Product Renewal: Apple’s Jobs Unveils New IPhone to Dial Back Android Rivalry

Product lifecycle management is one of the key elements of marketing. As technology evolves rapidly today, tech products’ lifecycles become increasingly short and, therefore, renewal of product vitality becomes critically important. Apple inc.’s Steve Jobs has been extremely successful in bringing into the market very cool products such as iPhone and iPad. Marketers have a lot to gain by following his product lifecycle management strategies, with one being tapping into the enormous resources of third party applications developers and the other being introducing to the market the new versions of the products. The company now has more than 225,000 tools, games and other applications available for downloading. That compares with about 50,000 for Android. Recent research shows that more than 5 billion programs have been downloaded from Apple’s App Store. On the other hand, Steve Jobs showed to the market ra week ago a thinner iPhone with a sharper screen and video-chat features, delivering a refashioned chassis and 100 new features…


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Know Your Target Customers: Subaru Thrives in Great Profit in Great Recession

Positioning a product to target certain market requires a great deal of diligence. A marketer starts by selecting a market as her target, taking into consideration of the company’s vision, product fit, competitive landscape and its winning roadmap. Once the target market is decided, the marketer examines the needs, wants and demands of the target customers at multiple dimensions and decides how it creates, communicates and delivers value to its target customers. By courting financially solid buyers with a taste for the quirky, tiny Subaru of America sped through 2009, logging record sales and market share along the way. Last year Subaru became the 11th most popular U.S. auto brand, up from No. 19 just a year earlier. Record sales in cities like Los Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas, and Orlando helped make Subaru the fastest-growing mass-market car brand in the U.S. for the last two years. It's the growth leader again so far in 2010 — up 41 percent through April. For the first time, its unit sales exceed those of such better-known brands as BMW, Lexus, Mazda, and Volkswagen…


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Targeting Different Markets with Different Products: Starbucks Rebranded Seattle's Best Coffee

Prudent marketers understand that customers have diverse needs and wants and, therefore, products have to be positioned to target selected customer segment(s). What if a business wants to take market share beyond its target segment(s)? Starbucks has saturated the market that it currently occupies, showing stagnant demand. In an attempt to drive future growth, the company is brewing a fresh image for Seattle’s Best Coffee, a specialty brand it acquired in 2003. The coffee giant last month kicked off a rebranding effort, which includes a simpler, more contemporary logo and design. It hopes to grow Seattle’s Best into a billion-dollar business by expanding it to fast-food channels, convenience stores, drive-through restaurants and even vending machines this fall. Rebranded Seattle’s Best Coffee is positioned as a premium set of products, which will be complementary to and not competing against the low-cost coffee products currently carried by those marketing channels…


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Google Fails to Revolutionize the Cellphone Market

Business model is one of the critical elements in business success. An effective business model is dictated not only by the grand strategy of the business but also by the key attributes of the product and the key preferences of the target customers. Google’s decision to bring an end to its online sales of its Nexus One handset shows how a poorly-configured business model led to a failure in marketplace…


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Giving Customers License to Enjoy Luxury

Many consumers hesitate when it comes to spending money on luxury items. The feeling of guilt, conscience and sub-conscience, plays a significant role in purchasing decision-making. Furthermore, the financial crisis and economic downturn transformed consumers’ mindsets and in the process of turning luxuries into socially discouraged opulence. Research at MIT suggests that people will spend more freely if you first help them feel more virtuous…


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Can You Describe Your Business in a Few Words?

If you ask people what their businesses are or sit in a presentation, you will likely to find that many companies have hard time to describe their business. People often try to cover every area of their businesses’ expertise, all of their industry experience and each qualification they have attained in an effort to paint the full picture of what makes them stand out. Consequently, the messages are diluted, sounding like everyone else, and audience is confused. A process of distilling the essence of your business from various aspects is mind-wrenching. What you gain from going through the process, however, are a crystal-clear understanding of the business in your own mind and clean, exciting message in the minds of your customers and staff. Meredith Vaughan, president of Vladimir Jones, introduces her agency as “an agency of exciting minds.”


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Five Steps for Consumer Brands to Earn Social Currency

Consumer brands can earn social currency. Launching promotional campaign using social media is, however, just the beginning. Effective social media campaigns are achieved by acting upon five key fundamental themes: 1) advocates trump followers – building promotions around turning real people into online celebrities and then endorsers; 2) the social context during consumption matters – creating relevance in consumer's daily life; 3) not every brand should be social – distinguishing those which can have upside in social currency, 4) social tools are a means, not an end – converting viewers into evangelists; and 5) gimmicks marginalize trust – focusing on present true values to consumers…


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