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.
This slide show highlights the most popular car color, peanut butter, drug, sneaker — and much more. An interesting read mostly on various brands. See Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s “Popularity Issue” (August 2010).
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).
U.S. automakers are now seeing an upsurge in demand for their vehicles. But the big three cut production and now dealer inventory is running low. This video describes the current situation and might work as a short video (1:30) to show when talking about channels, logistics, or even implementation and control (topics covered in chapter 19 in our Basic Marketing book).
The video could also fuel a little discussion of cross-functional business relationships. I like to use the first few classes to show non-marketing majors why marketing is important to them. I will probably show this in the first couple of weeks of class and ask: 1) Supply chain and operations majors — how does this show why marketing is important to you guys? (the links here are pretty straightforward) and 2) How about finance majors? What can you learn? (They might bring out that cutting production saved costs — but what is the cost of lost sales?).
One of the primary reasons for this blog is to keep you up to date with the latest happenings in marketing — like how marketers are using Facebook. This short (3:57) video from the Wall Street Journal explains how the “Like” button is working. While many firms are jumping into the fray, it is not clear if Facebook pages deliver results. [Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.]
Relatively few Chinese firms have tried to develop their own brands. Enter China’s Changzhou Asian Endergonic Electronic Technology and the Züuma brand developed by its U.S. partners. The company makes a dashboard mount for a GPS device. This article, “Chinese Firm Meets Global Branding” (Wall Street Journal, July 25, 2010, non-subscribers click here) offers a nice mini-case to discuss in class. If students read the article — or you describe it in class — you could then ask them why Jack Yang (the protagonist) would want to brand his product? Why is he using U.S. partners? Do you think he will be successful? Why or why not? You could even ask your students how they would brand the mount?
This article talks about new RFID technology being used by Wal-Mart — “Wal-Mart Radio Tags to Track Clothing” (Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2010). The RFID technology can be really helpful in managing inventory — but also raises privacy concerns. The new retailing video in our books’ video package has something on RFID (new videos for users of Basic Marketing or Essentials of Marketing — not available until November 2010).
In many product-markets, consumers make decisions at the point of sale. In these situations, packaging can be an important differentiator. I like this little story in Brand Packaging “Häagen Dazs: A Taste-Full Redesign” (July 21, 2010), because it provides: a) the company’s objectives, b) the results of some consumer research, c) before and after packaging images, and d) some preliminary results. You can right-click to save each image to your computer if you want to put it into a PowerPoint to make a point in class. This might be a good example to use in discussing Product or market research.
Competition is bringing innovation and change to the vending machine market. This article “Restocking the Snack Machine” (Wall Street Journal, August 3, 2010 – non-subscribers, click here) tells about some recent innovations.
This is an interesting video from the Wall Street Journal (July 30, 2010) provides a nice, easy-to-understand tutorial that explains Internet cookies. At 7:14, it is a bit on the long side, but provides a pretty straightforward explanation of a technical issue of importance to our students. Many of our students (and many of us) may not be familiar with behavioral targeting but it is clearly the future of advertising — unless concerns about privacy hang it up. This might be shown in class to stimulate a discussion about online privacy. My students seem to have a wide range of opinions about privacy — I am often surprised by their openness on Facebook for example.
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 “
Relatively few Chinese firms have tried to develop their own brands. Enter China’s Changzhou Asian Endergonic Electronic Technology and the Züuma brand developed by its U.S. partners. The company makes a dashboard mount for a GPS device. This article, “
In many product-markets, consumers make decisions at the point of sale. In these situations, packaging can be an important differentiator. I like this little story in Brand Packaging “