Hepp MRKT Class Blog

Dell Team Post #2

2005-06-23T06:34:00.000-07:00

The final post for the team project is on Maggie Jordan's Blog. Click here for the permalink!

Product Post #3: Google to offer online payment service

2005-06-21T07:12:00.000-07:00

An article featured on Business Week Online entitled PayPal: One Tough Nut for Google discusses Google's plans to introduce its own online payment system. According to the article, this is a risky step for Google, who will be competing with Ebay's PayPal - the indisputable leader in online payments.

A product mix "consists of all the product lines and items that a particular seller offers for sale" (Kotler 290). Currently, Google's product mix includes its search engine, the Gmail email service, as well as several other websites like Froogle, the comparison website for online shoppers. Google's decision to offer its own online payment service is definately risky. Brand extension, or "the use of a successful brand name to launch new or modified products in a new category" (Kotler 296), "gives a new product instant recognition and faster acceptance" (Kotler297). Despite Google's strong brand name and success in other areas, the online payment category is successfully dominated by PayPal. The article asserts that Google "would have to offer something unique or face a punishing fight against an established, fast-growing leader with 72 million accounts worldwide and payment volume that's growing 44% annually."

I think it will be an uphill battle for Google. PayPal currently holds the competative advantage. With a proven, reliable system, and early market penetration, PayPal holds almost all of the cards (and customers!). I guess we will have to see how Google can differentiate its service and position it in the market.

4th Ref Post: Answers to questions about blogs

2005-06-20T13:03:00.000-07:00

Since I started taking this class I have had to answer a lot of questions about blogs from people that I work with, as well as friends. The Diva Marketing Blog has a great post called Cheat Sheet on Blogs. It contains a link to a Q&A written by a web developer that answers questions about blogs. Maybe this will be helpful to some of you who have friends/coworkers who are also new to blogging!!

Extra Credit: Expanding on Sheharyar's Post on McDonalds

2005-06-20T10:12:00.000-07:00

Like many companies, McDonalds is always looking for new ideas and concepts that will help to increase sales and keep their brand competative in the future. Sheharyar blogged about McDonalds in his first topic post, discussing McDonalds' promotion and its global marketing initiatives. Faced with declining sales, McDonalds has started to position a new healthier image. To follow up on this post, Sheharyar added a new post citing an article announcing McDonalds' plans to enter the health/fitness arena by offering new some new products: skateboards and bikes.

Interestingly, these are not the only ways in which McDonalds is looking to change and keep up with the needs and wants of its customers. An article on cnn.com today described McDonalds' new plans for using technology in its restaurants, as well as plans for new more upscale coffee offerings. The article states that along with its new healthy initiatives, which include extending the menu to include salads and all-white-meat options (and soon bikes and fitness equipment!!), McDonalds has set up a test location in Oak Brook, Illinois that features hightech equipment. The facility is equipped with technology that allows customers to make cds, print digital photos, or just surf the web. Other test ideas being tried at this McDonalds include a new line of gourmet coffee and double-lane drive through capabilities.

The article explains that the new initiatives are aimed at attracting one of McDonalds' most important target audiences, men ages 18-24. Here is an interesting excerpt from the article:

"Morningstar Inc. analyst Carl Sibilski said all the new concepts reflect McDonald's stepped-up effort to please young adults particularly 18- to 24-year-old men, the demographic "gold mine" for fast-food purveyors.
"If you want to drive same-store sales you have to target your message to your most profitable customers," Sibilski said. "That explains the TV screens ... and the hipper advertising. They've made it OK (for young adults) to go to McDonald's again. It's not just someplace they went as a child."

The Oak brook site is just a test center, and it seems that it may not be profitable to turn every McDonalds into a high-tech wonderland. Yet, McDonalds is definately looking toward the future, seeking ways to maintain and grow its share of the most profitable customers.

Extra Credit: blog in search engine

2005-06-20T06:48:00.000-07:00

When i did a few searches in technorati, I found my blog in the search results.

Comments on Classmates Blogs

2005-06-15T06:47:00.000-07:00

Since I was having a hard time keeping track of the comments I was making on other people's blogs, I though I would set up this post to help stay organized!

1. Walmart Censors America (Alex Husted)
My Comment
2. Yet another follow up to my second class posting (Brandon)
My Comment
3. Online shoppers not as sophisticated as believed (Rachel B.)
My Comment
4. McDonald's sells skateboards and other goods (Sheharyar)
My Comment
5. Sir Bob to the Rescue - live 8 concert (Emil)
My Comment
6. Howard Stern and the Satellite Wars (Maggie)
My Comment
7. Extending Discussion on Lizzie Hepp: Dell on Products (Daniel Huang)
My Comment
8.Pennsylvania Roadtrippers (David Gong)
My Comment

Update on VHS post

2005-06-14T08:02:00.000-07:00

Just an hour after I read the article on Wal-Mart's decision to stop carrying VHS, cnn.com posted a follow-up article entitled Wal-Mart: Hey, we're still selling VHS. Apparently, the first story was unsubstantiated. Wal-Mart responded with the announcement that it would continue to sell VHS due to the fact that many of its customers still have VCRs. Despite this development, I still feel that VHS is on its way out. In my opinion, it is only a matter of time before DVDs replace VHS entirely.

Product Post #2: VHS and product life cycle

2005-06-14T06:54:00.000-07:00

An article on cnn.com today revealed that Wal-Mart will soon stop carrying VHS in its stores. The plan is to phase out VHS by 2006 in order to make room for DVDs. Wal-Mart is not the first retailer to make this decision, Best Buy and Circuit City have already stopped carrying VHS and Target will follow suit by this September.

As a product, VHS had been the standard for years. With the advent of DVDs and their increasing popularity, demand for VHS has declined. This relates to the topic of product life cycles that is discussed in our textbook (p328 - 336). Product life cycle (PLC) is defined as "the course of a product's sales and profits over its lifetime. It involves five distinct stages: product development, introduction, growth, maturity, and decline" (Kotler 330). For many years, VHS was the standard, or the fashion. The book defines a fashion as "a currently accepted or popular style in a given field" (331). In the 1990s DVDs were introduced on a large scale and quickly gained popularity. Since then, VHS has entered a decline stage - "the product life-cycle stage in which a product's sales decline" (335). The decline stage can be brought on by technological advances, shifts in consumer tastes, and increased competition(335); in the case of VHS, DVDs caused all three of these things to occur. Clearly, the decision of many retailers to discontinue stocking and selling VHS is a clear indication that the product is in the very last stage of its life-cycle and is on its way to becoming obsolete.

Team Posting #1: Dell on Products

2005-06-10T11:56:00.000-07:00

From the start, Dell was an innovative and successful company. It's unique value proposition, built-to-order products and direct to customer business approach, allowed Dell to sell its products for much less than its competitors while still providing great value. Today, Dell continues to be successful. Considered an industry leader, Dell's products are at the heart of the company's success. A deeper look into Dell's current product offerings, as well as its philosophies and strategies for the future, reveals why Dell is and will remain an industry leader.

Dell's products and services run the gammet, including: servers, storage, printing and imaging systems, workstations, desktop computers, notebook computers, networking products, software and peripheral products (i.e. plasma televisions, mp3 players, etc.), managed services, professional services, deployment services, support services, and training and certification services. These varied products and services are targeted at different groups and the main webpage includes links for: home and home office, small business, medium & large business, government, education, and healthcare, as well as customer service and support. Uniquely, Dell offers customers the ability to create their own computers and packages based on their own personal needs. This level of individualism allows customers to feel connected and personally cared for, despite the fact that Dell does not have the traditional contact (i.e. through a brick and mortar location or face-to-face sales staff interaction) with its customers. By cutting out the middle-men, Dell has been able to provide customers personalized products at very competative prices.

Dell has a policy of Open Innovation and Effective R&D. Dell is "customer driven" and its innovation begins with its customers: the requirements that drive Dell technology initiatives, innovations, and product directions are gathered "directly through tens of thousands of customer interactions daily, organized events, and customer panels." Dell's website goes on to state, " Dell products may be developed in house or by working closely with strategic partners. Customer feedback throughout this cycle reinforces Dell's focus on relevant technologies that address real customer requirements." Dell boasts that its' "Thousands of design engineers are focused on technology leadership and have a track record of innovative product and technology solutions, many of which were first-to-market." Color correction technology, ink/toner "gas guage," and image commonality are just a few of the products/technologies that Dell has been first to market with. Click here to find out more about Dell's global product development.

Now a quick look at some recent news and what Dell consumers are blogging about. Dell's products and services have done very well (click here for a timeline with the history of Dell), but as technology and the market changes, Dell must also adapt and avoid the marketing myopia that sometimes comes with an overfocused business plan. A blog that appeared on a feedster search addressed how Dell will be soon be stretching its product line upward in order to keep up with the competition. The new products will be a higher quality and are meant to compete with some of the higher end products that other companies (MAC, for example) are already offering. By stretching their product line, Dell hopes to fill a gap in its product line and grab some of the market for more expensive computer and electronic products.

All together, Dell's policy of innovation, combined with its direct to customer strategy, has allowed Dell to keep up on cutting edge technology and products while still allowing them to provide these products and services at lower prices than many of its competitors. Perhaps this is why "[n]early one out of every five standards-based computer system sold in the world today is a Dell."

**UPDATE**
In his blog, Daniel Huang further discusses Dell's products and strategies. His post includes links to several interesting articles that provide great insight into what Dell is doing and what it's plans are for the future. Daniel stresses the importance of Dell's commitment to Standards Based Solustions and how this has helped them keep costs low, while still satisfying customers.

Blog Ref Post 3: Fun Fact

2005-06-06T12:53:00.000-07:00

The Scobleizer is on vacation... imagine that. He brought up a funny point on his blog: we say "oof" to mean "out of office" instead of "ooo." Why is that? Click here to find out why!

Blog Ref Post 2: Biz Blog Profile Series

2005-06-02T12:55:00.000-07:00

The Diva Marketing Blog has a great series of Blogs called the Biz Blog Profile Series. Toby, who runs the blog, describes it as "a behind the scene look at how corporations, non profits and higher education institutions are using blogs to support their marketing goals." Most recently, she interviewed Dan Miller, the VP of content, at Monster.com who have started up a new blog. The people at Monster.com seem to have a great approach to the style and content of their blog. They point out the importance of maintaining a more laid back attitude in order to keep in line with the grassroots nature of blogging. Also included in the series is an interview with Alex Brown - that's right, our teacher - concerning the Wharton MBA Admissions Blog. The Wharton blog is especially interesting to me since I currently work in the Undergraduate Admissions office here at Penn. It seems like a blog for undergraduate admissions would be extremely helpful in de-mystifying the admissions process for applicants. Clearly, blogs can be a great resource, and the nature of blogging seems to be especailly aplicable in the admissions process. Considering that high schoolers are increasingly techno-savvy and are already forcing change within admissions offices (i.e. online applications, decision notification online, etc.), I think it is only a matter of time before it will be a impossible for admissions offices to ignore the value and necessity of having a blog.

2nd Intro Post/Blog Ref Post: Flickr's future

2005-05-30T17:11:00.000-07:00

I will be one of the Product experts, focusing on chapters 9 and 10 for both my class presentation, as well as several of my blog entries. Also, as a member of the Dell team, I will again be focusing on product. To keep my second post more interesting, here is some information about Flickr, one of the sites that can be found on our class blog.

Apparently Flickr, the online photo sharing site run by Yahoo, is changing the classification of photos to "all rights reserved." Since we all found out about this site in class, I thought it was an interesting and pertenant discussion that was featured on Stephen Baker's Blog on BusinessWeek.com entitled Is Flickr Departing the Blog Realm? He mentions that anyone with an Adsense account, among others, would be affected by the change. Since I am not too familiar with Flickr (though I have set up an account since the start of this class), and this blog seems to be the perfect format for discussion, I thought I would throw a question out there to the class: Would this change affect my or anyone in the class's ability to put photos on their blogs?

Product Post #1: A look at Product and the U.S. Army

2005-05-30T13:41:00.000-07:00

Marketing Product presentation

The United States Army has entered a new arena: the video game industry. In the article It's a Video Game, and an Army Recruiter that appeared in the Washington Post on May 27th, Josh White describes how the Army developed a new video game that is being used both as a marketing and recruiting tool. With waning numbers of volunteers for the army, Casey Wardynski, director of the Army's office of economic and manpower analysis, sought a new way to "market" the army. Right now the game, entitled America's Army is available for free on the internet. The game, White explains, "employs a realistic and team-oriented approach to give players a sense of what it is like to join the Army, to train how to use weapons and then how to work together on missions. Players progress through the game and its many updates in a variety of ways, learning how to jointly acomplish military tasks while using different skills, such as fighting as infantryman or saving lives as a medic." The game is targeted at boys age 14 and older, with the aim of increasing knowledge of and interest in the United States Army, thereby boosting its image and adding to recruitment efforts. It was introduced in 2002, and since then approximately 5.4 million users have registered on the website. Not only does the website have links to information on the U.S. Army and recruitment, but specific links that enable players to contact recruiters are also embedded within the game. Furthermore, since the game is played at gaming tournaments around the country, these events provide a physical location for Army recruiters to make contact with the players of their game.

I found this article to be extremely interesting, and particularly striking as an example of how organization marketing and product marketing (Kotler, 282) are evolving. Organization Marketing "consists of activities undertaken to create, maintain, or change the attitudes and behavior of target consumers toward an organization" (282). For the Army, the game America's Army is both a marketing tool to aid in it's corporate image advertising and organization marketing, as well as a new product that warrants development and promotion in its own right. In this way, the Army and it's new game also relate to the discussion of product concerning product and service classifications (280-281), product and service decisions (283-284), and customer experiences (277-278).

The United States Army is not a typical company or business whose main purpose is to put out product lines and brands. The Army is a government organization that provides a service - the protection of the American people- with the help of paid volunteers, the soldiers. Recruiting for the Army is similar to the Red Cross's efforts to get blood donations; they are both unsought products, or "products that the consumer either does not know about or knows about but does not normally think of buying" (281). For this reason, it is necessary for the army to be innovative and engage in a lot of advertising, personal selling, and marketing efforts.

The textbook states,"Companies that market experiences realize that customers are really buying much more than just products and services" (277). With its many memorable advertising campaigns and slogans like "Be all you can be, In the Army" and "Army of One", it is clear that the Army has long understood the idea that they were marketing an experience. The focus has not been on the monetary compensation, but rather on the invaluable skills, instilment of values, chance for character-building experiences, and the promise of educational opportunities. Despite succes with previous marketing campaigns, the Army was having a lull (a crisis, as White described it) in enlistment and was forced to seek new ways to vamp up recruitment and generate new interest in the Army.

The new marketing strategy employs an interactive internet game that is both a product in itself, as well as a mareting tool for the Army. It is a modern and more technological way to continue to emphasize the experience of military service. Not to mention, the new game is perfect for the Army's target market: young teenage men. In terms of new product development, it was an internal employee who came up with the idea for the game. Yet, in the FAQ section of the website, it stated that "Firms such as Toyota have used games for educational purpose with considerable success," suggesting that the idea for the game may have come from looking at other companies' marketing products and strategies. The quality, design, features, and content of the game were carefully thought out and are explained fully on the website. The game is supposed to be interactive, fun, and informative. In terms of pricing, the game is free on the internet, requiring only that the user registers on the site. There is a link to a site selling official merchandise relating to the game. Also, the article does mention that the Army has plans to release the game offline for gaming systems like Sony Play Station and Microsoft's X-Box. Already millions of pepole have been exposed to the game and its website. The success of this product bodes well for the Army, as well as for the continuation with this game and the possibilities for expansion of this product line.

Introduction

2005-05-19T08:02:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Lizzie Hepp's Blog. I am assigned to the Dell team and will be an "expert" on Chapters 9 and 10, focusing on product. I am new to blogging, but it seems like a great way to communicate and keep current with information, especially in the context of this class and our assigned group projects. I currently work in the Undergraduate Admissions Office here at Penn. Click on this link for more information about Penn Admissions.

First time Blogging!

2005-05-17T13:35:00.000-07:00

I did it! I am officially a blogger.