Month: March 2011

Sapporo beer, I was totally attracted to the topic when I saw the blog about it. The reason is that I like the taste a lot. Digging into the topic in Amanda Liu’s blog post, I then realized it is about a new online commercial it produced. Basically the commercial showed the process of how the beer was made. And, I agree with her for the idea that it gives a good sense of Japanese culture by using traditional Japanese music, wrestling, and etc. Then think back to a marketing lecture couple weeks ago, I realized this commercial is actually very similar with one of the Coca-Cola commercial we saw in the lecture. So, my question here is how effective and ethical is imitating an existing idea of a commercial. First off, which company “borrowed” the idea from which? With some research, I have found Coca-Cola has introduced its commercial in 2006 and the Sapporo beer commercial was on it about a year ago. Despite that they are both very fascinating commercials, I find they are also similar in ideas. That would probably have no legal issue since they have much different as well. In my opinion, this commercial will be very effective because they have borrowed a successful and amazing commercial and they have made it very unique in its way as well. Here are the two commercial, please take a closer look!

When I think of coffee, all I think about is Starbucks and the green lady logo. Just recently I have came to know that Starbucks has changed its logo again. This time they take off the words. What a cool idea, it takes Starbucks to a whole new level in its 40th anniversary! With the reputation of its premium coffee, Starbucks has already build a strong emotional attachment with its consumers. People now don’t have to read the name before recognizing the brand that almost everyone knows Starbucks now.

Finding other blogs about Starbucks, I realized how much attention people now give to this great company. For example, Tom Rattray’s post “Starbucks Coffee, Direct from the Fields to a Store Near You” talks about Starbucks’ new commercial which has gave me so much knowledge about its new marketing strategy of making coffee personal and special! As he mentioned in his blog, Starbucks uses pull strategy to have more customers coming into the coffee shops. Starbucks keeps innovate new marketing strategies to let people notice and purchase them. From my understanding, Starbucks has became animportant part of people’s lives! The marketing strategies are very impressive! I am looking forward to learn more in the future!

It is not uncommon to notice that companies hold their inventory of new products to motivate buyers. People line up for a long time and purchase a new invented product to satisfy their emotional needs. Apple is the master at this strategy. As a matter It is not uncommon to notice that companies hold their inventory of new products to motivate buyers. People line up for a long time and purchase a new invented product to satisfy their emotional needs. Apple is the master at this strategy. As a matter of fact, they have good products to offer to people. They also adopt inventory holding strategies to keep customers interested and excited about their products. In the beginning, Iphone, as a good example, has always been getting the attention from customers because people have to line up for it. There is always this huge demand from customer which is one of the pull strategy Apple uses. However, launching the newest Ipad 2 on March 15th, Apple this time have adopted a different approach. This time, they do not hold much inventory as they used to do before as a news article mentioned on Yahoo news. This approach will prevent employees from making inventory and order mistakes which will provide a better customer services. However, it also brings up some other problems at the same time. Black market in China is one of the most severe issue that “[they] buy from here, then sell” back to China, making about $1100. Apple’s successes with their marketing strategies have proven their market power and customer loyalty in this industry. And, now maybe it is the time for something different!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20110316/bs_nf/77739

Many people have experiences of people coming to the door and performing direct selling. However, nowadays, people don’t appreciate direct selling too much because some of them had bad experiences, and a lot people just don’t know why they still do such an old school selling style. As a door-to-door salesman, I have found some reasons why people do direct sales in 2011 according to the marketing mix.

–         Promotion

Low advertising expense – despite of other creative ways, many companies spend ton of money just by putting some TV commercial to market their products. However, as a direct selling company, it does not do much promotion to save more capital for profits.

–         Place

Normally, when people see something useful and cool, they will have strong emotion toward it at the moment. Since those sales are mostly made at home, people feel more comfortable to make a decision. If they have more choices at the mall, this urgent feeling will fade off once they conduct more research and comparison on that product. Thus, direct sales, more importantly for door to door sales, will speed up the process and help people make a decision at home or in their office.

–         Price

In my opinion, most direct sales companies offer lower priced products or services since they can save much money from avoiding capital investment. Dealers in this business will be able to make more commission comparing to other in-store           employees.

–         Product

As a special business model, these companies also offer special products. These products are normally attractive in the first place too.

These business models use their niche to become the differentiated industry and provide customers with special experience. Their special marketing mix and value proposition offer them the successes in the competitive markets.