Advertisement ethics

Many people are tuned to not believing what the advertisements are showing since it's by nature advertisement are suppose to be exaggerated and only shows the best side of a product/service.

I myself particular do not like such "norm" in today's marketing industry.

McDonald's advertisements are really attractive especially with the size and the substantial ingredients of the burgers it has portrayed. It's weird that people rarely complain about this and is it really taken as the hidden "rule" for advertising?

Many might consider such practice as a type of puffery but i will take it as some kind of deception to the consumers.

It is pretty lame to make a distinction between puffery and deception. Both are not conveying the "truth" of the products to the consumers. In other words, such practices are just artifices to get higher sales. Both are not ethical even though the former is legal but the latter isn't.

This is really a type of vicious cycle that since one is likely to do better with puffery and its rivals are like to follow suit and it inevitable leads to a "fad" of exaggerated advertising.

However some brands have taken such norm as a opportunity for another type of advertising which shows considerable "modesty and sincerity" in advertising. They focus on the facts and inform consumers about how others might have exaggerated and even caution the consumers when come to such puffery.

The awesome design made by Alienware

I received an email from dell's subscription and I have to admit that it's a really catchy advertisement that totally illustrated the qualities and values of this awesome gaming laptop - Alienware M11X. This is becoming more common as a mean for advertisement or promotion channel since emails are widely used among its primary target audience who are teenage gamers. The 3D image that comes out of the screen in this ads conveys the idea of a realistic and high quality LED screen that will provide the user a wonderful gaming or video watching experience.

Alienware is a sub-brand under DELL which is 1 of the biggest 5 computer manufacturers in the world. Dell's conventional laptops are deemed to be mid-class products which are priced reasonably given their hardware specifications. So my guess is that Alienware is created to differentiate and get a clearer and new positioning in the laptop market. Dell doesn't want consumers to mix up the alienware series with its other product categories.

It allows for more than 10+ personalization in hardwares and exterior designs, including a variety of colours of 6 choices for LED back-light keyboards alone. This is really impressive and it really adds value to its product.

The service for carving a personalized name onto the laptop generates even more perceived value as each laptop will be deemed as a unique product with all such personalized customizations.

Alienware is successful in the sense that its name alone already presents the idea of futuristic and high performance laptop to the consumers. All the ads it used for promotion use a mysterious but high-tech "Alien-related" theme which is easily recognized and differentiated from other conventional laptops.

Not only with the hardwares and appearance, Alienware has come up with its own theme for window OS which is actually another priced software product under dell. So it now comes together with the laptop in a bundle.

All of the above reasons contribute the sustainable competitive advantage and the success of this really impressive series.

A rival for iPad

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/27/rim-introduces-playbook-the-blackberry-tablet/

This is an external marketing site which consistently reviews new and highly anticipated products.

It is interesting to note that one of the PlayBook's (a close substitute of iPad made by BlackBerry) selling point is that it fully supports Flash which is an adobe software that are extremely widely used for internet programs.

There are many rumors going around on why Apple refuses Flash. One of the most credible one is that adobe causes many loopholes in iphone's/iPad's OS which actually leaded to the possibility of being backdoored by hackers that unlock the full accessibility of the phone namely "jailbreaking". Even though many apple users complained about the inconvenience brought by the lack of Flash, Apple still persists on its rejection for Flash.

While this eventually creates opportunity for other competitors such as the PlayBook.

PlayBook was only released after iPad, so the marketers for PlayBook has to erode the existing competitive advantages that iPad is holding. Multitasking was available for iPad since its very first release, but nonetheless, it's still not up to the standard as compared to our computers. PlayBook actually performed better in multitasking.

The 8.9 inches screen for iPad is deemed too large in the sense that it's almost the size of usual netbook. Playbook decided to make its screen smaller and more portable.

It also further adds values by providing dual HD camera that supports 1080p HD video recording and 1080p HD videos playback. All of which iPad is capable of performing.

Playbook made sure that all iPad's sustainable competitive advantages are more or less eroded by its superior hardware specifications and softwares. Then will it be possible for Playbook to make an impact on iPad's market share.

It is clear cut that apple's brand loyalty is dominating, if playbook can't even beat its foundamental functions, it will stand no chance in winning the war.

Creative Ads Add Value

Many of us have come across really interesting and impressive advertisements all around the world. We can easily recall vividly how each advertisement actually captured our attention among thousands of other ads.

Many marketing strategies focus on conveying the value of the products to the consumers. However, really creative advertisements add value by leaving a huge impression, be it bad or good on the consumers, at least it makes its brand or intended idea deeply rooted in one's mind.

Creative ads will also cause people to circulate them all over the internet or by mouth. Thus, they have to stand out among the others in order to success.

Here are some of the interesting ads:

A message on the harms of smoking

Another great job done by NIKE. A straightfoward and catchy picture that fully translates its slogan.

Impressive method of marketing!

No comment on this one.....

The war for laptops......

I have some thoughts after reading my housemate's post about the competitionfor "Mr laptop".

Jason's Post

I am sorry for posting a series of computer related stuffs but that's the area I am really interested and I believe that I can make better comments and insights about the existing marketing phenomena in this industry.

Jason listed 3 middle class laptops(Vaio E series which I have mentioned earlier in my blog, the mac book pro and the new dell XPS series) which includes rather similar prices which deviates at most 200 dollars.

The macbook pro is probably well known to every single student. It's still deemed as a luxurious product under Apple even though its price has dropped tremeduously from around 3000 to 1299. The highly positive brand impression it has created is its most appreciated value by its consumers. Just as what I have mentioned in the previous post, Mac book is inferior in every aspects of its hardware specification other than its Operating system and battery life. MacBook Air is well known for its portability, but there are still many substitutes available such as sony's X13 series which is also amazingly designed and highly portable as shown below:

I keep on wondering what really contributes to success of Apple's productions. No matter what it launches, it will be destined to be a craze or a fasion for the year.
I was rather surprised by the amount of Apple users in north americans. Apple is indeed deemed as a "cool" brand in South East Aisa as well as eastern Asia(China Korea Japan etc). However, the asians are not as crazy over the apple products as the western people. The cultural difference made Apple not as competitive in many Asian countries. Most of the Asian countries are still considered as "Developing Nations", so the prices of apple products actually take up a fairly big portion of their income. This makes the demand for its products elastic. It's impossible to target the consumers in Asia that most of whom stick to the rule of "good value-to-price ratio" strategy when making a purchasing decision. They perceived the extra value of better "self-esteem" when using the products to be ridiculous when such intangible features might actually cost them half a year's salary.

In this case, I believe in short-term, apple will never be able to capture those low-end markets especially in the developing nations. That actually makes the other laptop or electronic device producers to be able to find many segments which Apple isn't able to penetrate.

EVIL HP

HP is a well known brand for electronic devices such as laptops and printers.

I personally owned a HP 3in1 multi-function however it's now broken down and I have startd to search for a new one.

Only then I realise the "evil" marketing strategy adopted by HP. It's commonly known that specific printers will require specified model of ink cartridges. So the common sense strategy will be either selling the printers at a higher price but with a lower price in ink cartridge or vice versa. HP followed the latter. HP printers are sold much cheaper among the other brands such as Epson or Canon. The price is as low as 30+ to 40+ which also comes up with new colour and black ink cartridges. Because it's not a large expenditure the consumers rarely devote time into information search since the opportunity costs will be too high. So a buyer like me, especially a first time buyer, was rather uninformed about the general price of its ink cartridges. When I realised I fell for HP's "trick", it's already too late. I was in a dilemma of either buying a new printer or a new cartridge since a cartridge is equivalent to half the price of a new printer.

HP knows pretty well that many consumers are not inclined to throwing their old printer away after the ink is used up. So many will still stick to buying it's specified ink cartridges even though in a long term perspective it might be more economical to buy a brand with cheaper ink.

The low price of HP printers actually captured buyers' attention at very first sight with many purchase decisions are made instantly and what goes on will be the endless vicious cycle set up by our "kind" print manufacturer.

The new Macbook Air

Here are some pictures of the new MacBook Air:

A lighter, smaller and sleeker laptop which combines the knowledge and expertise Apple has learnt from its iPad and iPhones.

The craze for Apple's products have been continuously growing for which I attribute the success to its really cutting-edge technology as well as the highly futuristic designs.

Macbook Air alone doesn't really contribute to such a sharp growth in its sales. Steven Job, the CEO of Apple, knows that a really successful product has to be valued added by some other means other than its appearance. It is clearly that MacBook air doesn't really have impressive hardware specifications other than its long battery life.

So the new Air offers incredible 30 days of battery life when in the standby mode and works up to 7 hours. The booting process involves only 12 seconds for this ultra-light laptop from Apple. All of that are way ahead of those conventional laptops.

It is rather apparent that it doesn't focus on whole lots of evaluative criteria but just the concept of "portability". So all new features converge to the idea of portability, meaning smaller, lighter, and more lasting without frequent charging as well as an attractive and userfriendly operating system that is way better than its counterparts. It also futher added its value by coming with new audio and media softwares such as iPhoto and iMovie.

Furthermore, it is considerate of Apple to provide an USB drive OS installer which enables the users to re-install Operating System on their Airs without the need to connect to an external CD/DVD drive. The lack of a cd-drive for laptop now doesn't not really possess as much problems as years ago since faster internet and other storage devices are quickly replacing CDs and DVDs.

Post purchase dissonance

Post-Purchase-Dissonance by my friend XiangRong http://blogs.ubc.ca/tonyteng/2010/10/07/post-purchase-dissonance/

He made a good comment on the system here in Canada. The returning policy in most shops actually speed up the decision process of purchasing as consumers are psychologically less worrying about making a wrong decision. They still have a short period to consider if the value really match the price.

The pros is that users may ended up buying their products since they thought they still have many days to revert their decision. However most of them did not really consider the opportunity costs involved. They did not realise that returning the products actually takes time as well as transport costs. So, many ended up not returning.

It is interesting to note that the newest Sony Vaio laptop E series are actually selling good in today's saturated laptop markets. I ascribe all success to the series' striking designs and I did fall for it and bought one. However, I found it annoying when sony soon came up with E2 series, and then E3 series and who knows how shortly will the next model to be released.

Slowly they added in new colour as well as better specification. It's is normal to think that sony has actually fooled the consumers if given equal price since it makes the buyers to think that their products have depreciated in value in such a short time..However, it's smart of Sony to actually not changing the appearance at all, other than some new colours. The new series are actually priced higher than those older model. So it makes the previous buyers to think that their laptops' price to value ratio are still similar to that of the newly released E series. So buying sony's products seem to have slow depreciation. It thus solves, in certain extent, the post purchase dissonance for consumers even with new and faster models coming out in just short while.

Sony's E series laptop did stand out among the others due its unprecedented striking designs and colours. With successful pricing, Sony will definitely grab a large share of today's laptop market.

Marketing Strategy for Graphics Card

Graphics Card is an expansion card whose function is to generate output images to a display. Many video cards offer added functions, such as accelerated rendering of 3D scenes and 2D graphics, video capture, TV-tuner adapter, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, FireWire, light pen, TV output, or the ability to connect multiple monitors (multi-monitor). Other modern high performance video cards are used for more graphically demanding purposes, mainly for graphics demanding PC games.

There are hundreds of graphics cards in the market right now, ranging from 50 bucks all the way to over a thousand. This market is segmented according to different type of users. Business computers do not really require high performing graphics card instead, they need stable graphics card which are low in power consumption as well as low temperature while working. High performance cards can use up to 10 times more power than an on-board/in-built graphics card.

There is a weird trend in graphics card designs when they are meant to be installed inside computer casing that make them not visible to the users. So why all sort of fanciful designs?


Low-end graphics card usually are simplistic in terms of looks while high-end graphics cards are usually made as futuristic as possible which imply the technology level it contains. This is because dedicated graphics card are usually sold separately and their designs are one of the first things user come across in making a purchase decision. So it’s a type of value creation which I think is rather effective since psychologically, a hardware fan like me will choose the one with cooler design even though I can’t really see it after I installed it into my computer casing. One of the graphics card producers, Blue Sapphire, has created its symbolic colour and designs which usually involve “alien-technology-like” or futuristic blue o colored designs (or red colored for its previous generation of graphics card) and it has actually successfully created affection for its products among the consumers. While other cheaper brands without too much fascinating designs tried to lower their price so that their products is positioned correctly in the market with a reasonable money to performance ratio perceived by the consumers and thus still able to compete in the market.

CPU market

I am a computer hardware lover. I will make sure I am updated with all newest computer technologies and hardware releases. CPU is the first category of hardware that I paid attention to, from Pentium 1-4, all the way to duo-cores, quad-cores, and even to 8-cores.

However, understanding CPU requires a lot of contextual and background knowledge about hardware’ architectures and its corresponding performance testing platform. Most consumers are rather negligent about that and what they will do when they are buying laptops are either asking for help from the salesperson or consult friends who really know about computer hardware.

Taking the most recent example, Intel’s new generation of Mobile processors, the i-series, there are many models available on market each with slightly different architecture as well as the main clock speed measured in terms of frequency.

For Mobile i3 series, such as i3-330m (2.13GHz), i3-350m (2.26Ghz), i3-370m (2.4Ghz), and i3-380m (2.53Ghz), each of them appears to have faster speed in ascending order. There are many online hardware sites that consistently test the performance of each CPU model and they reflected about 5% performance increase with each model. This has found out to be a type of marketing strategies adopted by Intel for which Intel pay those websites for promoting their newest products by keeping the consumers informed. However, this also appears to be another marketing strategy for me as the laptop prices did not really change over the years, what changes is actually the model of CPU installed. Every 2 months or so, Intel will come up with a newer model with a higher speed frequency speed which kind of showed an improvement in the technology. However, most hardware lovers will know that it’s just a trick performed by Intel. The fundamental architecture of all i-3 series has not changed. In order words, what Intel did was just stabilizing and adjusting the clock speed slightly higher than before and declared them as if they were newer technology. Intel understands well that consumers wanted to buy things with newer technology and they wanted to see an improvement over time as compared to the older model.

New Nano Vs Old Nano Vs New Shuffle

This is the New Shuffle: While this is the latest Ipod Nano released Recently:

This time, apple has totally changed the design of its Nano series and moved to a new touch-screen generation. The new design does actually allure my attention on first sight. Many of my friends agreed that the new design is really eye-catchy and it does attract many of them to do further research on the specifications of this new product.

Being the first small full-size touch-screen mp3 player,the new nano indeed has its sustainable advantage over many other mp3 players. It requires trememdous amount of time and effort in designing as well as huge investment in technological research. Many of its close competitors may not come up with similar and competent substitutes in short term.

However, to my surprise, the new Nano, as compared to the older generation, is now without video recording and video playing functions. So, in my opinion, the new nano, other than its striking design, is no much different from the newest ipod shuffle. This is an overlap of market since now, both nano and shuffle are considered to be mp3players. This might be a huge problem especially when many people are only buying either one of them.

The newest Ipod nano, without many of its previous functions, may no longer be attractive especially when its price is not any cheaper than the previous nano series.

Hello

Hi, I will do a short introduction of myself as the starting point of this marketing blog. I have stayed in China for 9 years and followed by Singapore for the 9/10 years and now I am in Vancouver. Please feel free to give me feedbacks or comment on any of the posts for which I will update on a weekly basis.