Nilewide Marketing Review articles from June 2005

Nilewide Marketing Review archives from June 2005

Pricing made simple.
June 5, 2005... Over the years there have been many attempts to understand price elasticities - how a brand's sales respond to price changes. Some people have claimed that brands have their own inherent elasticity and that great brands have an inherently low...

When we don't mind paying.
June 5, 2005... The theory of loss aversion says that changes for the worse are noticed more than an equivalent change for the better. As described by the endowment effect (or mere ownership effect), something owned is of more value to the owner than it is to...

Older buyers buy the cars they know.
June 5, 2005... Even though people over 60 buy new cars, the focus is generally on encouraging young people to buy certain brands of car. However, the way that older people (60-74) and the elderly (over 75) make decisions is quite different to those who are...

Four easy pieces.(steps to marketing success)
June 5, 2005... The business press is awash with cliches, but that does not necessarily mean there is no truth in them. Alan Mitchell claims that the path to success is simple, but that does not mean that it is easy to walk along it. He says there are four...

When values meet metrics.
June 5, 2005... Mistrust of corporations and their values, or lack of, is nothing new. In fact according to Daniel Yankelovich, we are in the third wave of mistrust. The first wave ran from the Great Depression to WW2, and the second wave between the early 60s...

Keep them all dissatisfied!(Brief Article)
June 5, 2005... While most companies focus on customer satisfaction, and some also make sure their employees are satisfied, another group of companies wants to keep its employees dissatisfied! It all depends on how you define dissatisfaction. One study of High...

Resolving cultural differences.
June 5, 2005... When two companies merge, it is often the cultural differences that scupper the new company's success. Corporate culture is defined here as the set of behaviours that characterise how a company gets things done. Some understanding of the...

Protect the customer.(Brief Article)
June 5, 2005... The question of whether a company should promote its corporate image or its brands is a perennial one, and no more so than online. Some companies, like Microsoft, ensure that all customers come to Microsoft.com. Others, like Mars Corporation,...

Geeks are more satisfied.(Brief Article)
June 5, 2005... People who are experienced users of the internet might be expected to be more satisfied with their experience than novices. On the other hand, familiarity breeds contempt, and they may become less easy to satisfy over time. A recent American...

Neuromarketing — a caution.
June 12, 2005... There is no doubt that the concept of neuromarketing is exciting both its proponents and its critics. Put simply, the aim is to be able to understand which parts of the brain are involved in decision-making and what their effect on behaviour...

Where to with neuroscience?(neuro marketing)
June 12, 2005... Neuroscience, or the science of the nervous system, has come like a breath of fresh air into marketing. But in these early stages, it is difficult to know whether being able to see into the activity of the brain is going to change the way...

Too much experience.
June 12, 2005... Bounded rationality is one research stream of behavioural economics and, like behavioural economics, aims to give a better understanding of how people really make decisions. It is based on the understanding that most decision-making is...

Show some emotion.
June 12, 2005... The role of emotions in our daily lives is crucial, and yet our understanding of them is still hampered by old beliefs. In the past, we have been convinced that emotions are separate from rationality and, in fact, prevented us from being...

Running to stay still.(Brief Article)
June 12, 2005... In Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, the Red Queen tells Alice, "It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place". This would sound familiar to most managers who are trying to grow a business. It is also a principle in...

It's who you like.
June 12, 2005... While managers want to believe that they should and would hire competent people over likeable people, they generally don't. The likeable person is the hub of the social network and when we want practical help from within our informal network,...

Awareness by another name.
June 12, 2005... The value of replication studies is that they can potentially cast a new light on past results, even if they are broadly similar. One Australian study set out to replicate the empirical generalisation that top of mind, spontaneous and aided...

Trust in oxytocin.(Brief Article)
June 12, 2005... Oxytocin is a neuropeptide that is produced in the body and involved in some behaviours relating to emotion, including maternal bonding and childbirth. It is now clear that it plays a part in trusting. For example, in a study of trusting a...

Penny wise?(Brief Article)
June 12, 2005... The "spare change effect" describes the willingness of people to part with spare change for an impulse purchase when they would not break a note to buy the item. This includes the phenomenon where somebody may spend $1.00 in change, but not a...

The language of power.(Brief Article)
June 12, 2005... It is well known that the type of language someone uses can communicate whether they are perceived as powerful or not. Powerful language is revealed by the absence of certain speech markers that characterise powerless language. These are...

Investment rules for marketing.
June 19, 2005... McKinsey suggests that one way to address the challenges marketing faces today is to view marketing as an investment. If we do so we should apply the investment fundamentals that used in other businesses, such as clarifying the objectives of...

Superfluous choices.
June 19, 2005... The idea that marketing should give customers more of what they want (and less of what may be unwanted or superfluous) is at the very heart of marketing theories such as one-to-one, customisation and even relationship marketing. Inherent in...

Who wants self-service?(elf-service technologies)
June 19, 2005... It may seem paradoxical that many so-called service providers are choosing to co-opt, even force, their customers into serving themselves. Even so, Forrester Research, in 2001, found that 41% of companies had seen no return on their investments...

Predictions for the household.
June 19, 2005... With the high failure rate of new products, it would be useful to be able to predict which households are most likely to try a new product. One way to do this could be through understanding the kinds of attributes people prefer across...

Trolley tracking.(usage of PathTracker)(Brief Article)
June 19, 2005... Since the first scanner read the barcode of a packet of chewing gum in 1974, we have amassed valuable data on what people put in their shopping trolleys. The next step is to track how people do their shopping. A new system, using RFID tags and...

Looking for the next deal.(expected length of time until the next deal)(perceived price difference )
June 19, 2005... When customers evaluate prices, they commonly refer to an inner reference price - the price that they have decided is right for this product. New research suggests this is not the only influence on price evaluations and that customers also...

The post-it note trick.(Brief Article)
June 19, 2005... Most people have received a direct mail piece that appears to be a page torn out of a magazine, and a post-it note attached which says "Peter (the recipient's first name) try this it works, J". So common has this tactic become that it is clear...

Cherry picking — extreme shopping.(Brief Article)
June 19, 2005... When used in relation to shopping, cherry picking describes shopping in two shops to take maximum advantage of price cuts. It is an extreme form of price sensitivity, and, in a study of shopping habits in Chicago, is practised by about 20% of...

Queer ads go straight.(gay magazines )(Brief Article)
June 19, 2005... Few would dispute the power of the pink dollar, worth some $US450 bill in the USA. But advertising to this wealthy minority group is more problematic. The two most popular gay magazines only reach, at most, 3% of the US gay population, the rest...

Green and local.(Brief Article)
June 19, 2005... Many so-called green products, have struggled when launched even though consumers tell researchers they would prefer to buy environmentally friendly products. This has been explained by a number of studies highlighting that price, quality and...

Why changing is so hard.
June 26, 2005... Analysis The single greatest medical problem facing the western world is not the treatment of AIDS, cancer or dementia, but how to change people's behaviour (1). This is a simple reflection of the impact that destructive behaviours, such...