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This article in the British newspaper, The Guardian “Unilever unveils ambitious long term sustainability program” (November 15, 2010) describes Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan.  The company outlined a 10-year plan to cut its carbon footprint as well as the water and waste impact of its products.

Interestingly, this comes at a time when there are questions about consumer interest in sustainability.  An article in Advertising Age, “Has Green Stopped Giving?” (November 8, 2010 – you may need to be a subscriber to link through) notes:

In recent months, sales have begun to slow in categories such as green cleaners and grow in not-so-sustainable ones like bottled water as shoppers decide they may not be worth the tradeoff. And a September study showed big swings in the number of consumers who believe environmentally friendly alternatives are too expensive, don’t work as well as other products and aren’t actually better for the environment — all of which seem to add up to what Timothy Kenyon, director of the GfK Roper Green Gauge study calls “green fatigue.”

An update on a recent post.  About a month ago we posted about a BusinessWeek article “What Amazon Fears Most:  Diapers.“  Well problem solved — Amazon just bought the Diapers.com’s parent company Quidsi in a deal worth $540 million.

I really enjoy Jonah Lehrer’s science writing.  His books, articles and Blog (The Frontal Cortex at Wired magazine) are among my favorite readings.  He has a talent for identifying interesting scientific findings, boiling them down to their essence, and then communicating them in an accessible manner.  Some of Lehrer’s favorite topics are decision making.

A recent blog post “The Buzz on Buzz” describes a study by Northwestern University professor Brian Uzzi and colleagues on how buzz or word-of-mouth spreads.  Uzzi’s findings suggest that word-of-mouth is important — at least for movies — and suggest marketing managers reconsider their promotion budget.

The new buzz research has important implications for marketing. While the old model of advertising is all about reaching individual consumers—that’s why companies spend millions for a 15-second Super Bowl ad—Mr. Uzzi argues that future strategies should focus on getting consumers to spread the message themselves. “Thanks to social-networking sites, kids today are more connected than ever,” he adds. “They’re also much better at ignoring conventional ads, which means that the only way to reach them is with buzz.”

The Bloomberg BusinessWeek cover story this week (“What Amazon Fears Most: Diapers,” October 7, 2010) is a long article on Diapers.com.  Our kids are older — so we are not in the target market and we were unaware of the success this company is having.  The story is interesting and relays the low-cost start-up strategy.  The founders spent their seed money on building a customer friendly website.  When they launched they were buying diapers from the local club stores and storing them in a friend’s garage.  They have since moved into three state-of-the-art warehouses.

The article describes Diapers.com’s retail and pricing strategy — let’s not make money on the diapers but on the other products shoppers add to the cart with the diapers.  The article also has some excellent examples of logistics and distribution.

UPDATE, November 13:  Amazon buys Diapers.com.

This article, “How to Adapt Products for Different Markets,” (Inc., October 1, 2010) offers several interesting examples of small firms adapting current products to enter new markets.  The examples show that such re-targeting efforts often require changes to the whole marketing mix.  More good examples to show when teaching  marketing strategy planning, segmentation and targeting or new product development.

The photo to the left is for one of the products mentioned in the article — Violight’s Zapi Toothbrush Sanitizer.

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).

Hello faithful readers of “Teach the 4 Ps”.  My apologies for light posting in the last few weeks.  Between end of semester wrap-up, working on my text book, and dealing with my kids’ May activities (why do schools do so much in May) — including a high school graduation — I have had little time to keep up the blog.  I am back in action today and I do have a pile of articles and sites I have been collecting. Thanks for reading.

Joe

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.

Brand Keys has released its “2010 Customer Loyalty Engagement Index.”   It is interesting to see the winners and losers in 2010 given last year’s economy.  Hyundai, whom we have talked about before, leaped to the top of the automobile ranking (from the bottom third in 2009).  We talk about customer equity and lifetime value of customers in chapter 2 in our books.

The annual Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Winners are those brands best able to engage consumers and create loyal customers. Initiated in 1997, the Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index is fielded annually in the spring and fall. The current Index examines customers’ relationships with 518 brands in 71 categories.

You can read what Brandweek has to say at “Report:  Starbucks, Wells Fargo Surge in Customer Loyalty,” (January 30, 2010).

Ben Sturner, president and founder of sports marketing firm The Leverage Agency, talks about ambush advertising (The Wall Street Journal, June 22, 2010).  This is where a non-sponsor advertises around a sports event, diluting the benefits of the official sponsor, often confusing consumers who might believe the “ambusher” is the real sponsor.  When I worked at Kodak years ago, we lost sponsorship of the Olympics to Fuji — but Kodak ambushed Fuji and most consumers thought Kodak was the official sponsor.  You could show this during class when talking about Promotion and particularly sponsorship.  This might be relevant with a few big upcoming sporting events (Super Bowl and Winter Olympics).  It certainly raises ethical questions.  An instructor might also talk about how this effects the value of the sponsorship and what an event might do to minimize the effects of ambush advertising.