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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Why Consumers Spend Their Precious Resources on Lavish Purchases during Recession?

Feeling powerless is an aversive psychological state that people try to eliminate or diminish. Behaviors such as associating oneself with figures of power, wealth and fame and emulating what they do are driven by the desire to build status and compensate their feeling of lack of power, although they usually leads to decline in self-confidence. Researchers found that, in a time of economic downturn, consumers are more likely to feel powerlessness and, therefore, spend beyond their means to purchase status-related items. Their experiments showed that subjects who experience a sense of low power 1) were willing to pay a higher price to acquire status-oriented items, like silk ties and fur coats, but not regular products like minivans and dryers; 2) expressed increased willingness to pay for a picture of Northwestern University, but only when it was portrayed as an exclusive item providing high status, rather than a mass-produced item available to anyone; 3) were more likely to perceive status-oriented products as providing a sense of power. As marketers determine target market segment and develop persona, they need to take the compensatory consumption into consideration…


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Back to the City

Business success depends highly on discovering and seizing opportunities. Opportunities, on the other hand, are associated with events, changes and trends. If someone tells you that he is going to move to an urban area, it is not an isolated incident (event); it actually represents a change in mentality and a trend of urbanism. Young workers and retiring Boomers are actively seeking to live in densely packed, mixed-use communities that don’t require cars – that is, cities or revitalized outskirts in where residences, shops, schools, parks, and other amenities exist close together. Prudent executives are adjusting their strategies and market focuses accordingly…


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