Nilewide Marketing Review articles from October 2004

Nilewide Marketing Review archives from October 2004

Why the funk?
October 31, 2004... Analysis Some might say it's indisputable, while others project a brave front, but put a group of marketers together and the topic will turn to the trouble with marketing. The message from the doomsayers is that, from all the evidence,...

Why the funk?
October 31, 2004... Analysis The late 90s may have been the glory days for the promoters of CRM software but, despite the billions lost due to the failure of so many projects, CRM is seeing a resurgence of interest. Along with it there is a renewed interest...

Myths over-50.
October 24, 2004... Media interest in people over 50 is increasing and marketers and their agencies are being berated to take this group more seriously. The reasons for this growing interest revolve around the wealth of people over 50, with many statistics...

Life of the mass market.
October 24, 2004... Claims that the mass market is dead are based on the fact that mass marketing communications are less able to reach their required audiences. However, to claim that there is no longer a mass market fails to recognise that people act as herd...

Experience required.(Brief Article)
October 24, 2004... The dawn of the so-called experience economy has led many brands to consider whether they can differentiate themselves through experiences. Such experiences are now described as the fourth economic offering, after commodities, products and...

Benefits on the mind.
October 24, 2004... One of the beliefs behind the decision to extend a brand is that it should not stray too far from its category. This is because people appear to be more accepting of a brand extension when it matches their ideas about categories. An...

The ROI of market research.(return on investment )
October 24, 2004... Tim Ambler has made clear his view that ROI is incorrectly used to evaluate marketing effectiveness and he holds the same view when applied to evaluating marketing research expenditure. In his opinion, ROI is very often not being measured at...

Yin/yang measurement principles.
October 24, 2004... Constant calls for accountability, measurement and ROI, can easily over-emphasise the analytical, rational and quantitative assessment of marketing. They can make it easy to forget there are two sides to marketing measurement and this...

Sad moods are pro-ads.(Brief Article)
October 24, 2004... Advertisers, including Coca-Cola, have often believed they should not run ads in potentially sad or upsetting programmes (such as the news) as this mood may translate to attitudes towards the brand. However, preliminary studies in mood and...

Valued communication.(Brief Article)
October 24, 2004... While companies doggedly seek to find new ways of offering value, few consider the value of their own communications. In fact, it is debatable whether many marketing communications offer any value at all. In product terms, they are often...

Not the case studies.
October 24, 2004... The popular book by Collins and Poras, Built to Last, has been one of the bibles of business for ten years. Yet since it was published, nearly half of the companies held up as visionary, have fallen from grace. Some might see this as proof...

Price matters in toyland.(Brief Article)
October 24, 2004... Many retailers who have added an online sales channel have hoped their brands and market power would insulate them from the intense price competition among online-only retailers. In markets such as CDs and DVDs, there have been data to...

A real choice.
October 17, 2004... One book that has stimulated debate about consumer choice is The Paradox of Choice, by Barry Schwartz. His main premise is that too much choice can be a bad thing and that people feel pressured by having to make so many choices. However, a...

A dictionary of brands in the brain?
October 17, 2004... Brands are often blamed for many of society's ills and commentators ask how seemingly intelligent people can fall for the lure of the brand. But it is also true that, in our complex lives, where we are bombarded by ever more messages, new...

Mere measurement and persuasion.
October 17, 2004... It is well known that the act of asking a question influences the response, and this is known as the mere measurement effect. From a recent study, it appears that asking a seemingly harmless question can also influence behaviour, even though...

Licensed to kill.
October 17, 2004... Many managers, rather than venture into new product development, prefer to extend existing brands. Some of these are successful, but the majority merely clutter the market with similar, unremarkable products and can even dilute the brand. One...

A voice against innovation.
October 17, 2004... Does innovation really rule? Or is it just another fad or haphazard approach to growth? While the gurus like Hamel and Peters preach that destruction is cool and that innovation is the way to double digit growth, ex-Coke marketer, Sergio...

Marketing means respect.
October 17, 2004... Many articles have delved into the reasons why marketing has lost its patina, and ventured to suggest how it can regain influence. Yet one viewpoint, from the influential Professor Jean-Claude Larreche at INSEAD, suggests marketers have been...

The importance of perceived value.(customer value)
October 17, 2004... It has been claimed that customer value is the next underlying source of competitive advantage. Yet how customers perceive the value of a service remains enigmatic. Kotler's theoretical definitions of customer value include product value,...

Individualism in disguise.(Brief Article)
October 17, 2004... There is little doubt that humans are predominantly social creatures and consequently a strong case for marketer to considering the networks people are part of. However, the fact that technology has made us more able to communicate and...

Lies, lies and we all lie.(deception gives us an advantage over someone else)(Brief Article)
October 17, 2004... Amid all the high profile cases of lying, it is important to note that we all lie and in fact lie very often, One study suggests that at least three lies are told in every 10 minutes of conversation, and no doubt more if one includes the lies...

Talk about the net.(online stores)(Brief Article)
October 17, 2004... The golden rule for physical retailers - find the best location - does not apply on the internet. Yet a recent study suggests that, while the location of the online store relative to customers does not matter, the location of existing...

Farewell ROI?(return on investment)
October 10, 2004... The quest to assess marketing performance has led to an emphasis on ROI. A metric that one leading UK academic believes is completely inappropriate. Tim Ambler supports his view by pointing out that it is not even ROI that is often being...

Quality own-labels benefit everyone.
October 10, 2004... One of the most significant changes in retailing has been the growth of own-labels, or store labels, that are of similar quality to national labels. One might expect that quality own-labels would be a threat to manufacturer brands, however,...

Causes don't have to fit.(cause-related marketing)
October 10, 2004... One of the accepted wisdoms of cause-related marketing (CRM) is that there needs to be a good fit between the product and the cause. Even so, this has never been empirically supported, and there are examples of an apparent lack of fit still...

Why brands are part of the problem.
October 10, 2004... It is accepted by both those who are pro-brand and those who are anti-brand, that in contemporary society brands are very powerful. In recognising their power there have been many attempts to use that power for the common good - providing a...

Making NPD work.(new product development)
October 10, 2004... There are numerous articles about the high failure rate of new products and at times, it may seem as if new product development (NPD) is just not worth the trouble. However tempting it is to focus on all the reasons why new products fail -...

Customers: partner or adversary?
October 10, 2004... Perhaps one of the most striking differences between companies is that some see their customers as partners, and others appear to see them as adversaries. Yet customers intrinsically want to be helpful and could be a company's best asset, or...

Product variants and loyalty.(Brief Article)
October 10, 2004... There is a wealth of information about brands and loyalty, but very little about product variants and loyalty. Product variants are the elements of the product that vary, such as pack size, formula, colour or price. The question is whether...

Doesn't matter if they don't want it.(popup blocking software)(Brief Article)
October 10, 2004... As more net users install anti popup ad software, some of the companies that created ad serving technologies are now developing software to override the blocking software. In fact widely used software such, as Flash, offer the means to...

Not quite joining them.(Brief Article)
October 10, 2004... As Adbusters launches its own "blackspot" anti-brand products, first up a sneaker that is very similar in style to the original Converse sneaker (now owned by Nike), it is increasingly adopting the tactics of its opponents, including suing TV...

The charity business.(Brief Article)
October 10, 2004... Several recent surveys have suggested that there is a shift to a more business like approach to relationships with charities, even though many companies still want to cast the relationship as philanthropic, instead of it having mutually...

Timestyles and consumption.
October 3, 2004... The way someone perceives time has a significant impact on how they live their lives, including their buying behaviour. In fact, the western belief that "time is money" is a very limited conception of a term as broad as time. Instead of this...

The value of time.
October 3, 2004... In a time-pressed society, it might be expected that people would value time more than, or as much as, money. Yet studies suggest many people are more willing to waste time than to waste money. One reason may be because it is more difficult...

The era of mass service.(Brief Article)
October 3, 2004... The era of mass production and its benefits for manufacturers, has been well documented, but we are now in another era - that of mass service. Mass service literally means being able to serve the maximum number of customers as cheaply as...

The risks of loneliness.
October 3, 2004... The "friends generation", which is used to having a social network spread across the globe, or to spending long periods of time outside regular relationships, might think they will never feel alone. Yet there are increasing numbers of people...

Revolving and evolving relationships.(relationship marketing)
October 3, 2004... Much has been written about relationship marketing, and the importance of forming relationships with customers and suppliers. However, less attention has been paid to the way that relationships evolve over time. One example is the New Zealand...

A more assertive role for marketing.
October 3, 2004... According to the gurus, Gary Hamel, CK Prahalad, and Clayton Christensen, marketing is too close to customers to be able to effectively nurture discontinuous sources of growth. Yet CEOs are under enormous pressure to grow their businesses,...

Ethical numbers.(ethical policies)(Brief Article)
October 3, 2004... Senior marketing executives in the USA, when prompted to name the factor with the biggest impact on the need for ethical policies, said it was misstating financial results to make profits look better. This was followed by conflicts of...

Fashionably green.(Environmental aspects)(Brief Article)
October 3, 2004... The trend to buying organic vegetables, recycling, and fuel-efficient cars, suggests that people are becoming more aware of how their consumption affects the planet. Yet, one commentator suggests that these activities have nothing to do with...

Your call is important.(Brief Article)
October 3, 2004... Most people, if asked, tend to have a negative attitude towards call centres. A recent MORI (UK) study confirms that a significant minority of people are not satisfied with the service they receive. However, more interesting is the fact that...

New styles of funding.(Brief Article)
October 3, 2004... It used to be said that the introduction of personal video recorders (PVRs) would spell the end of advertising as we know it. However, a recent UK study by Ofcom suggests that the biggest threat to advertising is in fact shopping channels and...

Doing it all at once.(Massachusetts Institute of Technology research)(Brief Article)
October 3, 2004... Since multi-tasking is considered to be just part of life, it is perhaps surprising that our brains are not really wired for it. While we are capable of, say, reading and eating at the same time, it is much more difficult for us to perform...