Nilewide Marketing Review articles from December 2005

Nilewide Marketing Review archives from December 2005

The PC meets TV.
December 4, 2005... The New York Times once famously wrote that TV would never take off because nobody had the time to sit around and watch it! Now it seems the world has come full circle and nobody has time to sit around and watch it — except on their own...

No time for ads!
December 4, 2005... It is well known that many people avoid ads on TV and they do this by muting the sound, getting up and leaving the room, ignoring the TV, or talking. The question is why they avoid the ads. The claim that people avoid them because they find...

Broadband the thermometer.
December 4, 2005... It is easy to gain the impression that everyone uses the internet today, but this is far from the truth, even in a wired country like the USA. Two thirds of Americans do use the internet, but nearly one third do not and it is not always by...

Find the push-pull boundary.
December 4, 2005... The idea of managing product inventory is well established and many companies, like Dell, have learned to hold as little inventory as possible. This is the so-called "pull" technique, as opposed to "push". The same principles can be applied to...

To buy or sell?
December 4, 2005... We know that people are not rational in their decisions and often become unduly influenced by information sequences. When we see prices steadily rising or steadily falling we think that the sequence will continue. The belief that, say, stock...

Knowledgeably uncertain.(marketing managers)
December 4, 2005... In the ideal world, managers would have all the information they needed to be able to make a good decision. Unfortunately, they often have less than perfect information, combined with the urgent requirement to be accountable for their...

Desktop for a billboard.
December 4, 2005... Back in the dot-com boom, companies such as PointCast saw the future in pushing media and of course advertising onto the desktops of computer users. Like so many companies of that era, it failed to survive. But some of the ideas of the dot-com...

New media landscape.(Brief Article)
December 4, 2005... Since the launch of the video iPod on October 12, video must be the biggest issue for the interactive industry and potentially for media companies and advertisers. While Disney selling old movies through iTunes, or paying $US1.99 to watch...

The foolish Buzz.(Word of Mouth Marketing Association's new guidelines)(Brief Article)
December 4, 2005... Sometimes it is easy to overlook the simple things. The idea of paying someone to say good things about a brand to their friends and having to disclose that they are being paid (in whatever form) makes little sense. If a friend recommends a...

Media consume us.
December 4, 2005... Some American researchers have come up with the startling statistic that, by adding up all concurrent use of media, average Americans now spend 96% of their waking day using media. Each one is also spending about $US70 per month on media. Few...

A me or them approach.(influence of advertisements)(Brief Article)
December 4, 2005... Sometimes advertising sets out to sell a product or service that will help people achieve their goals in life. Researchers have shown that putting primes in an ad can influence consumer choices. Two American studies primed people with the...

As old as you feel.
December 12, 2005... The concept of cognitive aging highlights that one's chronological age does not always reflect one's self concept or the age that you feel. There are three types of aging (biological, psychological, and social) and each has its own influence on...

Owning our data: round two.(marketing management)
December 12, 2005... It can be argued that marketing today is based on three assumptions. One, companies own the information they collect about their customers and prospective customers. Two, the best way to connect buyers and sellers is through publishing...

CGM and other madness.(consumer-generated media)
December 12, 2005... An article in a respected marketing magazine claims that, at a recent seminar of vice presidents of marketing, only one person had heard of blogs (a mother of teenagers). This incident would be funny if it were not so serious. By now, all...

Interruption science.
December 12, 2005... Modern work lives are characterised by continual distractions and interruptions to the job at hand. This appears to be not only expected, but accepted. Just as computers are programmed to be able to carry out more than one task at a time, users...

Reference classes for new entrants.
December 12, 2005... Only 20% of new market entrants are successful, which suggests that many of the decisions relating to launching new products are sub-optimal. One of the reasons for these poor decisions is that there are many cognitive biases that skew...

Fat profits and slim pickings.
December 12, 2005... One of the metaphors currently doing the rounds in the business literature is that of a healthy corporation, and how it impacts on strategy. The coinage of such terms as "lean thinking", "lean manufacturing" and "slimmed down" workforces all...

I pod, you listen.
December 12, 2005... In 2004, Steve Jobs claimed that podcasting would be "the next generation of radio" and, judging by the amount of media interest, it is probably true. The ubiquitous iPod and its copycat versions have taken the public's ears by storm....

Expecting to criticise.(customer satisfaction form represents the services)
December 12, 2005... Most customers are familiar with the idea of filling in a customer satisfaction form after they have experienced a service. Yet some research suggests that expecting to fill in a form tends to depress satisfaction. A more recent study pursues...

The unfamiliar sponsor.
December 12, 2005... Sponsorship continues to be popular among marketers, with spending growing 10% per year over the past 10 years, compared to advertising's 3% per year. Considering the size of the investment and how common they are it is perhaps surprising that...

I like it but what is it?(accountability)(Brief Article)
December 12, 2005... Some words become so popular they are used as the key or even sole way to describe or evaluate everyday issues. One of those words today is "accountability", which seems to be rather menacingly pointed at marketing. However, like many other...

The customers you do want.
December 12, 2005... As any single person well knows, attracting someone is less difficult than attracting someone with relationship potential! The same applies to marketers, who are very good at using promotions to attract people, but often spend too much money...

Christmas chronomics.
December 18, 2005... Christmas is one time of the year when many people feel rushed and pressed for time. For other people, being pressed for time is an unrelenting daily experience and they feel more time poor than cash poor. Dr Michael Schulter has coined the...

Small but preferred.
December 18, 2005... The sheer size of a brand is often taken as a measure of its success. It is also commonly assumed that size equates to preference (which can be defined as: would the buyer be disappointed if that brand was not available and would they buy a...

Growth through WOM.(word-of-mouth)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2005... The current mania around word-of-mouth reflects its importance in influencing consumer behaviour, however the challenge of quantifying its effects remain. One approach is to derive a word-of-mouth score for a brand and compare it to the brand's...

Finding a holistic brand value.
December 18, 2005... Don Schultz has been calling for more holistic assessments of brand value for many years, but it will take time to develop something usable that makes sense of the complexity. One attempt, the stakeholder model of brand equity, shows how brand...

Satisfaction is not enough.
December 18, 2005... One oft-repeated marketing maxim is that satisfied customers are more likely to repurchase a product or service, so companies continually strive to should improve satisfaction. Unfortunately, many studies attempt to quantify these effects using...

Speaking up, speaking down.( consumer generated media )
December 18, 2005... There has never been a better time, technologically, for letting the world know your opinion. The opportunity offered by the internet, of talking to multiple audiences, is available at all times through various forms of consumer generated media...

Changing the TV mindset.
December 18, 2005... Television has been part of the furniture for so long that it is hard to believe that it is about to change dramatically. However, television's ability to evolve from a one-way to a two-way medium depends very much on the mindsets of marketers...

Are we afraid of software?
December 18, 2005... Consumers are accustomed to seeing products recalled because of some failure of design or lack of safety. We expect companies that have made a mistake to apologise, identify the problem, and pay to fix it. Yet it seems these rules do not apply...

Measure the rainbow.(Brief Article)
December 18, 2005... The pressure to measure everything that can be measured, and some things that can't, has fostered an atmosphere of frantic accountability. Branding activities are subject to the same pressure, even though the techniques to measure the financial...