Marketing 580 Blog

Just a quick post-Webvan post about the interesting things you can find in the online marketspace. Although this won't settle it, as a data point in the argument about whether almost anything can be sold online take a look at Prairie Tumbleweed Farm and a story about an unusual auction on EBay.

OK, because we all need a little fun, even in a business program, take a look at Business 2.0's list of the 101 Dumbest Moments in Business History

A quick post about Consumer Behavior and Valentine's Day. Remeber, tomorrow we will be discussing the Webvan case. You might want to look at some of the survivors such as PeaPod and NetGrocer. If you want to look at Webvan pages, try looking at Archive.org, which is a great resource for web history.

Regarding yesterday's very brief discussion of AIOs (Activities, Interests and Opinions), here is an interesting posting by Amber Pence about psychographics that also addresses this issue. Her posting is from a very informative site at Western Illinois University called the SchoolHouse which has some great articles on consumer behavior issues.

In preparation for the Webvan case, take a look at this article in Business 2.0 on a (potentially) successful online grocer. Also from the same magazine, a dated but still interesting article on PeaPod and from eOpinions, some consumer reviews of online grocers. Finally, Business Week weighs in on the success/failure of the online play.

In preparation for covering the WebVan case, take a look at this article from Business 2.0 on a (possibly) successful online grocer.

This is a practice demonstrastion of the Blog.

Well, I confess to neglecting the blog for a couple of days, but that should now be a thing of the past and we are moving toward the time when you will be helping me maintain the blog and start doing your own postings. In the meantime, a couple of subjects that we have talked about in class are file-sharing and the high price of college textbooks. Apple's iTunes had a toungue-in-cheek Super Bowl ad that attempts to mainstream digital music purchasing. Also, a public interest group is unhappy about the high prices for college texbooks, a consumer behavior issue that is probably important to many of you.