The shoes are not cheap ($190 – $320 a pair), in part because the company emphasizes production in safe, ethical, highly monitored conditions — significantly raising production costs.  The company has done a marvelous job generating publicity, but right now is selling just about 60 pair of shoes per month.

The story brings to mind another social entrepreneurship venture in the shoe biz — Toms (read or listen to more at “‘Soul Mates’: Shoe Entrepreneur Finds Love In Giving,” NPR All Things Considered, November 26, 2010).

This might make a fun case study to have students address with a written assignment or in-class discussion.  You could assign students to read (or listen to) the NPR story about Gideon Shoes — then look at the other media reports and the company’s website.  Then they could be asked to develop and defend a marketing strategy for Gideon Shoes.   Any such plan should keep in mind the company’s limited resources and its values.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

The video and article allow you to walk through the marketing strategy planning process with your students.  Here are some ideas:

• Customers: You can highlight customer needs – many don’t really need the high performance promoted by Nike and Under Armour.  Puma figured they could address the needs of the “after hours athlete.”
• Company:  You can briefly highlight some of Puma’s strengths (solid brand, good distribution, design reputation) and weaknesses (not as much money or strong a brand as major competitors)
• Competitors:  Nike, Under Armour, Adidas — all strong brands with deep pockets.  Each of these competitors also focuses on the hard core weekend warrior (or wannabe).
• Segmentation:  the video gives you an idea about how Puma segments and who they target.
• Differentiation and Positioning:  Puma clearly chooses to position itself as a fun fashion accessory.
• The video gives some examples of product and place decisions — but the focus is on promotion.  The brief highlighting of TV, print, outdoor, and online efforts provides a nice example of integrated marketing communications.

All that — plus a market my students can relate to — this is a winning video clip.  I hope you and your students enjoy it as much as we did.

This article might be interesting to use when you discuss promotion or consumer behavior.

• Click “More” and have it play full screen — the effects are much better.
• Use the forward/back arrow to move forward/back through the presentation one step at a time
• When you come to some of the embedded videos, simply hover your cursor over the video and you will see the “play” arrow.  If you click the video again, it will get larger
• For readers of our books the narration should be straightforward to figure out — probably for most viewers.
• Note that the chapter numbers correspond to Essentials of Marketing — and will differ slightly for Basic Marketing.

For everyone — this is my first Prezi.  There are some things I have learned — you need to have a high resolution version of any model you zoom into.  I am working on fixing that.  Please tell me what you think?  Anyone else have experience with Prezi?  Any tips?  Click on the comments link below and tell me what you think.  I have also published this at Learn the 4 Ps.

The article provides some good examples for market segmentation (boys v. girls, differences in play across international markets), market research (researchers “embedded” with families to observe how Lego kids live and play), and product strategy (product design to appeal to girls).  The result is the Lego Friends line of toys.  Lego has put $40 million behind its global marketing effort.  Still it might be a while before we know if this will work.  Lego decided to wait until after the holidays to launch the new line.  Given the importance of Christmas to toy sales, it might be a year or two before we know if Lego has finally cracked the code for the other 50% of the toy market.

You can read more about Harley’s efforts in this Wall Street Journal article, “Harley, With Macho Intact, Tries to Court More Women” (October 31, 2011, non-subscribers may need to click here).  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

This article provides examples you might find useful when you cover price, competition, marketing strategy planning, new product development or retailing.
 

Marketing managers at 5-hour ENERGY are now targeting the senior citizen market.  I got a first-hand look at one element of the strategy at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival this past summer, where 5-hour had a tent with promotional material and free samples.  For more on the new target market and strategy, see “Bottlers of Buzz Wake Up to Find Seniors as Newest Customers” (Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2011 - non-subscribers may need to click here) will give you more information.

Here is how I plan to use 5-hour ENERGY in class.  I will start by using 5-hour ENERGY as the example when I explain how to define a product market – and use the student market as my customer type.  Later, as my lecture continues and I get into qualities of a good market segment (homogeneous within, heterogeneous between, substantial and operational), I will introduce the senior market (which fits these criteria).  Then I will get the students active and talking.  I like to use an approach called “Think Pair and Share” which works well in the large 90-student sections I teach.  I will focus students with the question – “What ideas do you have for 5-hour ENERGY if the company pursued a senior citizen target market?  Think about all 4 Ps.”  To motivate and reward their effort, I have them turn in a page with their ideas.

This article might work well when you talk about market segmentation and targeting.  If you are using our books, we have an extended example of Ford’s marketing strategy planning over the years in chapter 2 — this provides a way to add a recent twist.

This article, “China Treads on New Turf” (Wall Street Journal, August 16, 2011, non-subscribers may need to click here) could be used in a number of different places in the introductory marketing course. There is a four minute video with the article, but it is kind of dry. This case raises issues about organizational buying when you think about whether customers will buy from an unknown upstart — though the 15-20% lower price might attract some buyers. It might be interesting to discuss what types of customers would be the best target market for Liugong. It also provides a great example about the importance of channels of distribution — particularly as a firm moves into a foreign market.  You could even outline Luogong’s marketing strategy – target, price, product, place, and promotion decisions – based on the article.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.