduction of myself in this blog.

I am from Malaysia, a great multiracial country, with Malay, Chinese, Indians and various other races. Yes, I know and speak Mandarin in case you guys might be surprised why Malaysian Chinese can speak fluently.

Besides being a multiracial country, we have great foods. Malaysia is a food haven literally due to our multiracial food variety. If you have chance to come over Malaysia, make sure you treat yourselves with the delicacies there. This is due to the mixture of different race’s food specialty.

Do try out foods like rojak, chaw kuey teow, bak kut teh, chicken rice, nasi lemak….Just the thought of it would make people mouthwatering.

I think that’s all for now. I would like to share more marketing experience with others in the future.

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