Monthly Archives: October 2012

Over-expectation on Apple?

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Here we go! Let’s talk about Apple again, the super successful “Marketing Company” in high-tech industry. Yesterday (Oct 23rd, 2012), the topical company Apple released their new retina iPad, iPad mini, new iMac and 13′ retina Macbook Pro. They upgraded almost everything right after the heat of iPhone 5.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL0UlqpfuQc

Apple – Introducing iPad mini

After viewing the intro video and keynote of those new products, I don’t find that they are really attractive to me and there are so many apple fans having the same feeling. However, Apple did put efforts to perfect their products. As the senior vice president mentioned in the video,  the new products have retina display that will provide users a greater experience. For the new iPad mini, it will be a very powerful, capable and simple to use product that is small enough to fit in one hand. The other main features of it are including faster processing, longer battery life and HD facetime. See, actually they make a lot of changes on the new product. But why there are so many people as me that we are not excited about it? My explanation for this phenomena is people have sky high expectations on Apple’s products before their releases. As this incredible company can always unexpectedly surprise their customers and satisfy their needs by the new cool inventions, gradually, people tend to expect too much on them.

Picture from: www.apple.com

It is the fact that a company have to keep and even lift the innovations of the products to meet the increasingly high customer’s expectation. Is is not limited to the design of the product but also the price and the length of its replacement period. As we can see, the upgrade of Apple’s products are quite frequent, therefore, a large number of potential customers may choose to wait till the next big thing comes out, which they believe will be closer to their expectations.

Let’s see if the iPad mini will hit the market.

 

The Future of Shopping – “Let’s Try Everything Out First!” (Comment on Crystal Li’s September Trend In Review )

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I am really interesting in Crystal’s blog post about business trends and wanna thank her for providing us such an awesome company’s website to explore. I love all those innovative ideas and vivid descriptions that make me feel like diving into a marketing world.

After reading the October 2012 Trend Briefing: SERVILE BRANDS, I am so impressive with the unique perspective of the future development of selling that it points out as well as the real-world examples.  The idea of SERVILE indicated that for brands, serving, assisting, and lubricating is the new selling. The first example of “SERVILE is: Letting customers try out first” is what I have imagine about, definitely the coolest shopping experience you would ever have. I wish I could shop as the girl in the following video. Check it out first!

The Future of Shopping

Isn’t that cool? What a fabulous combination of technology and marketing! And there’s more, the following example is Hyundai Home Shopping provided in the October Trend Briefing. Customers can try out all the clothes, handbags and accessories by simply uploading a photo of themselves on this phone app to see how everything looks on them. This service is even available for interior accessories and total up to 70,000 products. Moreover, users can also post and share what they bought or intend to purchase on FB and Cacao Talk (Korean WhatsApp).

Picture from: http://www.trendwatching.com/briefing/

I believe the above innovations  of shopping will tremendously influence people’s shopping pattern in the near future. Since the modern people have lesser and lesser time to hang around in the shopping mall and always complain about the long line-up in front of fitting rooms, it is imperative to come up with some new ways of shopping that are time-saving and convenient. Therefore, increasing number of people tend to shop online by using laptops as well as mobile apps. Recalling from what I have learnt so far, marketing is not just about advertising, it is also about changing the ways of doing things and that’s exact what Hyundai Home Shopping did.

Source:

http://www.trendwatching.com/briefing/

September Trends in Review!

We All Love Limited-Edition Products! (Comments on An External Blog Post)

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After reading Donald Cunningham’s blog post “Limited-Edition Products Create Marketing Buzz“, I found that this topic is so fascinating to me that I have to mention it.

Following are my comments and a few more ideas around this cool topic. Check them out!

Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 Versace Limited Edition

“Selling less helps you get more. It’s counter-intuitive, but it works.”

Have you ever bought something that was relatively expensive compared with the similar products and sometimes unnecessary or even useless to you? But your subconsciousness would encourage you to get it much greater than those normal products regardless of the high prices. Those incredibly appealing products are the so-called “limited edition” products or something “exclusive”. They are limited supplied and more expensive, however, people tend to love them more and crowd to purchase them. This interesting phenomena reveals that people tend to more value things that are rare (i.e. Gold, diamonds, vacations and winning the lottery).

Don’t you think the following limited edition products are more attractive to you, not only with their stunning looks, additional features but also their “limited” title.

Mario Special Edition NDS

Picture from: http://www.amallonline.com/nintendo-ds-lite-ndsl-red-mario-limited-edition-p-14808.html

S/S 2012  Louis Vuitton Monogram Vernis Alma BB

Picture from: http://www.esaybag.com/monogram-vernis/3356-louis-vuitton-lv-monogram-vernis-alma-bb-bleu-lagon-m91696-bag.html

ADR X H&M

Picture from: http://mirrorme.me/anna-dello-russo-x-hm/adr-x-hm/

There is a marketing strategy stem from this kind of customer behaviour, that is the scarcity strategy. It creates excitement and motivation for potential customers to make a panic purchase and greatly boost the company’s short-term profits. Interestingly, we found that people with good buying power desire to get those exclusively limited luxury goods no matter how much it takes.

Why? And what kind of things attract them?

From the marketing aspect, we can explain that the higher prices and the limited quantity or time supply of the products would create a stimulating atmosphere for customers who would perceive a higher value of the products as well as the brands, also promote the images of the brands. For those who with high status or want to be treated as high-class people, they tend to enjoy buying expensive limited edition products that as their status symbol in order to convey their unique social images to the public.

Source from: http://www.brandeo.com/scarcity%20strategy