Nilewide Marketing Review articles from August 2005

Nilewide Marketing Review archives from August 2005

Everyone is in marketing — except marketers!
August 7, 2005... Marketing today is less a department and more a diaspora of skills and capabilities within and even beyond the organisation. This could be seen as positive, because it means that marketing budgets cannot be easily cut or that marketing has...

More on failing mergers.(organic growth)
August 7, 2005... While the marketing literature tends to concentrate on examples of company successes, the business press is constantly documenting the failures of mergers and acquisitions (M&As). At least by standards of shareholder value, many were...

A simpler customer.
August 7, 2005... More people in western societies are choosing to limit their consumption to free up money and time for other things, and they have been described as "voluntary simplifiers". However, they are not a homogeneous group. Voluntary simplification is...

More super models.
August 7, 2005... Over the past few years, there has been a strong emphasis on gathering customer data. While this has offered many insights (and many red herrings), the resurgence of privacy concerns has made it more important than ever to supplement data with...

The route to financial choice.
August 7, 2005... It is well known that people no longer hold the same reverence or respect for many longstanding institutions, such as government, churches, or banks. When choosing financial products, they are more likely to be influenced by people on the...

Passionate pricing.
August 7, 2005... Even though pricing is one of marketing's hallowed 4Ps, jurisdiction over it often falls to the finance department or to sales managers. This removes marketing from a critical area of strategy. After all, a 1% price improvement is reputed to...

DIY marketing.
August 7, 2005... Various commentators have charted the rise of the amateur and the way the internet allows everyone to have a voice whether they are an expert or not. This is slowly but certainly finding its way into advertising and marketing. If consumers are...

Do products have a personality?(Brief Article)
August 7, 2005... The concept of brand personality is well established and is based on the belief that people are attracted to brands with personalities similar to theirs. A recent study found that, while people do prefer products that are congruent with their...

When it's better to compromise.(Brief Article)
August 7, 2005... When consumers make decisions, they do not always have an obvious choice. This means they may have to consider the context around the focal decision, to help compare and contrast the alternatives. The compromise effect is one kind of context...

Invisible brands.
August 14, 2005... Most of the thinking and research on brands has focused on the relationship or connection between the consumer and the brand. Examples include the work on brand communities, personalities, and the match between consumer identities and brand...

Brands get religion.
August 14, 2005... Many western societies are increasingly secular, but this change is paralleled by the rise of evangelical churches. In the US, 42% of Americans identified themselves as born-again Christians in 2005, although only half of them agree with the...

Profit before market share.
August 14, 2005... Conventional wisdom claims that market share is everything, and it is worth sacrificing profitability to increase share. Business operates under the mantra, "bigger is better" and this is used to justify the majority of mergers and...

New business from India.
August 14, 2005... To many people it must seem that business thinking and consequently management theories and styles are mainly driven by America. This probably reflects the dominance of American media, which concentrate on domestic matters and may ignore the...

Working the underground.
August 14, 2005... Many technology-based products develop a group of customers who want to explore and alter the product. Known by names such as hackers, phreakers, modders etc, they tend to be driven by curiosity and utility, but sometimes by anger, in a desire...

DIY innovation.
August 14, 2005... The 75% failure rate of new products is disturbingly high, yet surprisingly acceptable to business. The reasons why they fail continue to be hotly debated, but one reason why some innovations succeed may be because users themselves create them....

Inaction inertia.(purchasing methods)(Brief Article)
August 14, 2005... The post-promotion dip in sales is well recognised and is generally believed to be because buyers bring forward a purchase or stockpile the product when a discount is offered. Another intriguing option could be even more damaging for marketers...

Is the net better than radio?(Brief Article)
August 14, 2005... There are few studies comparing the effectiveness of online media and traditional media. It is a difficult task, given that they are so different and the internet is more interactive than, say, television. Attempts to compare media may also be...

To haggle or not.(Pricing )(Brief Article)
August 14, 2005... Growing up with big box retailers and the internet may have led younger Americans to prefer no-haggle pricing for even their biggest purchases, including new cars and houses. This suggests the concept of everyday fair pricing will become even...

A simple proposition.
August 21, 2005... The conventional view of marketers is that the reason why one product has a bigger market share than the rest is because of branding or creative marketing. However, there is an opposing view which says that all competitors are the same and it...

With regard to global brands.
August 21, 2005... In the rush to globalise, it is often assumed that being a global brand is a desirable position. The assumption is that global brands have a higher status and esteem than local brands. Pleasingly, when we control for brand familiarity and...

The dangers of dominance.
August 21, 2005... Most marketers are well aware of the antitrust implications of competitors acting together to set prices or to manipulate a market but, in many countries, regulators are scrutinising many other marketing practices. Some are everyday practices...

Using the force of talk.
August 21, 2005... The current interest in word-of-mouth (WOM) has been driven by the potential of new technologies to assist the process, but evidence of the power of WOM or advocacy has been around since at least the 1950s. In 1966, Dichter analysed 6,000...

Managing the social contract.
August 21, 2005... The role of business in society is hotly debated today, with two opposing sides fiercely defending their turf. On one hand, is the "shareholder value" group, which claims that that is the whole point of business and social concerns are...

Flow in the office.(Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience)(Book Review)
August 21, 2005... The bestselling 1990 book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, made an impact on sport and leisure, but seemed less relevant to business. This appears to be changing as the author, Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi, applies his theories to the...

Brands on the nose.(odors)(Brief Article)
August 21, 2005... Of all the senses, smell seems to have been most neglected in marketing except for products that obviously depend on their scent.Yet, after vision, it is the most important sense, and we tend to remember smells long after we have forgotten how...

What a laugh!(laughter is a part of life)(Brief Article)
August 21, 2005... Laughter is a natural part of life and there are many theories about what makes life funny and why we laugh. One theory says it is a convincing signal that the danger has passed, which makes sense as laughter often comes as a relief from...

Consumers doing it for themselves.
August 28, 2005... Analysis Today customers play a vital role in many activities that were once considered the domain of the company.The boundaries between organisations and people have become less marked, technology has promoted the spread of information,...