teachthe4ps.com - For instructors of marketing.

A couple of interesting stories about how retailers utilize high-tech analytics to better understand customer shopping behavior.  I heard “The secret life of discounts” (Marketplace radio, December 16, 2011, link to listen or read the transcript) as I drove to the airport last night to pick up my daughter who was coming home from college.  There are some examples about how stores use analytics to try to remain profitable with consumers conditioned to buy only at a steep discount.

In “Big Brother is Watching You Shop” (Bloomberg Businessweek, December 15, 2011), you can read about retailers using in-store video cameras and tracking your cell phone to better understand how you move through a retail store.  Analyzing video from a Miami store allowed Montblanc managers to more strategically locate merchandising, signage, and salespeople.  The result — a 20% bump in sales.  Other retailers follow customers’ cell phone signals to track and map movement through stores.  This of course is raising privacy concerns.

These two stories can be useful examples for marketing research (where we cover dashboards and marketing models), retailing, and in discussions of privacy.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

In “A Dinner with Drug Reps” (November 1, 2011) Dan Ariely describes a dinner with some former pharmaceutical and medical device salespeople.  After plying them with a few drinks, he and a colleague elicited some pretty interesting stories of personal selling to medical doctors. To be successful in the industry do you need to:

• Go to a dance class with a physician?
• Bring elaborate meals to doctor’s offices?
• Sell medical devices in the operating room?
• Hire doctors to speak about the pharmaceutical firm’s drugs at medical conferences?
• Switch on and off various accents, personalities, etc.?

It might be fun to describe each of these actions — and ask if students thought each was an ethical practice — and why.  It is easy to say they are not ethical, but then how would sales reps get their information to doctors?  And how do they compete with other drug makers that may be utilizing these practices?  Users of our text books might find it useful to contrast this description with the video we have that shows a sales call for a Johnson & Johnson sales rep and a doctor.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

Should the U.S. government ban food marketing to kids?  Should kids cereals no longer include cartoon characters, free prizes inside, and other promotions directed at children?  That is the position taken by one side in a debate at USA Today “Ban food marketing to kids” (October 16, 2011).  The other side of the debate can be read in “Food fight over marketing to kids misses the mark” (USA Today, October 16, 2011), which advocates new voluntary guidelines created by the food industry.  We have also posted this over at Learn the 4 Ps with some questions for our students to answer.

The debate could be extended into your classrooms when you cover ethics, legal, or corporate social responsibility — which comes in the first and last chapters of our books.  It could also be discussed in the segmentation chapters (we have an Ethics Exercise on a topic relevant to this in our segmentation chapter) or in ethics when covering promotion or product.

Marketing managers at ConAgra Foods thought they had a great take on the old “hidden camera” ad.  They invited food bloggers and mommy bloggers to dinner in New York City where they would hear a talk by a well-known food expert hosted by a famous chef.  They would also enjoy a four course Italian meal.  Who could refuse?  Of course the guests didn’t know that the lasagna they were being served was Marie Callendar’s Three Meat and Four Cheese, a frozen line from ConAgra foods.  ConAgra managers hoped that guests, being filmed on hidden camera, would rave about the meal and appreciate finding out they were tricked and eating a frozen lasagna.  Many did not appreciate being duped — and blogged (and not too kindly) about it.  The whole thing turned into a nightmare for ConAgra. You can read about the whole thing here at “Bloggers Don’t Follow the Script, to ConAgra’s Chagrin” (New York Times, September 6, 2011).

Sometimes students like to hear about marketing mistakes — and this one works.  It might be interesting to tell students about the idea — and ask if they like the plan and would have any suggestions to improve it.  Then lay out the “what happened.”

A few weeks ago we posted the “Ethics of Sunscreen” – from Seth Godin – and a counterpoint as well.

My friend Stefanie Boyer (Bryant University) has pointed out some additional reading which will give you an even better background on this issue.  She pointed us to the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) Sunscreen Hall of Shame.  EWG points out specific, deceptive claims being made by some brands — and also suggests better brands.  The site also includes a page with some surprising, scientifically backed claims, “Sunscreens Exposed:  9 Surprising Truths.”

I am using all this information as part of my “Is Marketing Good or Evil?” exercise in class tomorrow.  I ask students this question and then provide some examples on both sides of the debate.  Like most tools, marketing can be used for good or evil — it is really who uses it.  The question that continues to be debated is the extent to which regulation should be introduced to prevent abuse.  No answers, just useful questions for our students to consider.

Thank you Stefanie!

This infographic “The Sneaky Psychology of Advertising” (BuySellAds.com, June 20, 2011) provides some interesting examples of consumer and advertising research.  Several of the ideas originally appeared in academic outlets including the Journal of Consumer Research and Psychology Today.  You might find the results of some of the studies will make interesting examples to use when you teach consumer behavior or advertising.  Are some of these tactics unethical?  What do you think?

I also posted this at Learn the 4 Ps – I plan to take a look at student comments there before I teach advertising.  I think it will give me an idea about how students view advertising — you might like to do the same.  So come back to the student post in a few weeks to see if we have any action there.

Regular readers of T4Ps know that we enjoy Seth Godin’s pearls of wisdom.  In “The ethics of sunscreen,” Godin argues that consumers need regulation to protect them from greedy, self-interested companies.  He uses the behavior of firms that make sunscreen as his example — though he suggests it generalizes to all firms.   I think Godin’s arguments hold up best for credence goods (products for which the utility is almost impossible for a consumer to assess – even after consuming the product). For a contrary view, check out “The ethics of sunscreen” at Often Wrong Never in Doubt (June 27, 2011).  What is a firm’s responsibility?  What are consumers’ responsibilities?

The articles might stimulate a discussion of marketing ethics and regulation in the product or promotion units.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

Have you ever been felt stalked on the web?  We have found it downright creepy when ads start following us all around the web.  Recently Joe went to the iRobot website to get the latest on the Roomba which we have as a chapter opening case in our books.  For the next month, he kept seeing ads for the Roomba as he surfed the web.  It can get very creepy.

A previous T4Ps post “How Advertisers Use Internet Cookies to Track You” includes a video with some background on hot it works.  A recent article at PCWorld, “Help!  A Web Ad Is Stalking Me” (June 20, 2011) offers a lot of detail and insight on how it works.

We find that our students notice the “creepy ads” and sometimes ask about them.  Now after reading this article, we have a much better idea about how to answer the question.  I am not sure I will give my students this level of detail, but it will help me understand how things work.

The whole topic of behavioral targeting raises a lot of interesting questions.  Technology offers marketers many new targeting capabilities.  But just because they can do this, does it mean they should do this?  The article might help you lead a thoughtful discussion about the ethical implications of behavioral targeting.  The article could also provide you with useful background and examples to use when you cover segmentation and targeting as well as online advertising.

Here are two very powerful examples of how marketing that helps make the world a better place.  The first one (an ad created by Ogilvy, Dublin, Ireland) is especially hard to watch — but as you will see that is the point.  I don’t want to say anymore, because the ad and video explain themselves, and need no further introduction.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

As one of the world’s fastest growing economies, Brazil is a country our students should learn about.  Here we have a great combination of a video and article on Brazil — with a video showing a clever promotion to make customers aware that they can buy on credit.  Then, an article about potential problems for Brazil’s economy as more consumers use credit.

Brazil might want to learn from the experiences the United States has had with easy credit.  Apparently the Brazilian government is concerned — but many firms know that easy credit brings in customers. A recent Businessweek article, “Brazil’s New Middle Class Goes on a Spree” (May 12, 2011), describes how easy access to credit appeals to many Brazilians.  Unfortunately many of these consumers don’t understand what they are getting into with the sky high interest rates they are paying. Brazil’s government is putting in some controls, as it fears credit problems might drag down the economy.

You might start a discussion with the clever and seemingly innocuous video below. The short (0:54) video describes a campaign by Brazilian retailer Magazineluiza which targets elderly Brazilian consumers and informs them about credit through a crossword puzzle. After showing this in class, you could discuss the pros and cons of credit in an economy like Brazil’s. The article provides a nice background for your discussion.

This combination could work well in discussing international, ethics, public policy, promotion, and pricing.