Monthly Archives: April 2013

Reflective post about the marketing plan assignment for Cafe Artigiano

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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.

The role of social media today-Reflecting external marketing post of “Why Social Media Doesn’t Matter Anymore”

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It is a marketing blog posted on May 25, 2010 by John Jantsch that named “Why Social Media Doesn’t Matter Anymore” (http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2010/05/25/why-social-media-doesnt-matter-anymore/) that attracts my attention.

What we have learned from class is that social media is a kind of intermediary between business and audience, to get people’s attentions in order to introduce or advertise new products. Except that, people lack a quick and latest overview of the whole world outside.

In John’s blog, he stated that “[r]ecent surveys suggest that small businesses are still slow to adopt social media and it also doesn’t matter anymore. Social media agencies, departments, and experts don’t matter anymore”. It frequently happens that although social media could provide a fast track to gain public awareness, people still trust a lot more in brand value. That is, if a new-born company would like to compete with other old but well-known companies, social media is not the best way it could think about. However, we still can not get to the conclusion that social media is not important any more because of that, since it is the one and only biggest and fastest channel connected between people and business.

John thought that social media did not matter any more, and what going to replace social media were prospect engagement, customer experience, collaboration, and fusion, and all of them matter since they all get customers involved. In my opinion, the best way of promotion is indeed to get those potential users to involve and engage themselves. However, there are still existing other ways to draw public attention first, then people who are interested in would involve and have some personal experience and collaboration. Social media is not as important as before since modern intermediary has boomed, but it is still the fastest way of transmission.

 

Social Responsibilities of Nike– Reflecting “Nike suspends sponsorship with murder suspect”

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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.