Nilewide Marketing Review articles from March 2004

Nilewide Marketing Review archives from March 2004

Looking after me.
March 7, 2004... The phenomenon of trading up and down was documented about 18 months ago, and it continues to gain steam. As coined by the Boston Consulting Group, there is a new category of brands that confers "masstige". These are sub-premium brands that are...

Robots in the frame.
March 7, 2004... The importance of framing, or inviting comparison to a similar product, for new technologies is well recognised and is probably best illustrated by Sony's robot dog, AIBO. Sony and other companies, such as Honda, have for more than 10 years...

Network effects and pioneers.
March 7, 2004... The proliferation of new technologies means that network effects are becoming increasingly important. For pioneers of new technologies, these network effects have an influence on whether they eventually succeed or fail. A recent US study...

Marketing and the Net.(Internet)
March 7, 2004... There was a time when the Internet was heralded as a revolution, the dot-com boom and bust was everything, and the new economy was to eclipse the old. However, it is claimed that scholars have remained relatively silent on how the Internet has...

Customers define company value.
March 7, 2004... Direct marketing has focused attention on the lifetime value of customers. Since customers are intangible assets of the company, this should also be of use in determining the value of the company. Considering the valuations placed on some...

You won't keep growing.
March 7, 2004... We are in an era of unquestioning acceptance of the "myth of unbounded growth". No CEO would be prepared to tell shareholders that the company will not grow in the next few years and usually growth will be at double digit levels. In the same...

Fads and fitness.(Brief Article)
March 7, 2004... Following fads is not new, but new management fads seem to have been much more frequent in recent years. They often do much for the authors of the fads, but generally do not translate into profits for the companies that adopt them. This is not...

The power of music.(marketing with music)(Brief Article)
March 7, 2004... The power of music is well recognised in marketing, particularly in advertising. Yet we don't know why music is so powerful, even though music is a fundamental part of all cultures. Scientific evidence is beginning to provide insights into how...

Not so bad for US brands.(Brief Article)
March 7, 2004... Both Coke and Pepsi had their best sales to date in Arab countries in 2003, suggesting that fears of a backlash against American brands may be unjustified. This view is also supported by a recent Harvard University study that looked at the...

Cultural superiority.
March 7, 2004... Attitudes to aspects of globalisation, such as global trade, nationalism, and the value of local products, are bound to differ from country to country. They also differ depending with age, with younger people tending to see more advantage in...

How low can you fly?(Ryanair Holdings PLC-services)(Brief Article)
March 7, 2004... While airlines, such as BA and Emirates, continue to add luxurious extras for their more affluent passengers, the low fare airlines are paring down to bare essentials. The latest idea from Ryanair is to remove window blinds, reclining seats,...

Power laws in networks.
March 14, 2004... A networked world only increases our perceptions of being surrounded by complexity and chaos. However, science shows us that many of the things that appear so complex can be explained by what are known as power laws, for example, the number of...

The ecosystem of business.
March 14, 2004... While many would argue that business and marketing do not need any more analogies, they can still be useful tools to encourage new thinking about important issues. One of the more recent analogies is the ecosystem as a means to better...

What the seller knows.
March 14, 2004... The value of the information that sellers have about their customers and industry segments is under-explored for most sellers (especially in B2B categories), but it links well to interest in customer advocacy and networks. This is not the...

Making ideas count.
March 14, 2004... Thomas Davenport is well-known for inventing the concepts of knowledge management, reengineering, and enterprise systems, but has more recently looked at business ideas. By looking at some of the big questions surrounding ideas, he has come up...

Relying on ignorance and inertia.
March 14, 2004... While few people have anything positive to say about banks or insurance companies, it appears that our willingness to go into debt has increased. At the same time, the industry is spending unprecedented amounts to attract more customers, more...

Blame the company!(Brief Article)
March 14, 2004... The need for a company to respond quickly to a defective or dangerous product is well known, though not always well implemented. The rationale is that the situation must be remedied to minimise damage to the company's other products or brands...

I want it now.(consumerism and shopping)(Brief Article)
March 14, 2004... Despite many people suggesting that September 11 would stem the rise of consumerism, it appears that people are impulse shopping more than ever. Certainly planned shopping is down, but people are much more spontaneous in their shopping. Higher...

Brand managers and stress.(Brief Article)
March 14, 2004... The brand management system continues to be a popular organisational strategy. While brand managers are still considered middle-management on the first rung of their career path, they have little real authority or input into strategy. As has...

Creating the Net.(Brief Article)
March 14, 2004... One of the much-touted advantages of the Internet was supposed to be people's ability to interact with it, rather than just be passive recipients of information. A national survey in America suggests that people are publishing their thoughts,...

New cultural viruses.(Brief Article)
March 14, 2004... Most people would be familiar with the expression, "next big thing", which could probably be described as a "cultural virus" because it is passed on from person to person. However, it is often assumed that the next big thing must be created...

Luxury in a discount world.(changing perception, luxury goods)
March 21, 2004... Analysis "Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty." Socrates. If anyone were looking for examples of the power of brands, they need look no further than the luxury market. This market is based almost entirely on...

Moving the network.
March 28, 2004... One reason for the much-lamented decline in the effectiveness of traditional marketing tools, such as advertising and the sales force, is the rising importance of networks. Networks work against the traditional marketing approach of identifying...

Brand: a monopoly by permission.
March 28, 2004... Many commentators have forecast the death of brands and, at times, even the future of marketing itself seems shaky. Contrasting with this viewpoint, is that of Niall Fitzgerald, outgoing chairman of Unilever. He believes that, while some brands...

Vote for the brand!
March 28, 2004... If we believe that business is increasingly the primary power for social change, as opposed to the governments of nation states, and recognise the increasing role of brand strategy among political parties and nations, then it is a small step to...

Edited choice.
March 28, 2004... The UK MD of Procter & Gamble claims there are only two moments of truth for their brands: in-store at the point of purchase and when it is used at home. If that is the case, then the growth in retailer power over the past 20 years will...

When the brand goes to jail.
March 28, 2004... It is impossible to ignore Martha Stewart's widely publicised problems, and the consequent damage to her company Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. This example, again, raises questions about using the founder's name and image as the brand and...

Change and perish!
March 28, 2004... Nothing is guaranteed to ruin a brand experience more quickly than rude, inefficient service from change-weary, frustrated, cynical employees. Yet the change gurus maintain the mantra of "big revolutionary change or perish". They rarely...

Customisation or complexity?
March 28, 2004... Just as the industrial revolution made it possible to produce on a mass scale, so new technologies have made it increasingly possible to customise a product or service for an individual. Some companies have clearly succeeded, such as Dell; but...

Can spam be canned?(Brief Article)
March 28, 2004... The first national, USA, anti-spam legislation went into effect on January 1. It attempts to regulate rather than ban the practice of spamming by requiring email marketers to include legitimate return addresses and opt-out information in all...

Pepsi Challenge revisited.(Brief Article)
March 28, 2004... The now famous Pepsi Challenge found that, all over the world, people prefer the taste of Pepsi. Yet Coke is still the biggest seller. New studies in neuroscience have offered different ways of measuring people's responses to products so one US...

Blogs are conversations.(Brief Article)
March 28, 2004... The cluetrain manifesto, of which David Weinberger was a founder, made the statement that markets are conversations. However, as markets grow bigger and become more diverse, it is becoming more difficult to have a conversation with anyone...