Marketing-ing

As everyone else I am a “party” guy, I enjoy hanging out with a group of friend and I like to meet strangers and socialize with them. When I just got familiar with clubbing, I notice clubs are busy not on weekend but on “ladies night”.

A ladies’ night (sometimes ladies night) is a promotional event, often at a bar or nightclub, where female patrons are waived the cover charge or receive reduced price or free drinks. However I am surprised that on this day I thought I should see mostly girls in the club but that is not the case, men are the majority still. I asked myself this day has nothing to do with us why they still choose to come today. After a few thought I realized that is right this is called a marketing strategy. Men know that there will be a lot of girls tonight and that is why they want to come anyway they pay the same amount as usual.

I thought the club will not make much money since all the girls are free entries, when I saw it with my eyes, I know I was wrong they still can make money from men who look for girls on this special day. They might even make more money since there are more girls and men will spend more buying drinks for them. They even have special person that selling roses. When a man show interest in a girl .they will not be stingy about the money, so they will spend in club nonstop without pain

Just now, i have read Erin’s blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/mengxilin/2011/03/21/pricing-of-mcdonalds-pie/) about the price of McDonald’s pie. A single pie in McDonald’s cost $0.69 while buying 2 pies cost $1.39. Although i have never had a pie in McDonald’s, i definitely remember there is a ad like this in the McDonald’s restaurant. (but i couldn’t remember clearly what was the price) i feel this is really a trap for the consumers, because it’s in our vein that we know buying two will be definitely cheaper than buying one when there are no limitations. And for McDonalds, we know that a pie isn’t anything that is rare or need to post some limitations on it just in case too many people want it, therefore, upon seeing the ad, we will automatically think that buying two pies will be cheaper than buying one pie, therefore, paying a dollar extra.

However, i don’t think McDonald’s did this one purpose. Because this one extra cent of profit doesn’t worth the trust that McDonald’s has build up after so many years. Since McDonald’s sell their franchises, therefore, we shouldn’t calculate like what Erin did in her blog. Basically, if McDonald’s sell 100 pies a day, they are making an extra profit of $0.50, it’s something that many people wouldn’t care if it is dropped on the floor.

Therefore, i believe McDonald’s wouldn’t be so stupid to ruin their brand just because an extra profit that they can’t even get from their franchises.

Groupon is a website that provides deals and offers of many different products daily.  It is launched in October 2008 and now, it has 35 million registered users all over the world. Whenever Groupon sends you an offer, it is actually advertising for that the particular product or services. Many people may not pay close attention to ads on TV, but one will definitely pay attention to the email in the inbox. When an email is sent to you from Groupon, even if you didn’t buy the product, you still get to know the product. This could be much more effective than TV ads.

Furthermore, there are time limits for purchasing a particular offer. This time limit is actually pushing the consumers to buy the product, because consumers do not want to regret after the time runs out. Therefore its a very good idea to set the time limit

When a particular offer is sold, all the three parties benefit. The consumer will benefit because they had a good deal, the manufacturer will benefit because they have attracted more customer by giving offers on Groupon, and Groupon will benefits too because more companies will be willing to let Groupon to advertise for them.

When seeing the ads on Groupon, consumers will get to know many things that they didn’t notice before. With the offers, the consumers are encouraged to give it a try to the new product of services. Therefore, i think Groupon is a very successful way to help advertising.

I used to work in a fashion shop in Metropolis. The marketing strategy used there is good and simple, but not very ethical. In the store, you will see sign boards of 50% off everywhere to attract customers to buy the clothes. However, consumer didn’t really enjoy the promotion at all, because the store manager already marked up the price of the clothes. Therefore the customer didn’t save anything at all.

At that time i was wandering when the discount season is finished and the discounts are removed, will it have a serious impact on the business? The answer is no, because the store manager not just removed the discount like that. He stock up the store new arrivals of clothes therefore, even though there is no more discounts, the customer will still buy they clothes because they know that they are buying the new arrivals, not those things that used to be half the price.

Nowadays, since the new year sale, the store manager has not put away the 50% discount signs. At first, there are many customers in the store, however after some time, the number of customer start to decrease. i think this is because customers have seen the 50% discount too many times and too used to it, therefore the discount has no more impact on them any further. Thus, i believe it should be a good idea to remove the 50% discount for sometimes, before launching it again.

One of my friend currently want to lease a new car, so i to car dealers together with him and learnt many interesting things. For example, leasing rate for the brand new series X3 in Brain Jessel BMW is 4.99%, however for the previous model, the leasing rate is 2.99% which is 2% lower. For all the M series, its 6.49%. Instead of using a same leasing rate for all the cars, BMW is charging the better models for a higher leasing rate. I feel this is a very clever idea. For those who are really rich, they would have bought the car at once and would not consider about leasing. Since there is always a shortage in those high model cars and the buyer might wait a few months before getting the car they want, it is a good idea to increase the leasing rate so as to discourage those not so rich people from buying the high end model, so that those very rich people would not have to wait too long for their car to be here.

For Audi, it is almost the same. There is a promotion going on in Open Road Audi for this month. All the A4 and A3 model have 2.99% leasing rate and first month payment free. However this promotion is only limited to A4 and A3 models, which are the cheapest model for Audi.

In one of the marketing lecture(i can’t remember which one exactly), we were asked to do an class activity of choosing a brand from a list of brands that we think it is similar to Sauder. Although my group members disapproved my idea and did not write it one the paper, i think Disney land is still the best answer and it is really similar to Sauder.

First of all, Disney is attracting tourists from all over the world. Similar to Sauder, which attracts students from all over the world.

Second, Disney is know all around the word and for Sauder, it’s the same thing

Third, everyone knows that the admission ticket for Disney Land is really expensive so does the school fees in Sauder. (i m a international student here, therefore my school fee is about 3 times higher than the local students)

Most importantly, whenever a visitor goes to Disney Land, and left after the visit, Disney wants them to help to spread the good words of Disney Land to attract more visitors to come and come back to Disney Land again, which is similar to Sauder. When a student graduate form Sauder, Sauder also want them to become the alumni and help to spread the good word about the school so as to bring in more students to UBC and Sauder.

Therefore, i believe among the brands in the list, Disney Land suit Sauder the most.

Apple’s unethical marketing strategy

Apple is definitely one of the best brand in the technology area. When it introduced the first iPhone, it’s a big impact for the cell phone market. the first iPhone was released on June 29, 2007, throughout the 4 years time, Apple has released 4 generations of iPhone altogether, there is a new one every year.

I feel this is quite unethical because its updating too fast. Actually, fast is not much of a problem, what i want to criticize here is that in every new generation, there is not much difference as compared to the previous one. For example, the only difference from the first generation of iPhone to the second generation iPhone 3G is that the second generation has the 3G network capability, other than that, its almost the same phone with the same function, even the operating system(OS) in those two phones are the same. Furthermore, Apple has disabled the older generation of iPhone to update to the newer generation’s OS, thus, forcing the consumers to buy the new iPhone.

Other than that, for the most recent iPhone 4, there is a big problem with its connectivity. However, Apple did not make any factory recall. Their solution for such problem is to give out free bumper which helps to solve the problem for anyone who purchased iPhone but only in the first 3 months. For anyone who purchased iPhone after the first 3 month, they will have to buy the bumper if they want it. I feel this is really unethical because this kind of factory defaults should be taken care by Apple, not by asking the consumer to buy something else to solve the problem.

Despite all these, it is ironic that people still line up for hours to purchase their new iPhones.