At the end of simulation

Here we got constant shrinking in Vodite's market share. The SPI goes down from about 2200 to like 1100. And I cannot bear with that. Then I decided to play strong in the meeting during Round 8. I raised that
we should eliminate MELT since we cannot tweak the features.
We should adjust the commercial team size. Increase MONO's and decrease MOOD's.
We need set strong semantic scale for MONO in advertising, which featured in display.
Place strong semantic scale for MOOD, which is 7 in price and display.

The SPI turns to right way, which increased for about 20%
Our team is great but sometimes is too overwhelmed by information.

Week one in markstrat

I feel tough in combining all the information together to formulate a decision. Actually me and my teammates often go through the data roughly and make decisions by gut. We spend a lot time on discussing. But at the end the decision are often made by common sense. But it works in the second round, we have a great increase on sales. The bad thing is we didn't expect the sales can be so high that both products are out of stock due to we cut off the production. It is basically like a game theory for us to balance our budget on sonite and vodite. 

Information overwhelming is the biggest problem. And whether to improve the old products or introduce new ones is the second. We can try to get the first move-in advantages to the new market. But no one knows what will happen later. To focus on the old one is definitely safer because we have plenty research result. This is like adventure but exciting.

Communicating with teammates is always a challenge to me. I don't think they understand the research result like me. But to prove I'm right is another thing. Sometimes it is abstract to describe it.

In the real business, research result cannot come out so fast. But it is orientation for me to learn. How to gather the data immediately is significant.

Allocating budget in the right place at the very first is important and difficult. There is no historical data but the process of generating more budget is compounding.

Profit always first.

Cookware memo

Business memo

to:	Donald janus
from:	victoria brown
subject:	recommendation for promotion
date:	xx/xx/2006
cc:

Recommendation:

After analyzed the 2004 promotion, I will still highly recommend setting promotion on our products for 2007. And we can set price discount on fast-moving pieces. Meanwhile, we can set buy 500+ for gift on slowest-moving products consistently.

Analyzing the 2004 promotion:

I believe that normal sales we mentioned were too high. Based on sales in March-May 2003, which were totaled 78,778 units. The estimation of sales during the promotion is supposed to be 59,871 units. That is to say, the contribution of promotion to sales is much greater than what we mentioned before. The overhead of manufactory should not be included in variable cost. The calculation of cannibalization is not precise enough and there is not significant evidence that can support to make the calculation reasonable.

Recommendation support:

Based on the analysis of 2004’s promotion, we have significant sales boost, even the retailers cannot handle it. We have reason to believe the volume of sales will surge in the same way. It indicates that people cannot wait to buy our products, especially for the out-performance product lines. It helps drive our brand awareness significantly. And the effect will be compounding. Based on the survey we made, 30% people cares about price the most. We can compete with Star Chef and Kitchen Select to increase our market share.

Once people bought some piece of our products, they will have intention to buy more. Because a lot of people want their cookware to match the décor in kitchen. We care about the life time value of every single customer. The promotion will bring us more.

Risk mitigation:

We notice that there are about 50% retailers not passing along the full discount. In the plan of next year, we need to put the discount on both Ads and package.

To mitigate the sales peak, we can set the promotion on October and April. In this way, the manufactory will feel smoother and our products can be differentiated by customers.

Our advertisement awareness is extremely low. We should re-plan our Ads strategy and increase the promotional Ads in early April and October.

Appendix 1:

Appendix 2:

Appendix 3:

Cookware

The conflict in promotion and brand image is really confusing. Coach was trying to be a premium handbag and fashion company but they never did. They have so many stores in outlets and the discount is extremely high. A&F's regular price is relatively high. But there sales price is like $8 for a polo. However in China, in their just-open stores a normal T-shirt is about $100. It is like localized strategy. But if they get promotional price later. What will happen to their brand image.

Culinarian's customers are emotional I guess. They love cooking so they buy premium cookware, though the precondition is they have high income.

If Culinarian never did promotion before, I mean the promotion which will cause sales surge, how they will forecast the sales to prepare the inventory. Supply chain will burn sometime if they have no historical data.

As I notice that it will doesn't work if Culinarian set promotion on pieces cannot be sold in regular price, they should not sell these stuff anymore. Cuz people don't like it at all. It's like a market test.

Cleo-Soap

Colgate-palmolive: Cleopatra

to:	bill graham
from:	steve boyd
subject:	how to increase the sales
date:	May 24, 2014

Recommendation:

Cleopatra needs strategy that makes people try our products more.

As the consumer research (Appendix A) result showing, most of the responses know our new products, but much less people bought it. People ever tried our products are only in proportion 14.2% among the people who took the survey. However, the conversion is relatively higher than the other products. It is about 50% people who tried our product choose to use it in-home. We are creating advantages in product itself. The problem is marketing.

We could attach some sample with our other products which are popular to the same segment. Also the new products can be freely supply to relative hotels which has our target segment. Additional, if promotional discount on shelf is reasonable to consumers, it will appeal more users. My recommendation is to combine these together to set a mixed marketing strategy.

Risk mitigation:

One risk of these strategies can create additional cost for the financial performance. Discount and free supply would be extra expense of our budget. These expenses are positive for long-term sales of our new products. As the initial promotional introduction drives sales, I confidentially predict the financial performance will recover and grow healthily.

Another risk is that if we put promotional power on the new products, the brand image may hurts. Market position may go lower to for consumers. Through the marketing research result, it indicates that the people who use the product love it. It will help to build long-term loyalty and increase the life time value.

Summary:

To effectively introduce our new product, we should attract more people to try it. I recommend a combination of strategies including promotional discount, samples, free supply to hotels together. And these three implementations will be applied simultaneously. Appendix B shows how we process it.

Appendix A:

Appendix B:

Rosewood

Summary:
The case indicated the branding strategies in hospitality industry. Rosewood built and bought a bunch of hotels in multiple locations. They brand each hotel with individual unique differentiation in 90s last century. They are marketing their hotels with "a sense of place" slogan. Unlike four seasons and Ritz-Carton, the Rosewood logo only appears in some amenities or bathing soap in the room.
But the problem is the rate of customers stay in multiproperties is low as 5%, though the repeat rate is 40%. The top management begin to think connect Rosewood's hotel all around the world together with a corporate branding strategy.
The thing they were considering about is to set a loyalty award program and encouraging Rosewood properties in different hotel.


My thought
They can brand with corporate strategy but market with their previous tactic, which is offering a sense of place. All their hotels have their own unique features. Customers love the unique experience in these hotels. The Rosewood should keep it. As the new branding strategy increase the recognizance, it will also encourage customers to explore the new experience in other locations. "a sense of place " should still be emphasized in marketing. As the Rosewood logo appears, it already mention people that these hotels are together and they all have high standard service. Our service is great but different in different location.
It can also somehow mitigate the risk that different managers needs a same standard.

I've heard about Amen's hotel. The location of them are the best in the world, but they are different. One may in Yellowstone National Park in the states, one may in West Lake in Hangzhou, China. The style and experience are totally different, but both of them are the best.
Say, if I put the experience in a  coordinate system, set Y-axis as quality, and X-axis as style, Rosewoods' different hotels should all have high Y score. But for the X, it just depends on the location and history.

Marketing Myopia Essay

M450

Marketing Myopia Essay

Zhanghui Yuan

       Levitt, as a professor in business administration at HBS, demonstrated marketing myopia is a common problem in many industries, which cause the industry stop growing. Although most of the industries will suffer decline stage, the problem may not because of the market is shrinking or new technology has occur. It may be the problem the industry itself. Companies in this industry are too product oriented. They are not focus on meeting customers’ need. For example Levitt mentioned, railroad industry regard it as railroad business rather than transportation business. The customers are running off other methods of transportation may because the railroad companies have no sense in meet their need when they are deciding how would they go to the destination for travelling. And also the companies fail in creating new demand for the market. In addition, Levitt also raise the Hollywood example to explain the concept of marketing myopia.

       I mentioned HTC as a company that are suffering marketing myopia these years. I’ve thought it one more time after class. At least their products are meeting customers’ need with fancy looking, smooth operating system, and larger solid screen. The thing they were not doing just was that they didn’t spend money letting consumers know how great their product is. The REAL myopic company is Nokia in cellphone industry. Now the company has sold the cellphone business to Microsoft. Nokia used to a 110 billion company. Look at the history from growing stage to decline, it is typically same has the examples that Levitt has raised in his article. I will compare Nokia with Apple. At the end of last century, Nokia released hundreds of products in tight frequency. Such as game cellphone with horizontal hand shank keyboard and music style cellphone with extra control button on the side. They were trying to meet customers’ need in each behavior segment. But after all, they still see the cellphone as a cellphone. The customers’ need was gradually changing when new technology occurred and the internet became faster. People didn’t get satisfied with a machine can make a call. They want something that can do anything. Then, Steve Jobs and his team recreate the cellphone with iPhone. IPhone has a larger sensitive touchable screen and a brand new operating system. Apple transplant OS to a cellphone which make it a mini-PC. It was user friendly with extreme fast response. Nokia used to release a touch screen cellphone like N95 when I was in high school. But Symbian operating system was built for a cellphone with terrible users’ experience. What customers want is a fast, accurate touchable, and multiple application installable machine. Actually it is not about the machine itself, it’s about what can be perceived by customers. IPhone did everything that customers can expect that that time. In Steve Jobs’ presentation in 2007, he introduced iPhone as combination of a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communicator. It is smarter than the old smartphones with a great UI.

I choose these two companies because they were up to time and well known to everyone. In the Internet industry, people are always mentioning users’ experience. Apple and Nokia are two companies with different orientation. Then, one company succeeds, and the other one bankrupted. Apple actually did this innovation for multiple times with Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, and iPad in more than three decades. That’s why it is a great company. All these products are optimizing user experience. And obviously, they focus on how to meet customers’ need. Cellphone industry is typical for marketing myopia topic. We use it every day, and there is so many needs can be discovered by the marketers. There are companies suffering myopia such as Nokia or Motorola, and also there are companies caught the opportunity, like Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft. The press is still digging the secret of the success of iPhone even it has been 5 years since the first generation was released. And how Steve Jobs discovers customers’ perceived value has become material in every business school.