Ok...One more

So I know the last post was my last official entry in here.  But I couldn't end this after seeing the new Kraft zesty Italian salad dressing commercials.  They have been getting a lot of buzz already.
See article below about it. 

http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/shirtless-hunk-heats-kitchen-krafts-ads-zesty-italian-dressing-148279

The Today show today also mentioned how it may not necessarily be appealing to their target demographic here.  I'm not so sure, it makes me want to try it... see clip below. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLqci6rTi6Q

Week 11!

Welcome to the final week!!  This time we are changing things up a bit and doing a high level overview of marketing.  I’d like to explain marketing how I’ve learned it so far.   A lot of the conceptual information comes from Cohen’s book on Drucker and everything we have discussed regarding Drucker’s marketing ideas. 

Marketing is more than just creative advertisements and promotions.  Marketing is a focus on the consumer and markets of those consumers.  One of the most important lessons I learned during this class was that the consumer really drives the products on the market, not the companies that are making them.  If something does not appeal to the purchasers, they don’t buy it, and if they don’t buy it, the company can’t afford to continue to make the product.  Companies need to constantly review their product lines and see what stage of the product lifecycle the item is in and assess whether there will be future sales.  Drucker mentions that we cannot predict the future, but we can use the data we have to make an educated guess on forecasts. 

So although markets promote and advertise, it is really the consumer that makes the ultimate decision on whether an item will be a success or failure.

One of the key focus areas for marketers is the market for their consumers.  Rather than look at the product, they should look at the market they will appeal to and make decisions based on that.  By looking at demographics and market landscapes, marketers can decide how to establish the right promotions and advertisements.  For example if a product really appeals to an older generation without as much computer knowledge and access, an online promotion probably isn’t the way to go. 

 

 

 

In our Pharmasim world we did a cold medicine scenario.  If we had research shopping that young families do most of their shopping in the grocery store for cold medicine and young families are our main buyers, we should gear our strategy to a special promotion in the grocery channels.  Marketers should focus on markets. 

Another big part of marketing is developing a strategy, or plan, and looking at various research and data to support that plan.  There are a lot more numbers in marketing that I would have originally imagined.  Without an overview of your return on marketing spend, your marketing efficiency, and your net contribution model, a strategy would be really tough to develop.  Marketers need to know their product demand, product potential, and targets before moving forward.   With this also comes knowledge of competitors.  Those in marketing need to know what their competition is doing before being able to make a fully educated decision on where to take their product.  Important information includes pricing, promotions, and sales.  In the instance where a given market has the estimated potential for 100 million units and demand of 70 million units, a marketer would need to know how many units the competition is currently selling before determining if branching out into this market is a lucrative move.  If the competition is selling 65 million units, well, there’s not a ton of extra room to move in there.  If the competition has only recently broken into the market and is only selling 30 million units, there may be a good opportunity. 

Marketing is more than just looking at price, promotion, product, and placement.  It’s looking at the consumer needs and demands and how to reach those consumers.  Adjustments to strategy should be made based on the consumer and the competition.  Strategy revisions should be done often, and products that are not reaching their full potential should no longer be sold.  New products and innovation should be constant.  Without marketing and innovation, companies will not succeed according to Drucker.  Focusing on profit more than consumers will not lead to results, but rather a focus more on consumers will lead companies to produce profitable products.  The constant review of product lines and strategies allows for companies to not rest with status quo and to adjust for the future. 

Marketing has been a great learning opportunity and has allowed me to think about things in a new way.  I hope after reading this you will look at marketing in a slightly new way as well. 

Misc Marketing

Since JCP has been a focal point for marketing strategies during the last year or two, I had to add this article.  It looks like more are jumping ship from the department store.  I recently saw a commercial advertising the JCP Home store.  Not sure how that strategy fits into the recent changes, but interesting enough. 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/sapna/exclusive-jc-penney-marketing-department-hit-by-two-more-dep

Week 10 Blog

Almost the end of class!  We are working on wrapping up the team simulation this upcoming week.  So far we have completed through period 7 and are finalizing the strategy revision memo for the next 3 rounds.  It's been quite a journey, and the process has been an interesting one.

I think one of the biggest changes was going from an individual assignment review of the market to a team strategy.  The original strategy as a team seemed much more difficult than the revision.  I think since we were just getting to know what each person found in their individual assignment and making a whole overview of where we wanted to go that it took quite a long time to decide as a group.  For the revision, it seemed to go faster as we had the original starting point.  The overall process was time consuming and there was so much information to look at; as a team everyone really looked at all sorts of various things so compiling it made it easier since one person didn't have to do every analysis. 

Most Important Pharmasim Decision

There were so many decisions that all compounded on each other so it is definitely difficult to determine one most important one.  I know my teammates originally said Allround+, but I think Allright has been a better one for us.  I think it was so important as it extended our brand outside of simply cold medicine and into a whole new category.

Market Attractiveness/Competitive Advantage

This analysis came into play during both the implementation of Allround+ and Allright.  We discussed this as a team originally and decided that both Children's cold and Allergy would be good markets to break into based on our individual assessments.  The individual analysis was very helpful in looking into all the markets from new ones to the original markets.  For the original Allround market, we did not use the analysis as much in our strategy since it was the more generic product (all demographics). 

Special Incidents

Throughout the team version of Pharmasim we have encountered 'special' decisions in each round.  One of my favorite ones so far has been the social media incident where there were negative postings on our social media page.  I liked this one because it is such a common thing today where most companies are on Facebook or Twitter or review sites and of course customers are going to go to these places to complain.  Personally, I like to see when a company responds to negative comments on sites.  Just that they are checking them and care enough to address them makes me feel better so we followed that theory in our decision.  I later asked one of my marketing friends (after we decided!) who agreed that would have been the best move. 



The other good special decisions have been related to the site and internet.  I like that the simulation takes this into consideration because social media is everywhere now.  It was nice to make decisions on working with Pharmacists through the website and running an interest ad contest.  Those are serious campaigns and ideas that companies face today. 

Most Important Thing Learned

I remember at the beginning of class, our professor addressed that marketing was not just advertising and really was a lot of numbers and analysis.  I learned that marketing is actually not all that different from accounting.  I have an accounting degree and always looked at marketing as a more creative design type of business degree, but now I can see how much they are related.  It was eye-opening to understand how marketing is using some of the same types of analysis I'm looking at in the accounting world.  It makes me feel like that is something I can use at work and potentially work closer with on our marketing team. 

Apple Article

I wanted to send along this interesting Apple article I found.  I plan on posting a question about it this week so I thought I'd add it here.  I'm thinking we can discuss the strategy behind their original plan here and the ethics behind it.  It seems like those companies Apple attempted to work with here all settled and got out of the way - should Apple have done the same?  Are they know standing behind a bad decision or are they right to stand up for what they did?

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/big-week-apple-e-book-trial-starts-company-163701778.html?vp=1

Marketing Week 9

Pharmasim

This week we have spent a lot of time working in groups to develop the Pharmasim strategy for the next few periods.  Pharmasim has been an interesting challenge during the semester.  I've done simulations for classes before, but never a marketing one like this. The last one I did was an auditor simulation for accounting.  I have learned a lot of different ways to analyze data and the relationships between various data points.  It has been a good experience as a way to try out different strategies with 'pretend' money and see what happens when you make major or minor adjustments or what happens when you make no adjustments at all.
 

One of the challenges was the limited amount of options in the simulation.  Although there are so many different ways to analyze the data and make adjustments, there are also limits on the changes that can be made.  Sometimes there is information that makes you want to change something that isn't able to be changed. 

Another challenge was working together with the team to make changes and move onto the next round.  Just coordinating timing of conference calls around everyone's schedules has been difficult.  Being in a course where everyone has careers and priorities outside of class makes quick turnarounds tough as a team. 

Also this week we read an article about marketing metrics.  The article discussed knowing your market and customer before making any decisions on metrics.  This can definitely be applied to what we have been working on so far within the simulation.  When I first started working in the practice rounds I just looked at random data and made adjustments based on what I thought about as a consumer.  I didn't take the time to really think about an overall strategy and how changes impact the upcoming rounds.  Once we got into a team setting, it was more important to make sure we were all on the same page and begin to work on how we wanted to make decisions.  These metrics became an important part of any decision, especially when you have to convince others that your decision makes sense.  I think we have begun to work on the portfolio and metrics that make sense and will adjust as we continue further into the process.

Other Blogs

This week we were asked to also review another three classmate blogs.  I reviewed Aleena's, Marcin's, and Kristin's blogs. 

I started with Aleena's blog which gave a good first impression before I even started reading because it looked creative and pretty and fun.  And that impression was right!  It was a fun blog that was written in a very casual style.  There were random cartoon or comics throughout and she related the class information to completely unrelated items which made it different and interesting.  I'm glad I picked this one to review this week. 

Next I looked at Marcin's blog.  It also included some cute little clipart related to the push and pull strategy.  I learned right away that Marcin works at an accounting firm, which was relatable as I previously worked in public accounting.  I agree with all the comments related to the accounting firm strategy having had experiences in that industry as well.  There were also interesting simulation comments in there that had lead to some ideas for analyses in my own group for the next couple of weeks. 

Lastly, I looked at Kristin's blog.  Turns out last week she had reviewed mine!  It was nice to see some good feedback on my own blog and some comments there.  She takes the Pharmasim analysis and relates it to Drucker readings and ties everything together.  She mentions that she might not be that good of a marketer yet, but I think she's probably better than she thinks since she's tying things together from all different aspects. 

Week 8

Marketing 640 - Week 8

It has been a busy week!  There were some class prompts I'll start with this time around. 

One we began to talk about in class was Drucker's suggestion that the customer ultimately determines marketing decisions and what a business is because they are the ones buying the product.  I believe that there are some businesses that do not follow this thought process, but unfortunately I don't think they stay in business very long.  Not focusing on what customers want is ultimately setting yourself up for failure.  Sure not everything that people want can be achieved, but if there are many requests over and over again companies would need to seriously consider these and reach out for feedback.  Strategies like focus groups and customer feedback forms are helpful ways to address this and coincide with Drucker's suggestion.

Another Drucker discussion was on the ability to predict the future.  Drucker knew that strategic analysis could not predict the future - so the question was asked, why would you focus on historical data to predict buying habits if this was true?  I think this question somewhat relates to the one above.  Although we cannot know all the factors that are causing decisions in the future, we can use historical data to the best of our ability.  By looking at what customers want and their buying habits and trying to make decisions around that seems to be the best possible approach.  Ignoring information would be less helpful.  So even though we cannot predict everything that will happen we have to use the information we have as best we can.

One last Drucker prompt related to his '5 Certainties' of the future and whether these will change in the next 50 years.  These Certainties are:

1. The collapsing birthrate in the developed world.
2. Shifts in distribution of disposable income.
3. New definitions of performance in an organization.
4. Global competitiveness
5. Growing incongruence between economic globalization and political splintering.

I have to say for someone who mentioned we could not predict the future, Drucker seemed to nail it. In all honestly I can't imagine any of these changing in the next 50 years.   His prediction seems to be that things will change, and since I can't imagine we go stagnant all of a sudden I believe he is right.

Other Blogs

This week we were also asked to look into 3 other blogs in class.  I looked at Christine's, Mindy's, and Kenny's blogs.

I'll start with Christine's blog.  I really liked her in depth look into the Pharmasim assignment.  It made me think about how our team addressed the first round and it seemed to very different from what their team did.  I also like her comments on how Pharmasim decisions are not entirely like real-life because you can't adjust certain things, like her example of the dollar value associated with training sales staff.  I think this is a great point, there are many things that you could change in your decisions in real-life that you can't change in the simulation.  It seems like their team had a good plan going in and really went for it.  She also addressed an interesting article she found.  I think adding interesting articles helps classmates get to know each blogger a little better.

Mindy's blog was the next one I read.  She also addressed a lot of the Pharmasim areas.  In her blog she used specific reports that her group liked, and that it helpful to hear what other groups are looking and using to make decisions.  She also went on to address the 'try this' strategy of push/pull marketing.  That is one of the things I looked at in making our team decisions in the first round too.  In the week before she mentioned JC Penney and I've found their recent marketing decisions interesting too.  I think I had previously discussed them in one of my earlier blog posts, they seem to be having a lot of trouble trying to decide what customers want.  I think it took a lot for them to try something new and now address it's failure and go back to the old way.

Lastly,  I looked through Kenny's blog.  He started discussing how the class relates to his construction job and that was really interesting.  It's nice to hear how others relate to the things we are learning in class.  He also addressed the 'try this' like Mindy did, but he related it more to his job instead of the Pharmasim simulation.  It makes sense what he discussed about having to use the pull strategy in his career.  By not being able to relate completely to the simulation makes it more interesting and allows for a different view point of what we are talking about related to marketing.

Pharmasim

This week Pharmasim was all about analysis.  Since we had our individual assignment due for the situation analysis there were no decisions to be made or tried, but rather just looking at how all other decisions have worked so far.  It was good to take a deep dive into the information and really get to know the reports better.  Putting together all the information and considering all the various ways to look into everything turned out to be very time consuming, but helpful in learning.  It will be more interesting to learn what teammates came up with and whether or not any of our ideas of key focus areas were in alignment. 

Weekly Post

Questions

This week our review materials had a lot to do with the message to consumers.  We did not have any class prompts this week so I'm going to go through my questions and then some Pharmasim assignment comments in this week's blog.

My first question related to communicating a message to consumers.  In a world where so many people have DV-Rs and the opportunity to fast forward through commercials it makes it more difficult to get people to pay attention.  We also talked about in class how people have more than just the television in front of them at all times.  There are so many times when commercials come on and I go straight to my phone or tablet to keep occupied.  So how do companies balance between conveying their message and getting the attention of the viewers to watch?  I've seen so many commercials that are funny and entertaining, but I have no idea what the commercial is trying to sell to me.  Or other commercials that are all about a product, but I'm too bored to watch.  I think companies that have something catchy, like a specific jingle or slogan, can provide an entertaining commercial and still have people remember what company the commercial represents.

Another note from the weekly material related to keeping promotions consistent across channels.  My question was whether this meant solely the message or whether it meant that the promotion offered should be all the same.  I get so many emails that have in-store only or online only sales - are these companies going against the consistent strategy?  I have to think that they are, because personally I can't stand when companies do this.  It seems that it's always the one I don't want that I get the sale for and it turns me off to purchasing something from them at all.  Banana Republic and Petco seem to be notorious for this in my inbox.

My last question was addressed in class.  Since we were talking about public relations, I automatically thought of Carnival Cruise Lines and their recent blunders.  I think at this point there is not much they could do to come back from the hits they have taken recently.  The stock is doing better than I would have imagined, but not going strong (see article: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/05/09/carnival-stock-it-gets-worse.aspx ).  On the up side if you are willing to risk going on this line prices have dropped dramatically for them to try to fill up the ships.

Pharmasim

Also this week we began working on team Pharmasim sections.  It's been an interesting switch to this version as there are many more incidents and decisions to make as part of the team.  It has been nice though having input from a group and working together to make decisions that can be supported.  We have been off to a good start in this round with stock price steadily increasing.

We have put a reliance on the market update to give us a strategy which has worked out well.  That report got us to look into alligning our sales force which we did in the first round.  Then we have increased a little more since then due to channel increases.  We have also looked into cannibalization and some promotion information.  We have compared our promotions to other companies which lead us to some increases in the co-op and POP sections.  We started a website with Adworks which has been doing well. 

Next we will be looking launching a new product!

Interesting Article

Yesterday I mentioned that I did not see any interesting marketing articles over the weekend to post on here.  Today I have!  See the below article for ways that companies get creative with their logos to instill almost subliminal topics inside.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/corporate-logos-that-contain-subliminal-messaging-152827219.html

Week 6

Class Prompts

I'd like to go through quite a few class prompts this week so instead of starting with my weekly questions I'm going to start here and tie some question information into the prompt discussion if I can. 

One note was to put something interesting you saw in marketing this week.  I did post something this week (last post on May 8th) and I'd like to refer to that one because I haven't seen anything that has caught my eye since then.  I looked through my email to see what great Mother's Day specials came through to see if any got my attention, and there was absolutely nothing unique or special about a single one that I saw!  Very disappointed.  Anyway, my last post about Krispy Kreme donuts and their ability to go about an beyond just still seems very incredible to me.  It makes me wonder how they work with their employees to ensure they provide such great service.  Great employees make you want to go back.  I personally go to Dunkin Donuts (easy locations), but some locations alone are much better than others - the one in the gas station on Sumner Ave. in Springfield MA has always been my favorite due to one of their employees.  It didn't take much, but it made me go out of my way to that one if I had extra time to. 

Another question today was the 'myth' of the irrational customer.  I personally agree with Drucker in that customers are rational, it's just trying to determine why they do what they do.  One of my questions this week related to Comcast and their services.  I think that the Cable service they provide is better than Dish/DirecTV because I've seen what happens to some of these in rain storms.  I would guess that Comcast could consider my decision to be irrational if I switched.  Though Comcast's ability to make me wait, repeat my self over and over to five various people on the phone, and constantly increase my bill makes me consider the others every single time I have to call them.  Companies don't always want to know what they are doing wrong and just chalk it up to bad customer habits or decisions, when in reality most decisions have a reason even small.  I heard one new donut place was opening up on the right side of a busy road when there are two Dunkin Donuts on the other side figuring it would get all the customers that were going in the other direction, even though it may not seem that is a reasonable decision - to avoid crossing the street.

Then we discussed some pricing strategies.  Will pricing objectives strategies impact the net contribution model?  The answer is absolutely! Depends on price elasticity, a change in the price could significantly affect the units sold, which in turn influences the demand and the market share of the product.  If a customer introduces a new product using the penetration method (offering a low intro price) the goal is to get a higher market share and demand, but price will be lower in the model.  If the customer uses the skimming method then the original two factors of demand and market share may be lower but the price will be higher.  So depending on the amount of each, the company needs to look at all the various options to see where the net contribution model is where they want it to be and go with those.  Changes in each part of the model will impact the remaining parts.

Drucker has his own take on pricing strategies.  He believes that the companies should look at the price the customer would pay for the product and then determine a cost that works with that price.  There doesn't seem to be a model or calculation, but rather just a look into the market to see where the customers would buy a product.  Rather than set pricing based on a percentage above cost, this method would be to fix costs to make it work at a good price.  If companies looked at products this way they would be able to more clearly see products that cost more than they are worth and not venture out into those products.

Pharmasim

Pricing Strategies can be implemented in the Pharmasim program.  Below is a look at the various stratgies and different things to consider in the Pharmasim world.

EDLP (Every Day Low Price) - This is the Wal-Mart approach.  In Pharmasim we could look at our gross margin and bring the price down to a low reasonable price for customers that is still above our gross margin to ensure we are making a profit still.  We'd need to also consider our advertising strategy in Pharmasim here - if we are going to go for the EDLP method we may want to reduce the high priced advertising company we have and focus our strategy on benefiting the consumer with the low price instead of trying to compete on quality.

High/Low Pricing - This is showing the customer an originally high price and offering sales.  We could do this with the use of coupons in Pharmasim.  If we keep the price high and offer the higher coupons this would really show the high/low pricing.  We could also use this in our channel discounts with our distribution channel customers (B2B) by increasing or keeping a high price and then offering the largest channel discounts.

New Product Skimming - This is introducing a new product at a high price and really showing the quality of the product.  This would be the opposite of the strategy mentioned for EDLP.  I would think we would want to look at our competitors, make the new product price above theirs, and keep that high priced advertising firm to show our great quality.  We will sell less, but hopefully at a much nicer gross margin.

Net Product Penetration - This will be similar to the EDLP method just the price will be an introductory one instead.  We can start off low to build a customer base and then eventually incrementally increase as we have those loyal customers and move to a high/low strategy or stay low if our gross profit proves to be effective.  This should allow us a high market share.

Krispy Kreme

In reading a new e-book by Scott McKain (who I recently saw speak at a seminar) titled "Digging Wells and Building Fences", he mentioned a blog.  The blog is titled "100 days of rejection" by Jia Jiang, and I had to look it up.  Jia Jiang was determined to get rejected by outrageous requests 100 days in a row in an effort to get over that fear.  Well, Kristy Kreme donuts didn't allow this request to be answered with a 'No'... see article below.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/28/jia-jiang-rejection-therapy-krispy-kreme-jackie-braun-video_n_2206217.html

Two separate ads in one

Did anyone else see this?  It's a differnet ad depending on the height of the person viewing it...kids get one message and adults get another.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-now/anti-child-abuse-ad-aims-help-kids-speak-165043599.html?vp=1

This is incredible.

Celebrity Endorsements

I saw this article on Yahoo.com and had to share it here.  It's about celebrity endorsements gone wrong.  It seems like some of these stars have had a few PR issues that caused them lots of money.  Do you think that the companies used these decisions as a marketing opportunity?  By showing customers that they would not stand for some of the celebrity foolishness, did they earn some points and make some customers like them a little more?

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/8-celebrity-endorsement-disasters-203135313.html

Week 5

Class Questions

As in previous weeks, I will begin with going through some of my questions from class this week. 
One of my questions related to the idea from Drucker that change is required by companies.  He mentions that any company that remains at status quo will fail.  Although I agree with that as a generalization, I think there are some companies that makes changes and should have remained at status quo.  I think a good local example is Friendly's.  Now that they have had so much financial difficulty, they are trying to go back to their 'old ways' and bring back the original Friendly's.  They got so far away from it I'm not sure they can go back.  Had they just stuck with the burgers and milkshakes that people expected rather than try to compete with other chains - would they have had so much trouble?  I'm not sure they would have.

One of my questions that was discussed in class was when should you start to implement a new product - during the old product's maturity or decline?  We talked about starting a new product early to ensure early adopters are covered since those in the decline stage are generally a small population. 

Prompts

There were a few prompts given out in the class discussion this week that I'd like to go through.

One was to explain the strategy between Neiman Marcus and Target joining together for a marketing campaign based on the Luxury article.  The strategy of Target is easier to see as it's the lower end market that is trying to gain some popularity and 'luxury' by teaming up with those Neiman Marcus customers.  The strategy of Neiman Marcus is not as clear.  There are many reasons why luxury or high end stores would want to get together with non-luxury brands, one of the popular reasons seems to be to gain new customers.  This is an easier way to get their name out to people who don't generally shop with them, but riskier since their current shoppers may not like the luxury brand being associated with non-luxury items.  My teaming with Target, Neiman Marcus could get more customers that may be in the early stages of their life (young families) to look into Neiman Marcus in the future when they may be making more money to be able to afford to shop there.

Another prompt was to explain what Drucker meant when he discussed premium pricing as a bad strategy.  This got my attention as I was reading because there are many companies who use this as their strategy.  He explains that when goods are actually premium this is not bad, but when regular goods try to add on 'bells and whistles' to their regular products to increase price is when this becomes an issue.  I believe he used the Xerox example where they started adding so many high priced features when customers really just wanted a cheap basic copier. 

Pharmasim

On to our fictional medication world of Pharmasim...

We were asked to look at the various types of new potential OTC meds that we could add to our brand line with Allstar during section 4 of the simulation.  To define the market with these potential new products I would say they would fall into the 'product development' category for all of them.  They are new products and services for Allstar that would be reaching our existing markets.  By looking at our market as the cold/cough OTD medicine category I would say any of the potential new options fall into those categories (child cold, 12 hr cold capsule, or 4 hr cough).  There is some overlap with the 'market penetration' category as we discussed these potential options may cannibalize our current product as well.

This week we were also asked to look into market demand for the various potential products we could include.  I started by looking into comparable products between the new potential lines and the overall market.

Total unit sales at my point in the simulation is at 575.9 and market penetration across all cross sections is 64.8% leading to market potential of 888.73 for the overall market.

For each potential unit, I took the product closest to the new market.  It appeared that with all these various vendors the most likely target group was mature and young families looking for cold medicine.  For this cross section the the market penetration was 67.2%.

In the 12-hr capsule market I looked at the brand Extra, which had 32.8 units sold.  Based on the 67.2% market penetration I would estimate the potential to be 48.8 units.

In the 4-hr cough market I used both Coughcure and End, which had a total of 81.1 units sold.  Based on the 67.2% market penetration I would estimate the potential to be 120.1 units.

In the child cold market I used Coldcure as an example, which had 46.8 units sold.  Based on the 67.2% market penetration I would estimate the potential to be 69.6 units.

We also discussed that some of these products may cannibalize some of the original formula sales which would only be beneficial if the profit margin on the new product is higher than the original.  This would impact the decision of the new product as well. 

Linked In Article

Below is an article I found interesting.  I recently began 'marketing myself' more by signing up for Linked In again.  I had previously signed up when I was in college and looking for a job, but completely let my online image go after I started by career.  In a recent conference it became apparent on how great it was to be able to connect with people in business through this site and became active again.  Here is a Jim Cramer with his feeling on the LinkedIn stock.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/cramer-heres-why-linkedin-getting-142434642.html

Class Questions

This week my questions came from a few different sources, and I'll go through them below.

The first one came from 'Deliver Extraordinary Customer service' as it discusses the use of technology to be able to understand customers better and be able to cater to their needs.  My question was what about the companies that cannot afford such high tech software as companies like Amazon (of course they are known for their incredible technology) or other large scale retailers.  Should smaller businesses try to compete with such large businesses on the technology scale or should they find their own ways to wow the customer?  I think that to an extent companies need to keep up with the times of technology, but some companies will not be able to offer the same level of technology. 

The latest new tech idea I have seen is Lowe's where they are now storing past purchases.  I think this is a great idea because I always go in there with a lightbulb and try to match it up in the aisle every time one burns out - this would make this easier for me.  Although this is an incredible idea, I don't believe some of the smaller hardware stores will be able to compete with Lowe's on this level.

My second question came from 'Consumer Insight - Moment of Truth' that discussed customer movement throughout the store.  I was wondering if anyone else thinks there may be stores tracking who is currently shopping and sending along coupons as customers are shopping in their stores.  This could be used to bring customers potentially from one side of the store to the other as they are in there, and also lead to impulse purchases because they just received a 'good deal' in their email.  I think apps like FourSquare are already beginning with this idea where people can check in where they are and get a free appetizer at the restaurant they are in or something similar.  Actually this relates a lot to my first question with the use of technology to get more spending.

And my last question came from 'Analysis from marketing planning'.  There is a lot of detail about information collection and how companies can use it.  We use focus groups at the company I work for so my question was whether anyone thought that focus groups are more skewed toward in a company's favor if it takes place on company grounds as opposed to a more neutral location.  I would think that I would feel more amiable toward a product if I was at the company's headquarters (if they were nice) than compared to getting asked about random products in somewhere like a mall.  Does anyone else think that it would have an impact on them?

Class Discussions

We briefly talked in class about loyalty programs and I just wanted to comment on that here.  I think that most consumers that use loyalty programs regularly have high expectations for these programs.  I know we have gotten some feedback that older loyalty users want more than new users as they feel like they have been loyal to the loyalty program right along and want to make sure they are getting all the benefits for that.  When new users get similar offers, more consistent users become more unhappy.  These loyalty programs seem to be about striking a balance between 'insider offers' and brand loyalty.

Another topic was purchases that you did not intend to buy.  This immediately lead me to think of Groupon.  I'm sure everyone has heard about this, but if not check out www.groupon.com  to find deals in your area.  Many times there are things you don't need at all but you can get it for half off!!  There seem to also be more and more sites like this that keep popping up to get customers to purchase quick - there is a time limit - and on the impulse of a sale rather than thinking about it.

Pharmasim

This week I added a new product to my line!  I decided on the 12-hour cold capsule to add.  I used the report 'Symptoms reported' to see what lead people to buy cold medicine.  I also looked at the report 'Brand Formulations' to check and see if the market was already saturated with 12-hour cold medicines.  There was really only one other capsule like this (Extra) so I decided to go for it.  I moved some point-of-purchase and coupon promotion money from my regular product to this new one and added advertising to most consumers.  Unfortunately, I did not see the best results to the new period where my stock price dropped by about $3.  I'm wondering if this product was competing with my original product and maybe should have picked something completely different like a child medicine to avoid that. 

Week 3 Blog

Questions for Class

One of my class questions this week related to defining competitors.  Due to the economic fluctuations in recent years this lead to me ask whether or not this would impact the overall amount of competitors that should be considered.  If there is less spending money available by consumers, should more competitors be considered?  In my opinion, this would have an impact.  Rather than just potentially reviewing direct competitors, people may be more likely to substitute your product for indirect competitors.  In class we discussed the reduction in cable due to less money available, not necessarily because cable was substituted with something else like satellite, but could have been substituted for unrelated objects like groceries.  If consumers are spending less, they may have to make more product substitutions overall.

My next question was actually related to the first one.  There was a picture of a De Beers diamond ad shown below - noting to 'Redo the Kitchen Next year'.

I can see the intention of the ad, but I have to say this simply reminded me that those diamonds are as much as re-doing my kitchen.  Seeing this ad would make me change my mind about the potential impulse purchase of new diamonds.  Does anyone else agree that potentially calling out an opportunity cost in an advertisement may lead people to think more about the other ways they could be spending their money?

Prompts from Class

One class discussion included the idea of whether the customer or company determines the competition.  I would have to say that the customer is the overall decision maker related to competitors - especially noting the question paragraphs discussed above.  I believe our Drucker reading supports this theory in that he makes the point that marketing in general is customer driven.  Companies could look at any competitors they wish for comparison, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are picking the competitors that customers are choosing between with their products.

Another discussion focused on ethics.  There is a definitely a line between ethical and unethical competitor analysis.  I have heard stories of people getting fired from a job due to crossing this line.  Trying to secretly sneak information from a competitor was enough for his company to let him go as they did not want to be even remotely associated with this type of behavior.  The Analysis book mentions becoming a stockholder in your competitor to gain inside information.  Although I don't believe this is illegal, I don't believe it's ethical.  As a stockholder you have a partial say in the organization and it just doesn't seem appropriate to have a say in a competitor as that could lead to potential sabotage.

Pharmasim

I looked at two reports this week.  One report was 'Promotion Activity' which showed how much each company is spending on different types of promotional activities, including co-op, samples, point-of-purchase, and coupons.  Next I looked at the report 'Purchase Intentions'.  This report showed which product consumers intended to purchase when they arrived and then which product they actually purchased.  By looking at these reports together, it was easy to see that ALL companies that had increased percentage from the intention to purchase to actually purchased offered free samples.  This lead me to the conclusion that sample offers helped influence purchases over original intentions. 

WSJ Article

I saw this article flipping through WSJ online and it made me think of this class.  I'm not sure if you need to be a subscriber to see the article, but the link is below.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324345804578423081955213990.html?mod=wsj_cfohome_midLatest

All in all it explains what a rough situation JC Penney is in.  They had tried that new campaign over the last year or so where they were just going to offer their lowest prices and not send out coupons or have big sales.  It may have sounded like a good idea, but now it sounds like they are reverting back to their original plan.  It seems like they didn't consider that many times the consumers want to feel like they are getting a bargain somehow.  If it's the same price all the time there is no incentive to act immediately to get that extra special deal or sale price.  I love when I open the secret Kohls coupon and get the 30% off one - the coupon makes me consider what I may need to buy or could by at Kohls.  It keeps that reminder in the back of the consumer mind.  Interesting to see that JC Penneys may be reverting back to this method after making such a big marketing campaign about how they are not going to do this and offer low prices everyday... 

Week 2

Questions up for Discussion

One questions I had this week came from 'Analysis for Marketing Planning' and addressed the question of who is part of the 'buying market'.  In the book it says that children should be removed from the 'buying market'.  Maybe because I work for a toy company or maybe it's because I've seen Saturday morning cartoon commercials, but I disagree with this statement.  I think children are one of the biggest influencers of the buying market.  Maybe they aren't necessarily the ones going to pay for the product  (although more and more younger kids seems to be asking for gift cards to make their own toy purchase decisions) they are the ones that are picking out the toys they want.  After growing up in an age of the Furby, Tomagatchi, and Tickle-me-Elmo I can hardly imagine that kids should be removed from consideration in the 'buying market'.

Another question I had this week was addressed in class, and it looked like I was not the only one that had considered this scenario.  It appears that Drucker takes the stance that decisions should not solely focus on analytical/numerical analysis.  He makes the point that if there is something that cannot be put into numbers if has to be considered outside of the analysis, which I agree with.  The part I did not like in the book was that all examples he choose to use to support the theory that numerical analysis does not generally work were examples where the supporting information was incorrect.  In the case that the appropriate evidence was used to do the analysis it may have worked, but just because the assumptions were wrong does not make the idea of numerical analysis wrong.  Maybe it's because I'm an accountant, but I like the numbers that tell me a story.  It would actually make me think that more considerations should have been made prior to the analysis.  I used the example of 'Moneyball' in my posed questions as this was choosing players solely on statistical evidence and not looking at how good they look throwing a ball.  Although as someone who doesn't mind watching cute guys play sports, I support the latter theory as well.

Prompts

In the class activites there have been prompted discussion points and I'd like to address a few of those here.  First, we discussed how our own companies market to us as employees.  I don't work for a public company so I'm not going to announce where I work here, but I think most companies market to their employees.  We constantly receive information and news headlines on our intranet site with the latest developments.  We are encouraged to follow the cultures of our company.  We are in so many countries that individual cultures are addressed (we have a website that has general explanations about what to do and how to do it when traveling), as well as the general company culture.  We have quarterly update meetings with the whole site where it is announced how we are doing, what our strategy is, and future plans for growth and achievements.  There is a natural sense of pride at my company so I think not only does the marketing work, but our products speak for themselves in getting employees to stand behind it.  Our company leaders are definitely marketers.  I would say that the president of the US operations of our company meets all 8 of Druckers marketing/leadership principles. 

Another discussion was related to the view of growth being stopped or slowed is due to the failure of management per the article this week.  I do mostly agree with this assumption.  It is up to management to make decisions on behalf of a company to keep it thriving.  An example that comes to mind here is a real estate company I worked for.  In the earlier years of the company there were many conventional real estate sales where there were ordinary people buying and selling their homes.  Well over the past decade that had changed into bank foreclosures and banks selling homes to new buyers, with very limited conventional sales.  The company switched it strategy, reached out to banks, and became to list homes onto the housing market for the banks directly.  Had they focused solely on conventional listings, the company may not have thrived during a time when the housing market was in turmoil. 

Relating this class to my own career

I have a more personal discussion this week in addition to the prompts and questions from class.  I went to a gift card seminar in sunny Orlando, FL where I learned all about marketing gift cards.  I wanted to add a note here as it related to class that one of the presentations was about a customer survey that was done where 12 people went to 48 different stores and gave feedback about their gift cards.  Where they could find them in the store, whether there was packaging available, whether the associates helped them, and whether there were enough designs to choose from.  From this I learned that customers want more options!!  From the survey it was easy to see what the consumer wanted so learning my lesson from this experience, I will be back at work pushing our gift card program to our marketing department as it is in the consumers best interest and needs. 

Pharmacism

This week I reviewed the market report "Industry Outlook".  This report explains population rate, industry growth, and inflation.  These would be helpful to be aware of as a comparison.  If inflation is rising a lot, should be consider raising the price of the product to coincide or lower it so people may still be able to afford it with everything else on the rise?  We can use industry growth as a comparison point for our own growth - it should be at least consistent with industry norms.  Population growth wouldn't be as good to know as industry growth, but I would generally believe that these two would be correlated. 

This report also shows the costs associated with sales force and marketing research and the distribution between the various types of costs.  We can use this to see if there are any areas that are significantly lower or higher than others to determine where we can adjust costs. 

This week I also tried out some additional changes.  I increased in the grocery store sales force and the related co-op, and decreased the convenience store co-op.  I made these decisions based on the buying channels and the consideration that most people shop for cold remedies at grocery stores and few actually get them at convenience stores.  I slightly increased co-op advertising in general and POP advertising to see what that would do.  My net income went down over the previous period.  These decisions did not work as well for me as my consumer-based approach that I took last week. 

Marketing Simulation

Pharmasim Simulation

Trying out the Pharmasim Simulation for the first time this week has been an interesting experience.  I decided that I wanted to add the trial size samples to the marketing mix since personally as a consumer I like to try out products before purchasing them if possible.  In addition to that I decided to change the advertisement message.  Also just using my reference as a consumer, I don't like commercials that trash the competitor the whole time, and I think that repeating the name of the product helps me remember what the commercial is for.  So I increased some of the primary and reminder areas and decreased the comparison portion.  I decided that was all I would change for the first time around and advanced to the next section.

Overall I had good results with these decisions.  Net income and my stock price went up significantly.  This leads me to believe that by taking the consumer point of view in making those decisions I was able to make realistic effective changes.  For the next time around I think I'm going to focus more on changes between the product and the retailers and wholesalers that sell it for us.  We'll see how that goes next week!

What marketing is all about

What marketing is about

I thought this was a great article related to what we have discussed and read for this class.  It includes information about the use of consumer information for marketing and the benefits.  It also differentiates between marketing departments and sales departments. 

One of my questions this week was related to the difference between sales and marketing in informercials.  I think this article helps answer that question.  It's the marketing department that works on what a consumer would be interested in, and also may determine that an infomercial may be the best method to use to get the product out to consumers.  It's later the sales person in the infomercial that is portraying the message the marketers have researched.  Therefore I now believe that what I had thought was simply a sales pitch for products people don't actually need or want, may be more in depth with marketing behind the scenes. 

Another questions I had come up with this week was related to changes in marketing methods.  When Sears, Roebuck had begun to give customers the opportunity to purchase multiple types of products in one place - one of the beginnings of the department store - this changed marketing methods for customers completely.  Now, it seems that so many department stores have taken over, that the strategy has almost begun to revert back to specialty stores becoming more popular.  We discussed in class that these specialty stores now seem more high end and employees of them provide more expertise and customer service.  There is more to the customer experience than in department stores.  So one highly regarding marketing strategy in the past has been used so much that there has become benefits to going back to the original method of separate stores of specific items.

My last question of the week related to product limitations.  It seems that Druckers view on marketing is related to ethically supplying society with what people want and need.  Now when some companies will purposely supply less than people want to increase demand and make items "specialty" or "exclusive", this seems to go almost go against that definition of marketing.  I'd be curious to get some feedback on whether others would consider this a marketing technique.  Some examples I would say would be the original Furby or the infamous Tickle-me-Elmo doll.  By not supplying the customers with the product (whether intentionally or not) the products and companies get extra publicity and attention due to the demand that could not be met.