At first, I would say thank you to my team members.
It was a long way to finish this project.
In the first team meeting, I was so nervous because it was the first group meeting in English though I had done a lot in Japan. However, everyone in the group was very kind to me and innovative. I thought that this team was going to do a great job and we did!!

Of course, some problems happened. For example, one person, sometimes more than one, was usually late for a meeting. There were some fierce controversies among us.

However, everyone did their jobs on time in the end. It was a nice experience for me.

Thinking about the third assignment, it seemed difficult because I had never done such kind of video projects and none of our members did it before either. We struggled with how to start our filming.

Moreover, since one of our members was busy at that time and could not participate in our meeting, she had her own ideas about filming and it was different from ours.
Therefore, as in some of peer reviews, our video was a little difficult to follow. This is because two different videos combined together. We should have discussed it more. But, anyway, we learned a lot from this experience and we would do better next time.

Thank you very much for our teammates, class mates, and professor who gave us a great opportunity to learn how to do a video project.

Those kinds of events I wrote about in the last blog seems really interesting to me.
I will continue to write about it.

In this blog, I am going to think about the advantages and disadvantages of those events that customers choose a company’s new product.
Considering about advantages, the most important advantage is that a company gets a great attention from not only existing customers but also non-existing customers. In fact, Nestle says that they added 200k new customers because of Kit Kat chunk champion.

Also, a company can avoid a big loss because if they invest one new product and do not sell well, they will suffer a big loss. By launching several new products, they do not have to test them so much before launching them and can reach different segments customers.

But, if what I wrote above is true, why do not other companies do the same kind of campaign? Are there any problems for them?
I guess that the biggest problem is the cost. If you want to do a new campaign, you have to prepare some products at the same time. This means that you have to make several product lines. It costs a lot. And, it may cause cannibalization.

To sum up, the campaign like Kit Kat chunky champion that customers chose a new product is a good way to get a great attention from different segments. They do not need to test their new product before launching it. However, it costs a lot and may sometimes cause cannibalization.

A company has to consider about this when doing this kind of campaign.

By the way, I’m really interested in Mint Kit Kat 🙂

Kit Kat chunky champion 2013

Click the link above!!

Did you know about Kit Kat chunky champion?

I didn’t know it before my British roommate told me about it.
Kit Kat chunky champion is the tournament for four new flavor Kit Kats. This tournament was held in 2012 at first. According to Nestle HP, “It was the biggest confectionery singles event ever for Nestle Confectionery with over 600k votes cast on Facebook, 11 million bars sold[1] and very importantly drove penetration by adding 200k new young consumers into the category[2].”

Recently, These kinds of events that customers choose a company’s new product are becoming popular all over the world.

For example, coca cola Japan held the same kind of event in Japan. It was called “Oolong tea National referendum.” Maybe you don’t know, Japanese people like tea (not black tea) very much. We usually drink tea instead of water. This campaign also succeeded greatly, though I couldn’t tell the difference between these two oolong tea. Lol

This  is still going on, so why don’t you try this campaign if you plan to come to Japan?

Reference:
“Nestle UK”, URL: http://www.nestle.co.uk/media/pressreleases/nestle-confectionerys-2013-kit-kat-chunky-champion-campaign-goes-live

Recently, the sales of paper books have been decreasing dramatically. More and more bookstores have been closed.
This is remarkably sad because I love the unique atmosphere of bookstores.
The smell of the books and the sound of pages being turned make me relaxed.
Although e-books are nice and beneficial, I definitely do not want bookstores to be closed.
Therefore, I will consider some ways to get attention to bookstores and increase sales.
I will use 3P(Price, Promotion, Place) of 4P to consider this.

<Product>
There are various ideas to improve books and bookstores.
For example, there was an interesting fair in a Japanese bookstore, which was called “lead-in fair.”
In this fair, you cannot read titles and contents when you choose a book. All you can see is the first sentence of the book. This fair intended readers to pay more attention to the first sentence.

This kind of fair certainly will increase sales.
Another idea is to make a unique bookstore. I am not sure this will lead to an increase of sales. However, you will be able to get hard-core customers and stable sales. Here are some examples of unique bookstores.

URL: http://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/reasons-why-we-love-bookstores

URL: http://blogof.francescomugnai.com/2013/08/the-20-most-interesting-and-beautiful-bookstores-of-the-world/

<Promotion>
Promotion is difficult. Books are countless, which can be a good point, but could be also a bad point. The consumer cannot choose the right book.
In order to solve this problem, I think that you should increase the number of prizes like the Booker prize.
If you do so, it will be easier for us to choose books.

<Place>
I often see bookstores collaborating with cafes like Starbucks.
Although this is a great idea, more variations are needed.
For example, some bookstores collaborate with shoes stores. They place shoes which relate to books next to them.
Another example is that some bookstores have local supermarkets in them.
They place local food next to cooking books.

As we have seen above, there are a lot of ways to increase sales.
I hope that these solutions lead to the increase of sales and keep the unique experience of bookstores for future generations.

There is a famous story, which is about beer and diapers.
One major retailer in the U.S. found that the beer and diaper sales  were correlated.
The reason was that husbands were asked to buy diapers on their way home from work by their wives and they also picked up beer. Therefore, they just relocated beer next to diaper, then it led to the increase of those sales.

These kinds of stories come from data mining. We can deal with greater amount of data today because of the technology development. The data is called Big Data. Without any doubt, you can gain a lot of benefit if you use it properly.

For example, online dating services developed a unique algorithm for matching men and women from the data such as personal characteristics, reactions and communications.
Another example is that retailers analyze sales, pricing, economic, demographic and weather data. Convenience stores in Japan have the system that umbrellas are automatically delivered to the store if big data says it will rain in the afternoon.

Big data is innovation for marketers and will be used in many kinds of industries.

In this post, I will consider the future of big data a little.
For example, I think people will depend on their smartphones more. They know almost everything about holders from big data and will be able to predict their next movement easily.
If it says, “Eat sushi for lunch!”, most people will follow that.
This is because when a TV program said that bananas were really good for health, most people went to buy it  the next day. Why would people not follow smartphone’s advice?
Of course, it’ll be convenient for us but be somewhat boring for me.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbqjv1_dan-rei-suntory-kinmugi_shortfilms

Look at the commercial above. It’s a beer commercial in Japan.The woman was waiting for the return of her husband making his dinner. There was a big controversy about it. Men basically liked this commercial. On the other hand, most women didn’t like it as this commercial reminds viewers of the traditional image that wives stay at home all the day waiting for the return of their husbands.

In Japan, there was a tradition that men worked outside the house and women worked inside it (doing housework). But, the situation has been changing over the last 30 years. More and more women work with men and a greater number of men help their wives with housework, though the gender gap still exists as shown in the Global Gender Gap Report by World Economic Forum (Japan’s rank is 101).

The commercial above obviously describes Japanese traditional wives. Of course, the company knew about it. But, why did the company make it?

One answer is that the target is men, especially 30~50 year old men. These men may tend more to like traditional women. In fact, 30~50 year old men bought this product the most.

However, there is another possible answer. The company intended to cause a controversy and increase the customer’s interests by doing so. Actually, this commercial became very popular and I heard a lot of people talked about this beer.

Therefore, in terms of marketing, this commercial succeeded in providing the ideal image to the target audience and increased sales dramatically.
However, in terms of ethics, it involves the risk that it could lower women’s social position.
I don’t know whether it is right that the company draws customer’s attention by intending to cause a controversy. We have to continue to think about this problem.

sources:
http://www.weforum.org/reports/global-gender-gap-report-2012

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