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Author Laura Ries provides a post with her perspective on the current Verizon-AT&T battle at her Ries’ Pieces blog, “Verizon and its Atomic Bomb” (January 27, 2010).    We have blogged about this battle before on Teach the 4 P’s.  Laura is the daughter of Al Ries (whose now almost 30-year old book, Positioning:  The Battle for Your Mind with Jack Trout is still full of great thinking).  Laura is no slouch either, a frequent commentator on television news she has co-authored several books with her father and runs a consulting firm.

Last month I connected you with an article about about “Subway’s $5 Footlong.”  These days value sells in the quick serve restaurant industry.  So Quiznos, which had tried to stay a bit more upscale than Subway, responded with a value campaign and its torpedo sandwiches.  Quiznos has had success and you can read about it in this recent article on BusinessWeek’s site, “Damn! Torpedoes Get Quiznos Back on Track” (January 14, 2010)

The Wal-Mart vs. Amazon battle continues to become increasingly intense (see “Price War Brews Between Amazon and Wal-Mart,” New York Times, November 23, 2009). These two competitors have already engaged in price wars over toys, books, and DVDs this holiday season.  Now Wal-Mart is cleverly using one of their strengths relative to Amazon — their physical stores — to their advantage.  This a nice example of competitive advantage, SWOT, and logistics.  Check out “Wal-Mart Uses Its Stores To Get an Edge Online” (see The Wall Street Journal, December 15, 2009 – subscription required, or search the net using the article title).

With the holiday season here, there is more talk about Best Buy — which is also the focus of the chapter opening scenario we use for our retailing and wholesaling chapter.  A BusinessWeek article “Why Tech Bows to Best Buy” (December 10, 2009) the company’s strategy now that its direct competitors have largely gone out of business (see Circuit City) and new competitors Amazon and Wal-Mart are emerging.  Consequently Best Buy has changed its strategy. The article supplements discussions of competition (chapter 3), strategy planning (chapter 4) and retailing.

You can also watch a Wall Street Journal video below, “Best Buy’s Battle Between Sales and Margins” (December 15, 2009) includes an interview ith an analyst who discusses how competition and the need to lower prices has eroded Best Buy’s margins.  A bit more finance oriented, this video might complement a classroom discussion of pricing.

Redbox continues to stay one step ahead of Blockbuster.  Just a few days after Blockbuster announced it would kiosks would debut at Duane Reade stores (copying Redbox’s successful vending strategy), Redbox appears to be ready to start renting video games as well.

A couple years ago Kodak (my former employer — too many years ago) decided to get into the printer business.  To compete with established players like HP, Canon and Espson, Kodak decided to come out with lower priced ink.  The company has had a slow start — although 2009 saw them double market share, they are still only at 2% share.  The article and video describe the company’s latest efforts.   “Kodak printer ads remind consumers of lower ink costs,” USA Today, November 30, 2009.

This is another segment from Fortune’s interview with new P&G CEO Bob McDonald and his immediate predecessor A.G. Lafley. These leaders talk about the development of a product line (including some lower price products) and how they try to compete with private label brands. They also talk briefly about some of the qualitative marketing research that P&G has conducted. The clip might also be interesting to show when discussing value pricing — which we cover in the first of our two pricing chapters.

Verizon continues to run ads that promote its superior 3G network.  The 3G network allows simultaneous speech and data transmission at higher speeds — it is what you need to surf the web from your phone.   We have reported on this subject in a previous blog post (the previous post now includes links to articles on the subsequent legal battle).

This is a great example of a marketer identifying a competitor’s weakness (AT&T’s 3G network has significantly less coverage than Verizon and is a source of complaints of many iPhone customers).  Of course part of the goal is to distract customers from Verizon’s own weakness — Verizon doesn’t carry the most popular smart (surf the web) phone the Apple iPhone (although its recently Droid has received some positive reviews following its recent release.   The ad below is Verizon’s latest salvo in the battle.

UPDATE 11-22:  AT&T responds to Verizon.  How well do you think it works?  Who is winning this battle?  And should AT&T be replying to Verizon?

Here’s another technology product that’s moving quickly from the market introduction to the market growth stage of the product life cycle.  The first Kindle (Amazon’s popular e-book reader) was released on November 19, 2007.  Until I read this article (“Attack of the Kindle Killers:  The Boom in New E-Readers,” Time, October 11, 2009), I did not know there were so many competing e-readers – either on the market or due out shortly.  The article includes a slide show with nine different readers.  Only the Kindle and Sony seem to get significant publicity, but that may change if one of these other readers catches on.  Might be fun to show the slide show to class and ask students to develop a marketing strategy for one of the less well-known readers.