Nilewide Marketing Review articles from November 2003

Nilewide Marketing Review archives from November 2003

Revenue premium is brand equity.
November 30, 2003... Measures of brand equity are of three broad types: consumer mindset, market outcomes and financial. Each has its strengths, but as yet there is no easy-to-compute measure for managers. Customer mindset measures (such as awareness, attitudes,...

Not so many switchers.
November 30, 2003... Modeling the effects of sales promotions remains a critical issue for manufacturers and retailers. Retailers want to know whether promotions increase category sales or just shift sales between competing brands. Manufacturers need to know...

Putting up with IT.
November 30, 2003... In the wake of Nicholas Carr's provocative article, "IT doesn't matter", a UK research group set out to find out how technology is working at the coalface. It discovered that most companies are characterised by a "low-tech equilibrium":...

Invest in what could be.
November 30, 2003... Gary Hamel has continually written on the topic of innovation, hoping to inspire companies to take a more innovative approach. His view is that, without innovative strategies, a company can not be resilient. To be resilient, a company must...

From handset to mindset.
November 30, 2003... With the explosion of mobile phone use, the industry is considering the prospects for mobile data services. A recent study by AT Kearney and the Judge Institute (UK) suggests that, while mobiles were once seen as a distraction, nuisance, or...

What they think of sponsorship.
November 30, 2003... While advertising research has moved on from simplistic approaches, such as reach and awareness, sponsorship research has, until now, been slow to follow. One relevant approach to sponsorship research should be to address it from the...

Adspend and brand extensions.
November 30, 2003... High levels of adspend, either as perceived through experience or known from news reports, have frequently been shown to positively influence people's perceptions of a brand's quality. But there are also reports of a negative effect, due to...

Marketing no-man's land.
November 30, 2003... All too frequently, marketing and brand budgets are cut in hard times and expanded in good times, which makes little sense to marketers and even other managers. The usual response from marketing is that senior managers need to be educated on...

Cynical about marketing.
November 30, 2003... Few people would be surprised to learn that we are becoming more cynical about marketing and the true intentions of companies. Yet, in spite of this growing cynicism, we are not necessarily against all forms of marketing, and we do not reject...

Intentions are not predictions.
November 30, 2003... Intentions to purchase, like satisfaction levels, are widely used in predictions of actual behaviour, but are also recognised to be poor predictors. A far better predictor of future purchase is past purchase, but it also fails to provide the...

The privacy trade-offs.
November 23, 2003... Analysis The burgeoning use of remote technologies and reduced face-to-face contact have made personal privacy and security of data critical business issues. Some companies have paid heed; others have taken a cavalier attitude, believing...

Ignorance is bliss.
November 16, 2003... It is a sobering thought that, in this time of knowledge management and obsession with measurement, the knowledge we have is dwarfed by the extent of our ignorance. Even more importantly, new ideas come from what we don't know, not from what...

In the body thinking.
November 16, 2003... As biological research progresses, more and more marketers are becoming interested in the implications of new findings, as demonstrated by interest in topics, such as evolutionary psychology and low-involvement processing. Another perspective...

Global withering.
November 16, 2003... Global brands will get stronger and dominate most markets, at least, that is the general perception. But moving beyond the basic discussion, it is clear that global brands will not dominate all categories and may even wither in some. Food...

Whatever comes to mind.
November 16, 2003... When someone is asked to make a judgment about something, they are most likely to decide based on what comes most easily to mind. Ease-of-retrieval is a heuristic used to form judgments, and we are also likely to generalise what comes to mind...

The smell of the brand.
November 16, 2003... Smell is the most mysterious of the senses because it can be very hard to describe, and it has the ability to summon past experiences long forgotten. It is also very good at engendering a sense of place. It is claimed to be the sense most...

Hidden or transparent pricing?
November 16, 2003... The use of hidden fees and complex pricing structures is common in many industries, and generally makes it difficult for customers to know how much they will be paying. For example, mobile phone companies use complex pricing, such as free...

What will we pay for?
November 16, 2003... The gradual move towards paid content on the Net is slowly strangling the idea that the Internet is free. In fact, many companies are making enthusiastic claims for their online content, pointing to healthy increases in sales. Jupiter...

Can't hear you.
November 16, 2003... Technology is often viewed as the answer to research problems with self-reporting. For example, diaries are widely assumed to be a relatively poor tool for measuring TV viewing or radio listening, because technology can be used to monitor the...

Are they worth it?
November 16, 2003... While executive pay has been under scrutiny, it is curious that people are less likely to be upset by the exorbitant incomes of athletes, entertainers or actors. One reason may simply be that the average person has no idea what a CEO does,...

Do it, don't say it.
November 16, 2003... Proponents of evolutionary psychology (EP) claim that men and women behave as they do because of their need to reproduce, even if some of those attitudes or behaviours are no longer appropriate. It is commonly believed that men and women have...

Getting the job done.
November 9, 2003... With all the talk of customer focus, and moving away from a product focus, there is one area that is still being neglected. Rather than look at product or customer attributes, it may be better to look at the job that needs to be done. After...

Perceptions of market leadership.
November 9, 2003... The term "market leader" is widely used, but it lacks a clear definition and, more importantly, an understanding of what it means for and to customers. The double jeopardy effect shows that the leading brand has proportionately more buyers...

Image rescue.
November 9, 2003... Major companies continue to and even increasingly receive negative publicity, despite their many advisors and in-house PR departments. In the US AT&T has had more than its share of negative press and subsequent falls in share price and...

Service: efficient or effective?
November 9, 2003... Keeping the customer satisfied is no easy task, and there are no guarantees that a satisfied customer will return. However, customer expectations of service delivery are higher than ever, particularly given the lack of differentiation between...

Employees have the power.
November 9, 2003... Marketers have often over-relied on marketing communication as a means to build brand value, but it is, and always has been, only part of the story. This over-reliance on communication is partly because they believe that what they do is...

Online buying inhibitors.
November 9, 2003... Ever since the Net exploded, there have been concerns about people abandoning their online shopping carts before making a purchase. This has not changed even though online shopping is a more mainstream activity. Some of the major inhibitors...

Happiness by gender.
November 9, 2003... Around the world it appears that women are generally happier with their lives than men. In 60% of 44 countries surveyed, more women than men feel they are better off now than they were five years ago. They are more focused on their home lives...

The effects of repetition.
November 9, 2003... Many advertisers use repetition as a means to cement their brands in memory, but the effects of repetition are not always consistent. It is well known that repetition increases wear-in until a certain point, and then continued repetition...

A bad case of customer focus.
November 9, 2003... As Napster reappears in a legalised form, there is still an ongoing battle between the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the peer-to-peer networks providing free music downloads. Meanwhile, hundreds of people are being sued...

Unprepared for retirement.
November 9, 2003... As the first of the baby boomers are now entering their 60s, maturity should be considered the norm by marketers but, like many people entering retirement, marketers tend to be inadequately prepared to deal with the reality. Undoubtedly the...