A neat interactive tool for students to analyse the smartphone market
This is a great classroom resource - Our Mobile Planet. It provide students with an interactive chart generator where they can select data sets and undertake analysis of the demand for, and use of, smartphones in various national markets. Great for illustrating market share and for providing students with some raw chart data they can interpret. Have fun…!
Revision Presentation - Marketing Mix: Introduction to Place
The basics of distribution (place) in the marketing mix are covered in this revision presentation.
read more...»Revision Presentation - Marketing Mix: Introduction to Pricing
Setting the optimal price is one of the hardest parts of marketing - and the only element of the marketing mix which directly affects revenues. This revision presentation examines the main methods, tactics and strategies of pricing + introduces the important topic of price elasticity of demand.
read more...»Revision Presentation - Marketing Mix: Introduction to Products & Brands
This revision presentation provides a brief introduction to what is a product and a brand.
read more...»Revision Presentation - Marketing & the Product Life Cycle
The product life cycle is a popular topic in most business and marketing courses. This revision presentation introduces the concept of the product life cycle and considers some of the issues raised for marketers and businesses:
read more...»Revision Presentation - Marketing Mix: Introduction to Promotion
The basics of promotion as part of the marketing mix are outlined in this revision presentation. It considers what is meant by promotion and outlines the alternative methods of promotion for different types of products and businesses. It also looks at the factors to consider when choosing what goes into the promotional mix.
read more...»Revision Presentation - Marketing and Competitiveness
In this revision presentation we look at the key topic of competitiveness, in the specific context of marketing and market structure. We consider what is meant by the concept of “competitiveness” and what determines whether a business has a competitive advantage over others in the market or industry. The nature of competition in a market is also covered, including the key models of competition such as Porter’s Five Forces.
read more...»Epic fail: how to do really badly
This is a light hearted one, aimed particularly at those of you preparing for exams. It’s got nothing to do with exams really, just reflections on Disney’s mega flop “John Carter” in The Economist, which is said to have made a loss of over £200m and cost the boss his job.
Are there any common patterns behind famous marketing failures?
Same product - different prices: Greggs sausage roll costs more in Hammersmith than Hull
The Daily Mail reports that a 66p sausage roll in Hull sells for 85p in Hammersmith – that’s almost 30% more. That finding won’t surprise you perhaps, although the size of some price differences is quite a shock.
read more...»A cracking business lesson video on my favourite product - Jaffa Cakes!
Wow - oh wow. They’ve only gone and made a video to explain how Jaffa cakes are made. Best of all - the video is packed full with little business studies nuggetts, as well as a really useful supporting article in the Telegraph!
read more...»Marketing analysis: the UK supermarket battleground
Once again the BBC have posted up a clip that clearly and concisely (in two and a half minutes) neatly sums up the marketing challenges faced by the main UK supermarket chains: store locations, types of store, products, promotions, target markets … and prices.
On that point, there’s also more detailed news published recently about Waitrose matching Tesco prices, getting marketing mileage out of the John Lewis ‘never knowingly undersold’ pledge.
read more...»What’s going wrong at Superdry?
Bad news for Superdry, one of the most popular young fashion chains in the UK, which has suffered a huge knock. The firm’s owner, SuperGroup, saw its share price plunge 40% on Friday after a shock profit warning. And it’s not just investors who are losing faith. Fashionistas say the Superdry brand, which burst on to the scene in 2004 with its vintage Americana look topped off by Japanese script, is looking tired. This story combines accounting, finance, fashion, marketing and stock control.
read more...»Brand Logos (there’s an app for that)
At the time of writing, the best selling free app in the app store is ‘Logos Quiz Game’. A must have for all Business students to download onto their smart phones! This could be used in a variety of ways both in and out of the classroom; pupils might need a break from revision or teachers might use to introduce branding (perhaps in conjunction with brand logo bingo) or in those all important end of term quizzes!
More on “up-selling” (adding value) the budget airline way
So you’re used to the idea of the ‘basic’ price being increased by additional ‘extras’ offered by retailers. Budget airlines are experts at this approach (spoofed brilliantly by David Walliams here), inviting us to pay more for drinks, snacks, priority boarding and the rest.
read more...»Revision Presentation - Social Environment & Business
Changes in the social environment can have a dramatic effect on business. This revision presentation examines the impact of significant business influences from the social environment (e.g. changes in population size & structure, lifestyles, labour market).
read more...»Retailing booms: in railway stations
The recession has brought the troubled High Street onto the front pages of the business news over the last few years. There’s the very bleakest news stories: Shop vacancies rise to highest level in four years as retail sales plummet or Up to 40% of high street shops ‘could close over next five years’. Just last week Game came up in a blog. Another story without a happy ending.
But its not all doom and gloom, and there are fantastic retail opportunities for firms to cash in on. It might be something experimental like ‘pop up shops’ or another growing trend: railway retailing.
It’s Time for a Global Luxury Chinese Hotel Chain - for the Chinese
You’ll recognise some of these brands: Crowne Plaza; Holiday Inn, Hotel Indigo. They are all owned by InterContinental Hotels Group and you’ll find them in just about every major city in the world, from Chicago to Munich; from Mumbai to Sydney. IHG is a global hotels group with more guest rooms than any other hotel group in the world – over 645,000 rooms in more than 4,400 hotels in over 100 countries. But have you heard of Hualuxe? You might do soon…
read more...»The Apprentice and the Product Life Cycle
A tired formula. A predictable mix of over-confident and under-skilled contestants. Tasks we’ve all seen before - many times. Doesn’t sound like a recipe for success. So does the latest series of The Apprentice on BBC1 suggest that this particular reality tv format is entering the decline stage of the product life cycle?
read more...»Game Over?
Sometimes the decline of a business enters a spiral. Conditions in the marketplace change. New competitors emerge. Poor trading conditions lead to disappointing revenues. Cash flow dries up. Suppliers become reluctant to supply. Shareholders begin to pull out, and it gets progressively harder to raise finance to reverse the decline. That seems to be a fair summary of the current woes of Game Group, which is looking increasingly like the latest casualty on the troubled UK High Street.
read more...»Practice your skills as a retailer: entrepreneurs experiment with ‘pop up’ shops
The problems on the high street, and our changing shopping habits have been much discussed recently. But “bricks and mortar” retailing isn’t dead yet. Combine landlords with vacant shop sites (often in desirable locations), entrepreneurs (perhaps active online, but not used to face-to-face contact with customers) and an appetite for experimentation - and you get the phenomenon of the ‘pop up shop’.
read more...»Lesson video : Franchising for beginners
A wonderful topical video clip here from the BBC which introduces pupils to the pros and cons of setting up a Franchise. Four minutes long, the video is perfect as a lesson starter for just about every business course that requires students to develop their understanding of business startups.
read more...»Pink bricks for girls? Lego builds a new strategy
Opinions on this move has sharply divided Lego fans! The Guardian invites its readers to vote on the matter to decide if this step is ‘sexist’ or not. My daughter was seriously unimpressed when her Lego Club magazine arrived this month in a different format to her brother’s copy.
Clearly, the company have decided to put extra resources into refining the market segment for girls’ Lego and developing product lines tailored to their tastes. What else can we say about their strategy?
MU folding electric plug
“When I’m walking down the street I see everyday objects and ask myself why that object exists. If I can find any possibility for improvement, I start to design it.” Min-Kyu Choi.
The newly launched folding MU plug uses less materials, less space yet meets current UK regulations for electric equipment, and will appeal to users of tablets, smartphones and ipods, which require a slim USB adapter.
It is a great case study for consideration of all aspects of entrepreneurship - risk taking, design, development, finance, marketing production and profits.
read more...»Video case study - finding success in an engineering niche
This excellent short BBC video looks at a case study of success in UK manufacturing. Granada Material Handling has addressed the issues raised the recession and international competitors. They have focused on a niche market of making lifting equipment for offshore wind farms. Is there a role for government to help UK manufacturers exploit these niche market opportunities? Or is it really about the entrepreneurial spirit of firms like Granada that is the key?
read more...»Extreme Market Segmentation?
Advert on Oxford Street shown only to women. An interactive hoarding at a London bus stop aims to show a 40-second advertisement only to women and girls.
M&A - It’s time to merge breakfast cereals with some crisps…
A new takeover has been announced this morning and its one that many students researching takeovers and mergers might want to use a topical case study. For many, the products involved will be close to their hearts…
read more...»Pricing and the consumer - a question of haggling?
I got into trouble with Mrs T2U last week when I criticised her for accepting the first price offered by a supplier of bespoke curtains. “We’ve been ripped off!” I suggested, indicating that a door-to-door salesman is there to close the sale and will always accept a lower offer before signing the customer. A period of silence from Mrs T2U ensued…
I’m sure the curtains will be lovely (honest), but was I right to suggest that consumers should haggle? Do you feel comfortable negotiating the price of something or do you take it as a given?
read more...»Product innovation - extending the humble cupcake
It is often said that if you want to find the next “big thing” in consumer trends, then take a flight over to North America to see what is popular. Cupcakes are one such phenomenon - their popularity has spread quickly over here to the UK. So, could this slightly unusual product extension idea for cupcakes take off here too?
read more...»Which is better? Aldi or Lidl? Compare and contrast these (and others) using ‘Store Wars’
I’ve only just stumbled on this excellent resource which pits Aldi against Lidl - and takes a snapshot of the differences in customers’ opinions. In this example, Lidl won 60/40. This is a fun few minutes suitable for a starter activity, with over twenty other examples to choose from.
read more...»Mini’s PR backfires badly in central Europe
No doubt it seemed a jolly good idea at the time. Someone in Sassenbach, the advertising agency that handles the BMW Mini account spotted an oppportunity; the German meteorology institute offers ‘Adopt a Vortex’, the chance to name, or ‘sponsor’, weather systems and encourages people to follow the path of the weather on meteorological websites. So they decided to name a weather system ‘Cooper’, and according to the BBC report they thought that naming the front after the open-air vehicle was a “wind- and weather-proof idea”.
read more...»
