Chapter # 10

Services and Other Intangibles:

The double intangible has come to mind when thinking about services and other intangible goods. Hulu: TV that is streamed online. TV is entertainment which is ungraspable and the internet itself is also an intangible good. The difficult part of this is deciding how to market this doubly intangible good. A strong perception of the benefits received will have to be built in order to attract consumers to websites like these. Luckily with the shift to online life, if you will, there has been an explosion of popularity with sites such as Hulu and there is not a lot of need for promotional campaigns. Now however, Hulu is changing their product line a little by adding a tangible good to their services, a box for at home viewing. A bundling strategy.
How does one market a doubly intangible good? Why through another intangible service, the television of course! You can see commercials for Hulu on TV frequently nowadays.

Chapter # 9

Pricing Your Product:

Price skimming is the process where a company introduces a product line into the market at a high price and lets those willing to overpay do so before lowering the cost to appeal to the mass consumer base. Most commonly you will see this strategy with technology. A good example of this is laptops, a new model comes out each year at minimum and the older models move down a price level, leaving those who have waited with a better deal.

My question for the strategy of price skimming is this: will this strategy be effective for a new or start up company? I suppose that if a new company had a high in demand technology then it is possible they could use this as a way to enter the market. To implement this tactic would be the opposite of penetration pricing and would require the proper advertising in order to spread the word about the new product. The benefits of a new company using this and bringing something new to the table is that it may take competitors some time to catch up technologically, giving the newbies time to grab ahold of the market.

Chapter # 12

Place: Distributing the Product

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTJLhWGVQQs

This is an example of a Just in Time system. I think that this technology is the most interesting method of  distribution in this chapter. The novel concept that being one unit of over of your product is the same level of inefficiency as being one unit short is intriguing. This analysis is based off of the idea that because production leaving the factory is exact, there is no room in a plant for costly and disrupting storage area. Along with JIT systems it is not just the production of the goods that must be exact, but also the materials coming into the production plant as well. Multiple parties are involved in and benefit from the Just in Time systems.

Chapter # 11

Promotional Strategy 

These are two great examples of guerrilla marketing by the Swiss company Swatch. The first picture is of an elevator that is glass and inlaid with watches that takes the consumer up to the floor where they can find the Swatch store. The second picture is obviously just a massive promotional campaign of the watches.

I think that guerrilla marketing can be incredibly effective. More and more of the purchasing power is being shifted into the hands of up and coming consumers who have shorter and shorter attention spans. We need an advertisement to surprise us and catch us off guard. I do think that it can be dangerous though, if a high-end company that depends on prestige products as their main seller does a cheap gimmick then they could damage the value that they have worked to create.

For a company like Swatch, that does produce nice products that are high quality and durable but not luxury goods, it is effective to do campaign ads like this. They also have a large line of children's and teen's watches that a massive watch on a building might appeal to.

Chapter # 4

This is a robot. This robot is designed to shop for the elderly. When the elderly get too old to do their own shopping they sit at home and, using wireless technology, steer the robot to do their bidding for them. It also has telephone capabilities to talk to its companion.When looking at the consumer decision making models I am sure that an elderly person would not buy this. Sure, your potential affinity to this product will depend on culture,  but I am almost positive that a senior citizen would be overwhelmed by the technologies needed to properly work the telephone and extensive remote controls needed to operate a life-sized robot.

The product itself is not connecting with lifestyle or personality traits of their target market. And when looking at the internal influence of learning there is a large discrepancy between the knowledge needed to properly use the product, and the willingness of the market to learn. This is a huge oversight when bringing this product to market.

Chapter # 3

My office has recently made the switch to use an outside company to provide the support, advising and technical services for our Online Masters of Business Administration students. The company, EMBANENT, is trained as WSU advisors and the workers are familiar with our programs here. They merely have the manpower to properly administer to the volume of current and prospective students that our program is seeing. With the growing boom of Internet schooling WSU Graduate Programs in Business has begun to offer the online degree, which has been received quite positively.

Before these two big decisions could be made (offering an online degree and then requesting a third party to provide support) we did our research. Through primarily syndicated research our office became aware of the demand that an up-and-coming market would provide. Our generation is looking more and more towards college online as a viable option and the studies have shown this.  WSU has responded. However, once this program’s potential was seen we took things one step further. Embanent is a company that not only does support and advising after proper training, but they also market your program out to students across the nation. They are able to reach more of the target market than our team would alone. Research shows that students need roughly 8 interactions before they are willing to attend your university. With our small team we are unable to provide the high level of interaction that market research tells us we need to provide. Embanent can fill this gap for us.

These major decisions were a direct reaction from looking at the research telling our business that we needed to expand to a new market and do so with the proper amount of attention.