9 posts tagged “price”

Yep, another of those "you can have any two of the three" type scenarios (quality-service-price) is out. Of course, if you position yourself in the middle, no one will even know you are there. You can find it at Branding & Marketing.

Titus Cycles has a series of three ads putting the bike's $5,000 - $7,000 price into every day terms.

OtlTitusAffordCollege72

While I think the overall concept is good, I also think the implementation was a shot to their own foot. The ad shows the father trying to do the right thing, get his son something that can be far more valuable than any bike - an education. After all, someone can take the bike from you, someone can break the bike, but your education is your own and no one can take it from you. The dejected son, by the looks of it, wants the bike. At least that is what the graphics tell me. I haven't see the ad copy, but they will have to dig a long way to offset the graphics. Via Media Post  Ad2  Ad3   

I was cruising Duct Tape Marketing and saw this article on the straw market and it reminded me of something I went through many years ago - especially this quote: "Get out of the price game by coming up with a unique way to package, promote, offer, partner your business. Find a way to add value to your offerings, communicate that value and raise your prices. Owning your own business is the greatest thing on the planet, but only if you earn what you deserve." Are you in that trap? Were you in that trap? How did you get out? If you are competing on price with all your competitors, your business is a sheep. If you find a way to stick out and separate yourself from the flock, your business is a goat. 

If you are selling something (physical goods) then "free shipping" is your best best, according to DM News (via MediaBuyerPlanner). DMN, reporting on an eROI study, also states, "In fact, the survey shows that the majority of respondents prefer free shipping over discounts." In talking about doscounts, the DMN piece said, "Respondents favored getting 10 percent off any purchase over getting 15 percent off a purchase for a specified amount."

The Consumer Internet Barometer (via MarketingVOX) says consumers will up their online spending this holiday season if there is free shipping and bargains. 

Knowledge Wharton has released a paper examining the different cultural takes on price wars between the Chinese the US. While we look at them as being less than desirable, the Chinese consider them another strategy to capture market. So, when it comes to a Chinese-US competitive showdown, it would be like someone who will do whatever it takes to achieve their end versus someone who only understands the Marquess of Queensberry rules. Wanna bet who will prevail? As if the writing is not already on the wall. The authors note and comment on severla price wars and have some information on how to conduct a price war properly. 

Most record companies are still tied to CD sales, according to the New York Times, for the bulk of their income, but with music being distributed multimodally, they cannot depend on big CD sales for continuous income. To resolve this problem, they are taking cuts of concert revenues along with percentages of t-shirt/merchandise sales and the like - all areas that were considered outside their normal operating grounds. Of course, this generally affects newer acts. I can see them trying that invasion on the Rolling Stones or other, long-term stars. Right. CD sales continue to drop and the recording companies wonder why - yo, there is no reason at all you cannot cut the price - you want $15 for a CD yet that 12-song CD can be purchased song-by-song at 99 cents per cut? And I do not have to buy cuts  7 & 8 as I do with the full CD, if I do not like them. Get a clue. 

The US dollar has tumbled against the Euro and the British pound and that can hurt. The Washington Post (via MSNBC) says cokes have hit $6.50 and more, $25 for a dessert, $5 for an espresso (ouch). The painful read is here. 

I plan on resuming the newsletter after the holidays so, here is the last one written before my hard drive descended into madness and started spewing forth a lot of incomprehensible stuff. Most of the material exists in PDF and that does not translate well into this space. So here is the source document.
Jim Lane's Marketing Canapes

Marketing Canapés

October 9, 2006 #27

Some of the following morsels require registration and/or subscription. We only cover the freshest of news and should there be nothing in the market we think is good enough, any given category may not have any listing.

Marketing - Product

Crocs are interesting sandals (at least until the tread wears smooth on the bottom and then they get REAL interesting on wet surfaces). Here’s a couple that figured out how to make additions to Crocs and have reaped the benefit. MSNBC News

Artisanal cheese making moves underground. Yep, those hand-crafted wheels of cheese are going into caves to pick up local micro-stuff that should make the same cheese produced in different locations taste slightly different than their commercial competitors – richer and nuanced. NYTimes

Marketing - Place

From the realms of science fiction comes teleporting goods from one place to another. If you think that is still the stuff of pipe dreams, try this report out and try to wrap your mind around a product line with NO physical distribution at all – just, “Beam me a dozen, Scotty!” CNN

Marketing - Promotion

Great pizza boxtop adverts, more at Twenty Four: (cannot load it, so go to the source).

If you bat an eye, chances are you may start missing some of television’s newest short format commercials. Called “adlets,” “blinks” or “winks,” these last only five seconds or less. The question is, just what can you get across and through all the noise in that time and will any marketers want these. So far, Clear Channel has few takers for their one-second spots. There are some longer, five-second, spots running. WSJ Online

Okay, Dick Tracy, where are you? No, we don’t have a wrist radio, but would a phone watch do? TechDigest How about Levitra’s sponsoring elevator UP buttons? AdRants

Marketing - Packaging

Oh what a difference a change of color can make – and tying the change into a non-profit fundraising event. Campbell’s Soup lost its red label and went pink, allying itself with Kroger’s Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and doubled Kroger’s October unit buy. AdAge

Marketing - Target Market

"You can slice and dice by demographic data all you want, but each individual person will always constitute a market segment of one. You can run a campaign that will, you're confident, connect with the "Positive and Responsible" group but you will never achieve 100% positive results. That's because people ultimately make up their own minds. And with more and more choices available to them they're going to be swayed by the information they *can find* much more than the messaging that's *pushed to them*.” AdJab

Here’s an interesting question and accompanying concept. Are you eating out more often than you have in the past? Turns out that when you compute the cost of your time in preparing your own food, it is about the same as going out and you do not have the mess to contend with. Another life-style consideration to be taken into account. Yahoo!News Of course, you should take that “pay yourself” into account the next time you drive a few extra blocks and wait in a line at a gas station to save two cents a gallon.

Apparently, media and big advertisers/marketers have made a fundamental shift in the way they view the customer. SHE has been recognized. RealMediaRiffs

Management

An article on “plateauing,” says many people in middle management are no longer willing to pay the price of moving up in the company. No kidding? Colleagues of mine have been negotiating for life-style concessions for more than ten years. “This plateauing is part of a bigger phenomenon in the workforce -- one that also includes people putting higher priorities on activities outside their jobs, from family to volunteer work to hobbies.” Nothing like timely. Knowledge Wharton

Are job interviews going the way of dinosaurs? Can you tell as much about a candidate by their handshake? BusinessPundit

Media Matters

British newspapers are downsizing and not only in terms of distribution. Many have gone tabloid in an effort to become friendlier to commuters. There are other changes happening – for instance free newspapers that will be home-delivered. Other changes include dynamic layouts and reader-generated information instead of reportage. Is the writing on the wall for US newspapers? American Journalism Review and Media Life

Music used to be the generational divide. The digital divide separates the generations today. David Cohen concluded "there is no doubt that we are moving rapidly from a world of passive receptivity to active engagement. No longer can we simply broadcast our messages to a mass audience and hope that our standard metrics of reach and frequency will guarantee success. Accountable engagement innovation is the battlefield of the 21st century..." Research Brief

Public Relations, Press Releases and Spin

Here is a Top 10 list about how to drive traffic to your website via press releases. First on the list is content. Larry Chase

International

Mexico’s “competition czar” looks forward to the next eight years to make Mexico’s economy more competitive and productive by cracking down on the nation’s monopolies and duopolies. Yahoo!News

If you are marketing internationally, one of the things you need to remember is that consumers like hearing/reading your missives in their own language. For starters, more than half of ALL consumers regardless of their language ability buy only at websites in their own language. BizReport

How would you feel if your local businesses dumped a load of absolutely smelly and sickening garbage on your lawn? It is doubtful you would be very happy about the situation and would seek immediate legal remedies. Think about that situation for a moment and then take a look at what happens when industrial waste gets dumped in the backyard of people in developing countries. NTTimes

Finally, here is a webpage that does have some good points, albeit with some moralizing. If the world’s population were 100 people . . .

jim