teachthe4ps.com - For instructors of marketing.

Scott Anthony’s new book, The Little Black Book of Innovation:  How it Works, How to Do It has received great early reviews at Amazon.com (don’t you wonder if those few early reviews are just friends and family?)   Those reviews and his post at the Fast Company Co.Design  blog, “3 Ways to Predict What Consumers Want Before They Know It” have moved the book to my Audible.com library (so maybe you can wait for my review).  The blog post has some great examples which will help you when teaching marketing research or new product development.  The photo accompanying this blog post is of the ChotuKool portable refrigerator a disruptive innovation that targets India’s poorest households — I learned about it in the blog post.  Anticipating customer needs takes a certain mindset, and besides the examples, I like that Anthony offers some practical “how to” ideas.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

You might find this article provides good examples when you teach market research and new-product development — with at least one international example.

US News & World Report‘s  ”The Best Jobs of 2012” (February 27, 2012) includes links to a number of different lists.  You might want to be aware of this if your students are writing a personal marketing plan.  For more, see an extended post I made at Learn the 4 Ps.

This 4 minute video is from Google UK’s head of Business Marketing.  But don’t worry, it isn’t a pitch for Google — at least not directly.  It summarizes many of the changes going on in organizational buying and complements what we talk about in the organizational buying chapters in our text books.  Bottom line, more and more business buyers are turning to the Internet early and often in the buying process.  The video talks about promotion to business buyers — so you might find it helpful to show to your students when you cover organizational buying, B2B, or promotion.

Imagine walking along a city street and seeing your own face in ad for a shirt you are checking out.  Or perhaps a friend’s face in an ad inviting you into a restaurant.  Technology may not be too far from making this a possibility.  How creepy would that be? Or perhaps it wouldn’t be creepy at all. Would we get used to it? This Slate article, “How’d My Avatar Get Into That Sneaker Ad?” (January 4, 2012) lays out this type of scenario as a thought experiment.

There are already examples of parts of this technology. My Virtual Model allows you to build an avatar with your body type and face can be placed on a “virtual model” — allowing you to virtually try on clothing. Lands’ End has used this technology for several years now. What is to prevent Facebook ads from using the photos you post to put you in a Facebook ad?  The natural next step, suggested by the article, is that you may walk by a billboard or store and see yourself in an ad.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

It might be fun to engage your students in the same thought experiment described in the article as a way to open a discussion into technology, privacy, and ethics.

Sustainability as it relates to marketing is an important issue for students (and managers) to wrestle with.  The subject of sustainability can get complicated.  This video offers a quick and simple overview that might lead to some in-class discussion.  I have also posted this at Learn the 4 Ps.

We know that many of our readers are having to do more online teaching.  It can help a lot to learn from others that have already made this transition.  You might find some “Practical Advice for Going from Face to Face to Online Teaching” (Faculty Focus, February 9, 2012) if you read this short article.  For more Teach the 4 Ps posts on online teaching, click “online teaching” in the list of tags on the right.

Many Western firms have struggled in China — see Home Depot, Dunkin Donuts, and Best Buy as recent examples.  Success, not surprisingly, revolves around effectively adapting a marketing mix for the Chinese consumer.  Today I am offering two case studies that highlight how firms can succeed in China:  the Oreo cookie (see “Rethinking The Oreo For Chinese Consumers“, Planet Money, January 27, 2012) and Starbucks (“Why Starbucks succeeds in China and others haven’t,” USA Today, February 10, 2012).  The Oreo story highlights how the brand has changed consumer habits in China — teaching them how to open the cookie and as well as the practice of dunking cookies in milk (previously unknown in China).  Advertising like the one below, featuring Yao Ming (former NBA star), was key to the campaign.  Both articles share sales data that helps attest to the success of the campaigns.

These examples will play well when you cover international consumer behavior, product adaptation, and retailing.

The growth in online retailing presents a very real threat to traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Traditional stores have some clear advantages including a physical presence that allows customers to touch/hold/see/try on something before they buy or to be able to get what they buy now. Multichannel retailers offer multiple ways for consumer to shop — for example a physical store and an online store. Unfortunately, most retailers that offer multichannel options do a poor job integrating those experiences. Mitch Joel’s post, “Endless Aisles” (Six Pixels of Separation – The Blog, February 9, 2012) and an article in USA Today “Touch-screens create online shopping experiences at stores,” (February 7, 2012) offer a starting point. The image at the right shows a Kohl’s in-store kiosk which connects to Kohls.com.  It might be fun to share these ideas in class and ask students how ideas like this might benefit brick-and-mortar stores.  You might ask them to suggest other multichannel opportunities.  We also posted this at Learn the 4 Ps.

This cartoon might be fun to show when you cover customer service — especially if you want to talk about how reward systems influence employee behavior.  In our books we cover customer service with personal selling.  We also cover service quality in one of our product chapters and it might work well there, too.

If you want to add this cartoon to your PowerPoints, follow these instructions:  1) place your cursor over the image below, 2) right click, choose “copy image,” then 3) open your the PowerPoint slide where you want the image and place your cursor over the slide, 4) right click and choose “paste,” 5) you can adjust the size to fit.

Young people represent an important demographic group to many marketers.  Many young people don’t have strong brand attachment, so many consumer product companies target this group.  In our books we define this group as having been born between 1978- 1994 and the actual range varies according to the source — which differs from the 13-24 year old age range cited in this blog post.  Keep that in mind if you present the data in class.  The blog post “Number Crunching:  The Top 51 stats for Generation Y marketers” (TNW Social Media) offers a lot of useful data about social media engagement with brands, gadget ownership, technology usage, and mobile phone usage.  Some my favorite stats (see the blog post for the original sources):

• 65% report researching the next model for their current product, immediately after making a purchase,
• 62.7% of US undergraduates surveyed had an internet-capable handheld device,
• 59% visit Facebook during class, and
• 62% of youth brand and technology decisions are influenced by friends and family.

This data will present well when you cover consumer behavior and demographics.  For users of our books, you can find extensive coverage of technology usage in Basic Marketing (chapter 5) and Essentials of Marketing (chapter 3) — but this post offers an update.