I am really glad that I have finished this marketing course and have a unforgettable memory to it. People all have a feeling that once they have finished a task, they believe what they have done is great. However, after carefully review, they will find out many area which can be improved. It happens to my group as well. But what we have done well is that everyone in the group is willing to spend tons of time in reviewing these assignments.

What we have done well:

1. We are detail-oriented. Every grammar, wording, and sentence do matter in our eyes. Sometimes, we even spent several minutes in arguing which term we need to use.
2. We are willing to contribute the whole weekends to the assignment and meeting. Usually from 1:00pm to 9:00pm.
3. We have a good offline relationship. After several-hour meeting, we usually will have a good dinner together, which enhanced our friendship so that we can work better together.

What we did not do well:

1. We are not efficient and productive. Our shortest meeting is about 5 hours and we do not do what we should do in the 5 hours because we can good friends and we are always playing and working.
2. We seldom split up the task before we meet. This is another reason why we are not efficient

Considered of the the video assignment, we really concentrated on the content but somewhat ignore the creativity of the video. None of us knows how to create a high-quality video like a pro, however luckily we know how to use our strength to remedy the weakness. So we put a lot of weight in the content of the video.

Lastly, thanks all my group members for working hard together, thanks Tamar Milne for great teaching, and thanks all the staff behind COMM296 for contributing to this course.

When I reviewed Jacky’s Blog, I found an interesting topic — the pricing strategy of Best Buy. It is about that Best Buy now prices match against other retailer competitors’ price such as Future Shop, Memory Express and so on. So if a person go to Best Buy and see a product’s price is higher than that in other retailer stores, he can get the same price if he shows the evidence to the staff in Best Buy. The evidence can be the screenshot of the information on the main websites and a photo of the product’s price shown in the store.

In fact, this “pricing matching” strategy has been widely used before so if Best Buy just started to use this strategy, it is far behind its competitors. When I bought my computer, I went to a online shopping website http://www.shopbot.ca. This website can display a bunch of information such as the price of the computer, where I can buy the computer and who the seller is. You will not buy a computer from a stranger, all the information that the website provides to you is directly collected from authorized Canadian dealer. So when you look for the computer and arrange the information from a low price to a high price, you can easily see which retailer gives you the lowest price. A number of retailers have the price matching policy, however, Memory Express has more than that.

In order to attract more customers, Memory Express has a price beat guarantee. As the guarantee says, “Memory Express will beat any authorized Canadian retailers by 25% of the difference in price. It will beat any price both in sores and on website. It will beat any price up to 7 days after the purchase.” In addition, right now Memory Express will match the shipping price of its competitors.

More and more retailers engage in the more and more fierce price war, who has the laugh for the end of the race? Express Memory? Best Buy? Future Shop? or Customers?

Today I read an interesting blog “Scott Oelkers and Hatsune Miku, Together at Last in Crazy Video From Domino’s Japan” written by John Tejada. The bog is about a measure of promotion of pizza initiated by Domino, in which  Domino uses Hatsune Miku, a holographic avatar created for a “singing synthesizer application” from Crypton Future Media, as the stunt to promote its pizza among Japan.

I would say this is a great example about how a company create a specific tactic of promotion based on the local market. Pizza is one of the popular fast food in the world, but there are many alternatives of it such as hamburger, sandwich, hot dog and other form of fast food. So biggest question Domino is facing is: how could Domino differentiate its pizza in the relatively pure-competition fast food market? Japan is a country that highly value the anime industry. The anime of Japan is very popular and famous to both domestic   Japanese and foreigners in other countries.

As the table shows, the anime helps Japan make 207.1 billions RMB in 2005, which is equivalent to 34.52 billions in U.S dollar.

Therefore, recalling Japaneses’ passion to anime is a key to open the door of fast food market. I believe Domino’s promotion tactic will succeed for the following reasons: 1) the combination of mobile app and the theme of Hatsune Miku will improve the information searching experience for customers. When consumers use the adorable app to order pizza, they are easily in a happy mood so create a positive point of view to the Domino Pizza; 2) when people get the delivery, they are easily surprised by the packaging of Hatsune Miku and what effort Domino does for differentiating the products, which leads to a happy mood; 3) after customers finish the pizza, they can even play the mobile app, which further strengthens customers’ post-purchasing experience.

If I were a Japanese, I would buy that pizza, what about you?

 

As I discussed in the Mobile Apps — Let’s Rush into TV Shows!!! ( Part 1 ), the simple mobile app Ugly Meter made a unbelievable success after it was mentioned on the Howard Stern radio show in the U.S with $80,000 in just a single day and half million after it released. Personally, I will not spend any penny on this app because I do not trust a phone can measure how attractive I am. In addition to Ugly Meter, sound effect apps are not in my desirable purchasing list. They are too simple to provide me with a long-term benefit and I am most likely tired of it in a week. But a sound effect app called Whip Sound App had also had the similar experience as the Ugly Meter. Whip Sound became famous quickly after it was played in the Big Bang Theory. So here is the question — Why do mobile apps become popular after they were mentioned in various TV shows?

First of all, the presence of apps in on the TV shows significantly decreases the time between when people know the apps and when people buy the apps. That is to say that TV shows help apps make people recognize the expected performance they want from apps, which is simply having fun.  People can see the direct performance of apps when hosts play them, so information search is not necessary. Also, people tend to buy the same apps from the same developers as they are shown on TV shows, which make people neglect those apps with same functions but different name. It is the reason why mobile apps can become profitable after TV shows — people will not consider alternatives!!! All these points encourage people to make a quick purchasing decision. Last, those apps are usually sold at a price of $0.99 and $1.99 which is too low to matter, so postpurchase dissonance rarely happens.

Overall, the presence of apps on TV shows can advertise them in an interactive way, which is the best method for bringing the happiness of playing apps to those people sitting in front of the screen.

With the development of mobile platforms such as cellular phone and tablet, more and more software developers are battling in the mobile app market which is regarded as a new profitable area.Through research, IOS Apple App Store has had 700,000 apps and hit $30 billion downloads in 2012. Apple also declares that it has paid app developers over $5 billions.This incredible record is just made by Apple and I have not included the data in term of Android App Store. Above facts give people a strong idea that how fast the mobile app ecosystem is growing and how profitable it is.

Apple’s CEO -Tim Cook shared the biggest number 30 billion apps downloaded in WWDC 2012

When  I shopped in the super market this weekend, I found out that many snacks were marked as “healthy” or “natural.” I felt happy to buy these products because I can fulfill my needs of taste buds, meanwhile do not gain weight. But a video changed my mind.The Video I Wached. It said ” while some brand names on the supermarket shelf may sound healthy, they could be far from it. ” Then I became curious of the beverage in my hands –Vitaminwater.When I saw the nutrition facts, I was so disappointed.  

( The advertisement “the drinks promote a healthy state of physical and mental being, and provide the drinker with antioxidants and other nutrients that reduce age-related eye disease.”)

It shows clearly that Serving Per Container: 2.5, Calories 50g, Sugar 13g. So one bottle of Vitaminwater has 125g calories and 32.5g sugar in total. I was shocked because it has the same amount of caloris as a half slice of cheese pizza! Why is it called “water” when it actually contains so much calories and sugar? The “vitamin” aspect of Vitaminwater confused me in thinking that it was a healthy and all natural beverage.

 

Coca Cola company takes the advantage of customers’ trust and  is irresponsible for customers’ health. What it really care is the money in people’s pocket. People are too lazy to read the nutrition facts. They tend to be undue faith in the words in advertisement. Also  the colorful packaging of the beverage attract all the attention from customers. So customers’ ignorance and carelessness make the company barefacedly abuse their trust. Coca Cola should be aware that customers can bring it up, also push it down. So I suggest the company modify the advertisements and help customers make the right purchase choice.

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