For marketing plan assignment, we choose Cafe Artigiano as our target, and explore different market strategies to analyze its business, strengths and weakness.

As Cafe Artigiano is definitely a Vancouver-based coffee house, it has only several retailers in Alberta and abroad. It is different from Starbucks, which provides mainly the “grab and go” service, people needs to order a cup of fantastic coffee and seat to enjoy the atmosphere as well as unbeatable latte art. Cafe Artigiano do not have external advertisements, and many people even do not know what it is. However, it still survive in the competing coffee market to attract more and more loyal customers; and that is why our team would like to choose it and explore its potential uncomparable advantages.

The only way that Cafe Artigiano uses is to build up brand name. It trusts that if anyone could have a chance to go into the store, order a cup of coffee, and seat to enjoy the atmosphere, nobody will not be attracted and wishes to come again. There is no doubt that building up brand name is a long-term and useful method to promote a product, just like Cafe Artigiano. It just takes slow step and aims to go further than other coffee brands, so it focuses on own quality rather than quantity to make everyone coming in love the coffee, service, and atmosphere. It believes that reputation is better than any form of actual advertisement, and people who feel good recommend to their friends, then there are no worries about the sales.

By doing the marketing research about Cafe Artigiano, it provides a quick overview of what a kind of business would like to form, and would like to go further.

It is one of the late surprising news that ” The dark and complex life of ‘Blade Runner’ Oscar Pistorius emerged yesterday as he was charged with the Valentine’s Day murder of his model girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp”. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2278492/Oscar-Pistorius-charged-MURDER-model-girlfriend-Reeva-Steenkamp.html#ixzz2PXWzojUo, Mail Online)

Nike, one of the sport brands giant, offering sponsorship to Oscar Pistorius once before, now stops the action. As described in one of my classmates’ blog, Nike has got enough publicity from Pistorius drama, but being as a public choosen sport brand, Nike should “embody values the company wants people to associate their brand”.

In my opinion, Nike should balance the social influence that it has with the economic profit it makes, and focuses more on the former to suspend sponsorship for Oscar Pistorius.

Since Nike is so much popular among young adults, their image of brand will easily affect the young adults’ values. To build up an active brand name provides assuredness for not only those parents that all that young kids gain from Nike is affirmative sport spirits, but also the whole society that Nike is kind of social responsible.

I strongly agree with my classmate’s opinione that “The way Nike is perceived, and the attitudes people have towards the company, will affect sales, target markets, and aspects of the marketing mix”. It will be easy to boom up even the company is during a recession, while it is super hard to change the impression of everyone that something is socially agreed to be bad.

As long as people have positive and cognitive perspectives towards something, they will then think further about getting to know it well, purchasing it, or even recommending it to their families and friends. From that, each company will have no worries about their sales and profits.

Iphones are probably the most modern cellphones in the world. The idea and model was first proposed by Apple company in California, but when looking at the back of each Iphone, there is a label saying that “Assembled in China”.

Besides Iphones, there are also many other stuff that are made or assembled in China while designed from a different place. It is frequent to see a “Made in China” label on toys, cloth, industrial materials, and hand-made goods.

There are two main aspects that explain why the phenomenon has happened: One is that most developed countries suffer labour shortage, and the other is that the majority of developing countries have cheaper and surplus labour.

For developed countries, especially European and North American countries:

• Low birth rate and rapid growth of older generation result in a lack of working generation.
• The value of economy is high while the number of employment is low, so the value of each employment is quite high to hire.

For vast developing countries, like China, India, and Philippines:

• The large number of population and the fast-growing population are the base of labour surplus.
• The total value of economy is fixed, but it is shared by a large number of people, so the value of each labour is much more cheaper than developed countries.
• It is a domestic policy that manufacture can absorb foreign capital to stimulate the gross development.

Based on that, there booms an emerging industry that named multinational manufacturing outsourcing to take advantage of labour surplus in developing countries in order to add more value to their economy, and help developed countries to make use of cheap labour so that the virtual value of product itself won’t be lost.

As we were doing a market analysis during the week past, it provides us a clear structure of how a product or company looks like in the market surrounding it. Personal speaking, I am quite interested in the competition part.

Is competition good or bad? That is the question which people think about harder since a long time ago. Well, it is obvious that no one likes competiton, especially a company in the market. “Competition has a bad reputation, however. Even in a Thesaurus, other words for ‘competitive’ are ‘bloodthirsty’ and ‘cutthroat.’ That’s about as negative and unattractive as it can get.” (Coffin, Karen. http://www.nfhs.org/CoachingTodayContent.aspx?id=7023) As competition brings pressure, blows, and lack of confidence, people are afraid of losing any chance and being beaten by their competitors.

However, everything has two sides. Anything we are afraid of could turn to what we can make use of oneday, just like any weakness could turn to become an oppotunity. Same story happens for competition. Those pressure and blows could turn to motivations and encourage people think harder, prepare harder, and work harder. “Competition is a good thing. It’s about finding out how well you can do something under pressure. It’s about challenging yourself to get better. “(Coffin, Karen. http://www.nfhs.org/CoachingTodayContent.aspx?id=7023)

A competition could:

• Make a person or a company not easily get satisfied with what he has done.
• Stimulate people to work harder, and think more.
• Provide a person or a company their weaknesses directly during comparison with competitor.
• Help a person or a company correct any small mistakes in time before resulting in a loss.
• Teach a person or company to respect and learn from their competitors.
• Press up personal benefit or company profit since it helps eliminating faults.

Broadly speaking, competition lubricates the whole market to become more effcient, and narrowly speaking, it helps a person understand himself/herself better.

Marketing can be found everywhere in our daily life, and it is in different types. For me, I regard advertising as the most common issue in marketing and the most relevant issue that people are familiar with. Advertising is the first step of marketing as it promotes the products and services of an organization, then the public will get to know that organization or interested in the services it provides. As long as the organization has a broad base, it will then develop the business successfully. Based on the importance of advertising, it has to be regulated ethically. Firstly, any advertisement should have to be of truth and honesty. People get incentives to enjoy the products and services because they rely on the advertisement, and if they find themselves frauded, they lose confidence on whatever service of that company, which results in a bad reputation for that company. Secondly, any advertisement has to be positive. Advertisement can be found everywhere around us, for example, beside a bus stop, on the wall, and in a magazine, so when a person waits for the bus, walks beside a wall, or reads, the easiest stuff that he/she has access to is advertisement. A positive advertisement provides a positive feeling over a person, and stimulates him/her to read more about what being advertised, and on the contrary, people will feel uncomfortable about negative advertisement and dislike to know more about the object. Thirdly, the more creative an advertisement is, the more it draws the public attentions. Making an attractive and unique advertisement partially succeed a company since people cannot forget it even if a long time has passed. An attractive advertisement should be innovative, out of violence, and close to public tastes. Hence, advertising is the first ethical and critical step for any business.

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