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A classroom and research blog about marketing in general and consumer behavior in particular for the MBA Buyer Behavior (MGT 580) class.
Friday, May 14, 2004
dI am here at the Harvard Internet Law Program listening to a very interesting discussion on the Digital Divide. The discusssion of whether or not the devloping world can effectively use technology to leapfrog a stage of development and play "catch up" with the developed world. This is very relevent for issues of economic development here (I guess technically there) in New Mexico. We still have areas of our state that our still very economically endevelolped. The same question can be posed in relation to these areas. How can we tie concrete improvements in economic development to bridging the digital divide in these areas to achieve a leapfrog effect?
Saturday, May 08, 2004
Just a repost about our Saturday gathering. Our house is located at 1104 San Rafael Ave NE. I tride to post a mpa on the FTP site, but I was for some reason unsuccessful. My suggestion would be to go to what used to be Mapblast. As for written directions, San Rafael is between Academy and Paso Del Norte on Tramway. We are on the east side of Tramway on the corner of San Rafael and Marigold. The phone number is 294-2549 if you have problems.
Friday, May 07, 2004
Just a quick note about our Saturday gathering. Our house is located at 1104 San Rafael Ave NE. I am going to post a map on the FTP site or you could just go to what used to be Mapblast. As for written directions, San Rafael is between Academy and Paso Del Norte on Tramway. We are on the east side of Tramway on the corner of San Rafael and Marigold. The phone number is 294-2549 if you have problems.
Friday, April 30, 2004
From Chuan-kai Wan
There is a practical experience from my friend who used to be the top salesman to sell the materials for learning English published by Sesames Street in Taiwan
My friend told me the way that they sell the materials. First, they would have an advertisement in the newspaper at large margin to attract the consumer’s vision easily and make them pay attention on it. It successfully employs the sensory stimuli of sight. In the content of the advertisement, they mention that people can get free sample of part of the materials when they fill in the basic personal information and send it to the company. By using this tactic, marketers not only take advantage of this by offering free samples to get consumers to engage in a behavior and feel good about doing it but also can get the potential customer data.
After collecting the data, they allocate the customer’s data by geography. Salesmen pick the area that he/she wants to run the door-to-door marketing.
It’s very common that the rejection rate of door-to-door marketing is very high. But it doesn’t happen to them because the advertisement says “Our employees will send the free sample to your place and explain how to use the material to you.” By doing this way, customers have the awareness that salesmen would come with free sample. When the salesmen come into the house, they start to market the whole package of the materials. I think it is kind of a “foot-in-door techniques.
Many salesmen like to pick the customers where they live in the high-class zone because they think people living there have extra money to buy the materials for their children. However, my friend chose his potential customers in opposite way---he did the door-to-door marketing in the middle or lower class area.
Many people will feel that it’s more easily to sell the materials in the high-class area than in the middle or lower-class area. The reason why he chose the lower or middle-class area and still can make more sales is that the parents in those areas don’t want their children to stay in the same social class or have the same life as they do. They are willing to invest more money on their children to help them move upward in the society. On the contrary, parents in high-class area with higher education have their own way to educate their children. It’s very hard to persuade the parents to buy the materials. Especially, they have more resources and excesses for their children to learn English.
After listening to his true experience, I feel that if you want to do your business successful, it is imperative to understand the psychological side of consumer behavior.
There is a practical experience from my friend who used to be the top salesman to sell the materials for learning English published by Sesames Street in Taiwan
My friend told me the way that they sell the materials. First, they would have an advertisement in the newspaper at large margin to attract the consumer’s vision easily and make them pay attention on it. It successfully employs the sensory stimuli of sight. In the content of the advertisement, they mention that people can get free sample of part of the materials when they fill in the basic personal information and send it to the company. By using this tactic, marketers not only take advantage of this by offering free samples to get consumers to engage in a behavior and feel good about doing it but also can get the potential customer data.
After collecting the data, they allocate the customer’s data by geography. Salesmen pick the area that he/she wants to run the door-to-door marketing.
It’s very common that the rejection rate of door-to-door marketing is very high. But it doesn’t happen to them because the advertisement says “Our employees will send the free sample to your place and explain how to use the material to you.” By doing this way, customers have the awareness that salesmen would come with free sample. When the salesmen come into the house, they start to market the whole package of the materials. I think it is kind of a “foot-in-door techniques.
Many salesmen like to pick the customers where they live in the high-class zone because they think people living there have extra money to buy the materials for their children. However, my friend chose his potential customers in opposite way---he did the door-to-door marketing in the middle or lower class area.
Many people will feel that it’s more easily to sell the materials in the high-class area than in the middle or lower-class area. The reason why he chose the lower or middle-class area and still can make more sales is that the parents in those areas don’t want their children to stay in the same social class or have the same life as they do. They are willing to invest more money on their children to help them move upward in the society. On the contrary, parents in high-class area with higher education have their own way to educate their children. It’s very hard to persuade the parents to buy the materials. Especially, they have more resources and excesses for their children to learn English.
After listening to his true experience, I feel that if you want to do your business successful, it is imperative to understand the psychological side of consumer behavior.
Iris sent in this post.
It is no breaking news that the people in United States are increasing in weight. It has sparked lawsuits and much finger- pointing towards companies such as McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, whose main products are fatty and/or sugar-ridden.
In looking at the consumer behavior side of this topic, I found some interesting articles that discuss who is to blame.
The following articles are general background and different points of view on who to blame for this:
(1) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/755196/posts
(2) http://www.westernfrontonline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2002/12/06/3df114eac2da1
(3) http://www.stress-free-weight-loss.com/Obesity-in-America.htm
Although I have seen commercials promoting low-carb food selections and healthier eating at places like Wendy’s and McDonald’s, all of these portray adults. Perhaps there is a way to have advertising that encourages the kids to eat healthier too. There just has to be a clever marketer to make the idea catchy. Although it would take a lot of time to instill such a campaign, (because the norm in America is fast food), you’ve got to start somewhere. This short article suggests something along those lines…
This article has an interesting quote from an advertiser who has the following to say:
“But when advertisers like Paul Kurnit are putting together an advertising campaign, do they care whether the product is healthy or not?
‘I care that the product has a positive role in a child's life,’ said Kurnit. ‘It is not my fundamental responsibility to be sure that that product in and of itself fulfills a complete diet.’
When asked if he played a role in making less healthy products appealing to children, thereby increasing their desire for those products, Kurnit responded, ‘I've played a role in making all kinds of products appealing to kids and the issue of less healthy is a judgment call that you can make.’
But advertisers know where asparagus and soda pop line up.
‘You are absolutely correct that I am not going to get the same return on investment for a client in advertising asparagus and spinach to a kid as advertising some of the so-called less healthy products to kids,’ said Kurnit. ‘Guilty as charged.’”
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/Living/obesity_031208-3.html
Although some of us are reading what Paul Kurnit said and are thinking, “He gives all of us marketers and advertisers a bad rep” or “I would never put together or be part of such unethical marketing tactics,” I am sure that at one point in time Mr. Kurnit may have had those same thoughts as well. It is easy to sit in class and say that we will never do such promotions and campaigns, but the real test will come when we are faced with such ethical choices in the real world of marketing and advertising. Not to sound touchy-feely and say we should all hold hands and sing “We are the World” before C.B. class, but money and returns on investments can sway one’s decisions, as displayed in Mr. Kurnit’s case.
It is no breaking news that the people in United States are increasing in weight. It has sparked lawsuits and much finger- pointing towards companies such as McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, whose main products are fatty and/or sugar-ridden.
In looking at the consumer behavior side of this topic, I found some interesting articles that discuss who is to blame.
The following articles are general background and different points of view on who to blame for this:
(1) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/755196/posts
(2) http://www.westernfrontonline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2002/12/06/3df114eac2da1
(3) http://www.stress-free-weight-loss.com/Obesity-in-America.htm
Although I have seen commercials promoting low-carb food selections and healthier eating at places like Wendy’s and McDonald’s, all of these portray adults. Perhaps there is a way to have advertising that encourages the kids to eat healthier too. There just has to be a clever marketer to make the idea catchy. Although it would take a lot of time to instill such a campaign, (because the norm in America is fast food), you’ve got to start somewhere. This short article suggests something along those lines…
This article has an interesting quote from an advertiser who has the following to say:
“But when advertisers like Paul Kurnit are putting together an advertising campaign, do they care whether the product is healthy or not?
‘I care that the product has a positive role in a child's life,’ said Kurnit. ‘It is not my fundamental responsibility to be sure that that product in and of itself fulfills a complete diet.’
When asked if he played a role in making less healthy products appealing to children, thereby increasing their desire for those products, Kurnit responded, ‘I've played a role in making all kinds of products appealing to kids and the issue of less healthy is a judgment call that you can make.’
But advertisers know where asparagus and soda pop line up.
‘You are absolutely correct that I am not going to get the same return on investment for a client in advertising asparagus and spinach to a kid as advertising some of the so-called less healthy products to kids,’ said Kurnit. ‘Guilty as charged.’”
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/Living/obesity_031208-3.html
Although some of us are reading what Paul Kurnit said and are thinking, “He gives all of us marketers and advertisers a bad rep” or “I would never put together or be part of such unethical marketing tactics,” I am sure that at one point in time Mr. Kurnit may have had those same thoughts as well. It is easy to sit in class and say that we will never do such promotions and campaigns, but the real test will come when we are faced with such ethical choices in the real world of marketing and advertising. Not to sound touchy-feely and say we should all hold hands and sing “We are the World” before C.B. class, but money and returns on investments can sway one’s decisions, as displayed in Mr. Kurnit’s case.
Our New Coke case discussion came back to me in an interesting way. ELMAR is a marketing academic listserv used on a worldwide basis. A researcher in Australia posted the following request on ELMAR.
"I believe I recently saw a posting about a paper/article/study in
which a taste-test of Coke vs. Pepsi was conducted, but the
labels on the drinks tasted were reversed.
I do not think it was in a TOCs, and in any case, a search of
the literature using the EBSCO database has not come up with
any leads.
If you these cues trigger a lead, please let me know. I am
interested in the paper because it gave me an idea for looking
at country-of-origin effects.
Any leads would be welcome. Thanks,
Stephen"
I believe this is the article he is looking for, although I have not yet heard back from him.
"I believe I recently saw a posting about a paper/article/study in
which a taste-test of Coke vs. Pepsi was conducted, but the
labels on the drinks tasted were reversed.
I do not think it was in a TOCs, and in any case, a search of
the literature using the EBSCO database has not come up with
any leads.
If you these cues trigger a lead, please let me know. I am
interested in the paper because it gave me an idea for looking
at country-of-origin effects.
Any leads would be welcome. Thanks,
Stephen"
I believe this is the article he is looking for, although I have not yet heard back from him.
Thursday, April 29, 2004
Another interesting story about marketing, this time from Bill Surrock. Non-profit marketing is frequently done by paid professionals who take a cut of the proceeds as their fee. He notes that "Along the lines of the discussion we had in class, here is a case where the telemarketers keep 85% of the donation for their fee. I remeber donating to the DAV and called back (thanks to caller ID) and found out that the telemarketing organization was keeping 90% of the donation for their fee. I cancelled that donation and refuse to give to telemarketers now." Now the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on a case (Ryan v. Telemarketing Associates) that directly addresses this issue. You can read more about this case on a website called Freedom Forum (which I am not familiar with and can't vouch for in general, but does seem to have a good article on the case), or you can read the Supreme Court opinion. Note: the case was retitled Madigan v. Telemarketing Associates since Lisa Madigan had succeeded Mr. Ryan as Illinois' Attorney General.
Jay Cummings sent me an interesting article on the the evolution of the so-called Digital Divide. From the McKee, Wallwork, Henderson advertising firm right here in Albuquerque, the article explores the challenges of marketing to young adults (acutally an age subculture) who have grown up in a multi-media environment. If you prefer, you can also print and read it as a PDF file.
Saturday, April 17, 2004
Today I am here at BloggerCON 2, being held in Pound Hall on Harvard University campus. The opening session is a get-acquainted, overview of today's program covering such issues as educational blogs, political blogs media blogs and various other blogs. BloggerCon is also being livecast on IRC (irc.freenode.net/bloggercon20/). The first session that I am attending is What is Journalism" examining whether bloggers (at least some bloggers) are journalists in the more traditional sense of the word. Very intersting crowd so far, Dave Winer (of Linux fame), Dan Gilmour of the San Jose Mercury News, Chris Lydon from NPR and Jeff Jarvis from BuzzMachine are all BloggerCON returnees. Blogs in Business will be one of the sessions that is most germane to our class and I will be reporting from that session later. On that same subject, I have Meghan Stier from IMG publications sitting next to me in the first session. She is running a fashion blog for The Daily, called Megastyles.com (I'll try and put the links in later). Prof. Jay Rosen of NYU is the first speaker (Pressthink) and I will be posting updates as we go. Jeff Jarvis (BuzzMachine) made the interesting comment that blogging is essentially a relationship-oriented medium. Basically, it allows writers to find their audience and interact with it. From the perspective of our class, that has clear implications for marketing in general and consumer behavior in particular. Is this another way to build or maintain our relationships with our customers?
Using the Mac requires a little different technique than using my PC. In order to put in links, I have to paste them in directly, as
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Sasha's recent post surprisingly did not open up much debate within our small blog community, but it did make me recall a column by Ellen Goodman that I saw recently in the Albuquerque Journal . A similar view was also expressed in a story that appeared in today's Lobo by writer Gala Venis. Whether or not you agree with either of these viewpoints (or Sasha's), it does present some interesting arguments about the way marketing and society might affect self-image and societal ideals of beauty. Any thoughts?
