teachthe4ps.com - teaching the 4 ps

We have always enjoyed how Harvard Business School professor Youngme Moon things.  We have read her articles in the Harvard Business Review and used some of her business cases in our classes.  I am looking forward to reading her new book, Different:  Escaping the Competitive Herd, which is getting great reviews at Amazon.com and over at Bloomberg BusinessWeek “To Hell with the Herd,” (August 12, 2010).  We think breakthrough products come from thinking different and look forward to reading some of Professor Moon’s thoughts on this subject.

KFC has found itself between a rock and a hard place.  Following general trends toward healthier fare, the company has developed and more aggressively promoted some of its healthier fare (read grilled instead of fried chicken).  On the other hand, many franchisees are upset with the new emphasis and feel the strategy confuses customers.  They don’t want KFC to turn its back on its fried heritage.  Interesting marketing strategy questions to raise in class — see “Why KFC Franchisees are Squawking” (Bloomberg BusinessWeek, August 12, 2010).

We have a boxed teaching example on “freemium” in one of our pricing chapters.  Freemium refers to “giving away service to users and making money when some opt to pay for additional features.”  Evernote, a suite of software and services used for taking and storing notes, has used the freemium business model with great success.  This Fast Company article, “Evernote CEO Phil Libin’s 3 Steps to ‘Freemium’ Success” (July 1, 2010) describes how it works with real number examples.  [NOTE:  This post is also featured at our companion blog for marketing students - "Learn the 4 Ps".]

Indonesia is a good example of a fast-growing developing economy. This Wall Street Journal article “Brands Bet on Indonesia as Spending Booms,” (April 7, 2010 – if you don’t have a subscription, click here to learn about the WSJ “back door”) provides some interesting data on buying power growth and how some Western companies are positioning themselves in the growing market.  I really like that this video has some great images of Indonesia.  Many of my students are not familiar with Asia and this video lets them get a better feel for the country.

This is the first of ABC’s Good Morning America series, “Secrets of America’s Favorite Stores.”  This one takes you “Inside Costco,” (5:10, March 29, 2010).  As with others in the series (see following posts), you learn some of Costco’s marketing strategy decisions.

One idea for using this video series would be to have students watch the videos (in class or outside of class), and then ask them to identify specific decisions that each retailer makes for each of the 4 P’s.  In our book we categorize retailers around the strategy decisions they make.  This exercise reinforces their understanding of the 4 Ps and also reminds them of the variety of strategy decisions that retailers have to make.

A special thanks to regular Teach the 4 Ps reader Stephanie Bibb (Chicago State) who brought this series to my attention.

This is another segment from CNN’s Poppy Harlow’s interview with Howard Shultz. This might fit in one of several marketing class sessions. Starbucks is a retailer so it might fit there. But I think it works best when talking about implementation and control of marketing strategy. Thus it might fit with our books with chapter 2 or with chapter 19 in Basic Marketing. Note: I can usually resize videos to make them fit my column, but it did not work with this one — so click here to see it larger on the CNN site.

For a nice green example of segmentation and targeting, see “Electric Car Strategy: Follow the Fleet,” (The New York Times, March 1, 2010).  Definitely shows how to tie characteristics of the market (technology, customers, company, and competition) to the target market.

We have posted earlier on Hyundai’s award-winning marketing program from 2009.  For an update, see this NPR story “A Year After Program, Under 100 Hyundais Returned.”

This neat little article might work well as you teach chapter 2 — and need relevant examples of marketing opportunities.  Many of us in the U.S. (and our students) can relate to an unusually cold winter.  Some brands see this as an opportunity — and not only makers of coats, gloves, and snow shovels.  In this article “Marketers Make Most of Falling Mercury” (AdAge, January 11, 2010 – sorry subscription required, so I am providing a longer post than usual to give you some ideas.  If you don’t subscribe, you might be able to find the article through your library database.)

• Campbell’s Soup increases radio advertising in cities with miserable weather,
• Online retailer Zappo’s promotes coats and boots more often,
• Snuggie reported shortages of their blankets with arms and legs — so it cut back on promotion activities,
• Sales of Ugg boots and electric blankets jumped, too.

At a local level, you can read about what New Orleans businesses are doing in response to the cold spell “Cold snap creates business opportunities for some,” in the New Orleans Business News, January 8, 2010.

This 5 minute video clip is an interview with P&G’s new CEO Bob McDonald and A.G. Lafley, its recently departed CEO. They talk about P&G’s focus on developing markets as its source of growth. They mention that demographics drive this focus. The clip would have a nice tie-in with demographics as we talk about it in chapter 5. While the video clearly demonstrates the opportunity here, it might be fun to show the clip in class and ask students – “what P&G should do with its marketing strategy to appeal to this target market?” it might also provide an example of an opportunity that could be discussed with chapter 2.