teachthe4ps.com - For instructors of marketing.

Here is a great case study.  This article provides the basis for a nice story to tell in class or reading to assign.  What happens when the company that holds 40% of the carrot market brings in a former Coca Cola marketer to run the company?  Well, he conducts research and then brings on big name ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky.  Together they go after new ways to increase our consumption of the orange veggie — and not promoting its healthiness.   An interesting marketing tale is told in “How Carrots Became the New Junk Food” (Fast Company, March 22, 2011).  And the story is still being written — we don’t yet know if this strategy will work and sell more carrots.

The article will allow you to talk about consumer behavior, market research, positioning, branding, packaging, promotion, and advertising.  Good stuff — and a fun example, too.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

Here at T4Ps, we are always looking for interesting B2B cases.  Unfortunately, they are much less common than B2C.   But here is a good article “Deere Enhances Focus on Russia” (Wall Street Journal, March 25, 2011 — non-subscribers click here) featuring one of our favorite companies Deere.  We feature Deere in the opening case scenario in our chapter on Business and Organizational Customers in our text books.  Deere’s stretch goal of doubling sales in the next 8 years will not happen in the slow growth construction and farm equipment markets in North America.  So Deere needs to look at international opportunities.  This is not unlike the situation many of our students will likely be facing in the coming years.  It provides a nice opportunity to discuss the challenges and opportunities in international markets.

The article is light on details related to the competition in Russia — or the needs of the Russian customer.  Russia is also a risky market.  So you could ask students what kind of marketing research they might want to have before developing a marketing strategy.  Combining this article with some student research at Michigan State’s great globalEDGE website might be a nice assignment.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

One of our favorite companies here at T4Ps is Zappos.  We also feature them in our text book.  The online retailer is always innovating.  Now they are using their own employees in online videos — they have produced 58,000 short videos of employees (not professional models) showing off its shoes and other apparel.  The use of employees can build trust — and seeing someone actually using a product can increase its appeal. Zappos also conducted an experiment – showing the same products with and without a video.  They found sales averaged 10% higher when a video accompanied the item.  Check out “A New Sales Model:  Employees” (Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2011 – non-subscribers may have to click here).

This example would be helpful when talking about marketing research, retail, or promotion.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

It is always nice to find articles about marketing research.  This article, “Sentiment Analysis Gives Companies Insight Into Consumer Opinion” (Bloomberg BusinessWeek, March 1, 2011) is an example of a trend in marketing research — real-time analysis of social media data.  Kia, Best Buy, and Viacom are among a handful of firms using…

…a tool that can swiftly analyze large numbers of opinions on the Web, including blogs, the microblogging site Twitter, and social networking service Facebook. It’s called Mass Opinion Business Intelligence and it was developed by an Irvine (Calif.)-based company called WiseWindow. It coughs up a continuous, real-time feed of relevant consumer sentiment, gathered from millions of sites.

The article cites a number of different examples that might be useful in class.  An accompanying slide show of “Most Loved — And Hated — Tech Companies” shows a real example that maps 10 tech companies on a 2×2 matrix — see below.  Check out the slide show and article for a full explanation.

I was doing some online searching for some material on customer lifetime value and came across this great tool at the Harvard Business School Publishing.  Apparently this “Customer Lifetime Value Calculator” (Flash animation required) can be accessed by anyone at no charge.  I think you will find this a great tool to teach this concept as it includes an overview, an example, and then a model that allows you to plug in different numbers.

Oh Fortune magazine, why do you tease me so?  I saw this article in my print edition of Fortune a couple weeks ago — but they always wait a bit before making it available online.  Well, the wait is over and it is worth it — they even added a nice short video you could show in class.  In-depth pieces on P&G often provide great classroom examples because P&G brand managers are known for conducting consumer research before developing new products.  This article “Can P&G make money in places where people earn $2 a day?” (Fortune, January 6, 2011) and the short 2:45 video below describe P&G’s research efforts to learn more about the needs of rural Chinese consumers.

This offers some good examples of new product development, international marketing, and market research.

The oldest of the baby boom generation are reaching retirement age.  How are companies preparing for these customers?  A series of short articles in Fast Company (February 2010) highlight some people and companies that are preparing for the onslaught:

• Volvo is studying older drivers to figure out how to develop cars that keep roads safer.
• At the MIT Agelab, researchers have developed a bodysuit that helps researchers empathize with the physical challenges faced by the elderly.
• GE’s industrial designers also try to emphathize with the elderly while developing new applicances and lighting to better meet their needs.

See the table of contents of this issue — right side “Fast Talk” for a few more.  These examples can work at many places in your course including demographics, consumer behavior, marketing segmentation, marketing research, or new product development.

This Wall Street Journal article “Pizza Chain Seeks Slice of Bicultural Pie” (December 29, 2010 non-subscribers may have to click here) describes the 100 store Pizza Patrón restaurant chain’s changing marketing strategy.  The firm has focused on a Spanish-speaking target market, but now looks to reach out to new target markets that includes whites and African-American youth.  The article describes Pizza Patrón’s marketing research and some of its strategy plans.

The article provides an interesting strategic counter-attack when you consider all the companies trying to appeal to the growing Hispanic market.  The example also fits with a discussion of segmentation, marketing strategy planning, and even market research.

This is the time of year for “Top 10 of 2010″ lists — and here is another one:  “Ace Metrix Top 10 Ads of 2010” (television commercials).  Ace Metrix uses proprietary software surveys 500 consumer responses to ads across a range of product categories to create an “Ace Score” for each ad.  We like that the score considers each commercial’s persuasiveness and watchability. 

The Samsung commercial below scored the highest.  This could be used in class when you talk about market research or measuring advertising effectiveness.  One way to use this in class would be to show students a couple of the highest rated commercials and ask them why they think the commercials scored well. 

I have been reading Anne Holland (note:  that is not Anne’s picture on the right) for a long time — she founded one of my favorite sites Marketing Sherpa.  I only rarely post Marketing Sherpa articles here because most links are only open for a week.  If you are interested in online marketing efforts, I encourage you to check out Marketing Sherpa and perhaps subscribe to the pay site, or one of its RSS feeds or e-mail newsletters.

I digress.  I just found Anne Holland’s new site — Which Test Won?.  The site claims to have “the goal of evangelizing the best practices in marketing optimization — in particular through A/B and multivariate testing.”  Those sound like some of the same goals many of us have in our classes.  The site posts A/B tests and the results.  For example, in this particular test you can predict which of two websites will have the higher level of sales.  As it turns out, one of these two very similar pages generated 34% more “add-to-cart” clicks.

It is nice to have some real marketing research that you can show and discuss in class.  I am going to show my class both pages and ask them which one would sell more — or if they think they would perform similarly.  A show of hands (or clicker votes) — perhaps with a follow-up discussion about why they favor one or the other.  Then, if there is some way to figure out which will perform better.  You could then describe the experiment that SlideShop.com ran over a two week period (with 50,000 – 60,000 visitors) — you will see the results after you submit your vote.  You can find other examples in its extensive archives.

Fun site. I will be back.