Nilewide Marketing Review articles from February 2004

Nilewide Marketing Review archives from February 2004

The apolitical consumer.
February 1, 2004... During the Iraq war, there was a rise in anti-American sentiment throughout the world, yet American brands continued to dominate global markets. There was no real change from the recent past when some 69% of the top 100 global brands were...

No more innoflation.
February 1, 2004... While the innovation cycle keeps on turning, the current climate for innovation seems tougher than ever. Claims that it is "a thing of the past" or that it is no longer profitable to create a completely new product (unless it is a blockbuster),...

Relationships: to reduce choice?
February 1, 2004... There has been so much interest in relationship marketing, across nearly all industries, that most people would assume there is a strong theoretical basis to it. In fact, relationship marketing was borrowed from business-to-business (B2B)...

Keep loyalty programs light.
February 1, 2004... The demise of a number of high profile loyalty programs has not deterred other companies, even small ones such as restaurants and coffee shops, from setting up their own. Certain products and services do lend themselves to these programs better...

A balanced view of success.
February 1, 2004... Management inevitably involves looking for answers as to what to do next. However, the critical thing is not the answers but asking the right questions. One set of potentially useful questions comes from the MD of McKinsey, who suggests we...

Online shopping types.
February 1, 2004... It is often assumed that the main reason for shopping online is convenience. This belief comes from the reality that online shopping lacks the social/ experiential/ tactile aspects of physical shopping. However, it fails to recognise that there...

Our favourite media.
February 1, 2004... One might assume that media planners would have a good idea about people's preferences for different media. Yet an American study suggests that they are not at all in touch with people's preferences. When asked about their favourite media, 47%...

Bombing Google.
February 1, 2004... Since the creation of the first search engine there have been people who have sought to manipulate search results for their own benefit. Google is no different and it still banishes sites whose results they believe are being manipulated. But,...

No clean slate.
February 1, 2004... Marketers regularly ask groups of people what they think about a new product, as a way of assessing the potential success of the product. However, what someone thinks about a new product will always be affected by similar products that they...

A long way from the top.
February 1, 2004... Many commentators have noted the relative absence of marketing directors on company boards. The question is: if marketing is so important, then why does it appear to be so marginalised? One answer may be because the meaning of marketing is so...

What is luxury anyway?
February 1, 2004... The question of what is luxury may seem rather academic in the light of spectacular growth in sales of luxury brands. As many people's standards of living rose, and they became more knowledgeable about products (and more prone to using their...

Culture and persuasion.
February 1, 2004... Influence, by Robert Cialdini, is one of the more recent books outlining our understanding of the principles of persuasion. Just as other authors do, he tends to focus on six basic behavioural tendencies. Reciprocation, which is the societal...

Guilt-edged marketing.
February 1, 2004... Guilt in the context of consumption is a widely used, but rarely discussed, marketing tactic. One reason why it tends to be glossed over in research and many texts is that there is no simple typology of guilt in consumption. An attempt to...

The order of ads matters.
February 1, 2004... Conventional wisdom is that the first TV ad in a pod is the one that is best remembered. This ignores the fact that men and women process ads differently, as women are subject to primacy effects and men to recency effects. While women use more...

The agency/ client mix.
February 1, 2004... Much of the discussion about relationship marketing ignores the importance of relationships within marketing companies and between different marketing entities. The relationship between ad agency and client is critical, but research shows that...

Affinity for technology.
February 1, 2004... The impact of technology on everyday life is so great that it is easily forgotten that not everyone has an affinity for technology in general. Some people are clearly more comfortable with it than others, and use a range of technologies, from...

The importance of values.
February 1, 2004... Many companies appeal to potential and current customers who hold certain values as a means to differentiate themselves. Sometimes these values will be obvious, as in Virgin's irreverence, but they may also be more subtle. A Belgian study found...

Products are what matter.
February 1, 2004... In an article that questions the validity of much of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement, The Economist highlights some of the problems for brands and those who seek the funds to invest in them. The article presents data from a...

No common senses.
February 1, 2004... A rarely discussed but fundamental question for market research, especially when asking people how something feels or what they think, is whether everyone's senses act in the same way. Unfortunately, for those who hoped this might be the case,...

Let's do relaunch.
February 15, 2004... Time and again companies attempt to relaunch a brand, often within just a year of its original launch. Many of these relaunches fail, even when there is a real change in the brand's positioning. Recent examples include P&G's Sunny Delight,...

The importance of the "other product".
February 15, 2004... All too often in research, the existence of other products is ignored while it concentrates its attention on one product or one category. This is not surprising, given that a market is very complex and it would be time consuming to always look...

Those promiscuous customers.
February 15, 2004... In the years since the first loyalty card was introduced, the environment has changed dramatically. Perhaps one of the key societal changes is that there is generally less loyalty than before. People are less loyal to their partners, their...

Luck happens.
February 15, 2004... In an age of accountability and the quest for marketing science, luck seems to be dismissed or simply ignored. But when we look at markets or products, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between the winners and the losers, or explain...

Not fair!
February 15, 2004... As the record industry associations step up their prosecutions of people who facilitate file swapping or have files on their computers that were not paid for, the movie industry is about to face a similar scenario. Movie file swapping software...

The politics of marketing.
February 15, 2004... Marketing is not the only profession that believes it is underrepresented at board level, as HR and IT departments will also attest. For marketers to have more influence at board level, they must learn to see their profession from the...

Extreme risks with EVT.
February 15, 2004... As the costs to launch new brands increase, there is growing interest in risk management for marketing. However, it is fair to say that marketing has taken far less interest in risk management than other business disciplines, such as finance,...

The same lessons, another crisis.
February 15, 2004... The BBC may be one of the best known, and perhaps strongest, brands in the world, but it certainly seems to have got itself in to trouble recently. These troubles all relate to how it responded to what became a crisis and how it seemed to...

This isn't spam!
February 15, 2004... As the latest virus again floods inboxes with junk email, there is a growing urgency in many companies to control the amount of incoming email. One of the real risks is that email that has been requested will be blocked, with Jupiter research...

The fine arts of marketing.
February 15, 2004... Just as marketers are feeling the pressure to be more educated about business, business people are being sought from, and urged to train in, Fine Arts. An arts degree is now claimed to be the best credential for business. Even companies, such...

Art on the brain.
February 15, 2004... Neuroaesthetics is a burgeoning area of neurobiology that seeks to understand how the brain reacts to art or aesthetics. Its results and techniques are already being used by some marketers. The most common approach is to attempt to map the...

The marketing of happiness.
February 22, 2004... Analysis In a world where you can buy almost anything, there are still some things that remain elusive. One is love, at least according to the Beatles, and another is happiness. Perhaps it is the fact that happiness has remained so...

The age of advocacy.
February 29, 2004... Now that relationship marketing is widely practised, with varying degrees of success, it is important to look for the next big step in marketing strategy. One possible direction is consumer advocacy, which is a logical progression from TQM and...

More than gas.
February 29, 2004... Many utilities have struggled since they were deregulated, because they had no real way of differentiating themselves. In the UK, British Gas has also been subject to high cost, high prices and competition. Its new strategy seems to be part of...

Define the brand!
February 29, 2004... While the original intention of the brand may have been to simplify things for the consumer, it has certainly made life more complex for marketing professionals. It is almost impossible to find a common definition for the brand. Consequently,...

Regional animosity.
February 29, 2004... The role of regional allegiances and animosity within countries is often ignored in the rush towards globalisation. Yet even country-of-origin is a double-edged sword for many brands (especially in light of anti-American, French, Arab etc...

The new service-centred paradigm.
February 29, 2004... There is no shortage of papers or books hailing the next new idea in marketing, from the roles of different technologies, customer relationship management and co-creation, to the changing roles of brands. But, what is interesting is that these...

In whom we trust.
February 29, 2004... Trust in institutions has been falling for some time, yet there is evidence to suggest that the picture is not all bleak. An international survey of opinion leaders recently found that trust in business has risen during 2003, particularly in...

It's the questions.
February 29, 2004... Market research (MR) has certainly come in for considerable questioning and concern over the last few years. Yet, in spite of a number of major issues being raised for MR, there has been a surprising lack of response from researchers....

Over-subscribed.
February 29, 2004... There has been a huge increase in use of subscription pricing, particularly for technology products, led by Microsoft in software and now its watch that receives news, weather, email, stock prices etc. This suggests there will be a point where...

Fee backlash.
February 29, 2004... In both business and consumer markets there is a growing backlash against the hidden fees added to what appears to be a low purchase price. These range from fees to add essential features through to monthly subscription fees. This push to lower...