Group Buying?

A recent arrival in the internet marketing world is the 'group buying' service offered by a growing number of internet businesses. The strategy is related to the internet marketing use of 'viral advertising' and a form of 'crowd sourcing'. It principally targets consumers who are 'bargain hunters'. Businesses are invited to offer heavily discounted goods or services on the condition that a minimum number of consumers purchase vouchers for the product.

The group buying web business collects a high fee (reputed to be up to 50%) for each purchase.

http://www.theage.com.au/small-business/trends/group-buying-shows-signs-of-slowing-20111104-1myrf.html#poll

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/retail/20110120-australia-s-leading-group-buying-spreets-site-bought-by-yahoo-7-for-40-million.html/

http://www.scoopon.com.au

http://www.groupon.com.au

http://spreets.com.au

http://cudo.com.au

http://www.jumponit.com

Q1. How is this related to eBay auctions?

Q2. What is the benefit to the businesses offering their products?

Q3. Is this method of marketing and retailing sustainable?

Music in the Cloud

With the music industry in serious trouble, there are some interesting developments in using the 'cloud' as a vehicle for a new business model

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Apple has led the shift with iTunes as a successful music business. Now Amazon and Google are two big players that are offering a 'music in the cloud' service. However a new player has emerged with a variation of the cloud service to challenge the three big players. Spotify as been operating in Europe and has now launched in the USA. Spotify's big claim over the others is the offer of free music.

Explore the following websites:

http://www.apple.com/icloud/

http://www.apple.com/itunes/

http://music.google.com/about/

http://www.amazon.com/MP3-Music-Download/b?ie=UTF8&node=163856011

http://www.spotify.com/int/

Watch the following video:

http://youtu.be/ZrNhKcxBbZo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gng29RIhIl8

Read the news:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/piracy-fears-cloud-apple-launch/story-e6frg6nf-1226071294051

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/world/online-jukebox-spotify-valued-at-1bn/story-e6frg90o-1226009844746

http://www.news.com.au/technology/first-amazon-now-google-takes-music-to-the-cloud/story-e6frfro0-1226053947338

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/disciplines/digital/apple-set-to-unveil-cloud-music-service/3026936.article

Q1. What are some of the differences between the 'music in the cloud' offerings?

Q2. How can Spotify offer free music?

Q3. How do these services avoid the risk of 'piracy'?

Social Shopping

On line fashion retailing is changing the way the fashion industry is responding to consumers.

From Mashable 20/06/2011

"In an effort to drive deeper engagement between designers and those who purchase their clothes and accessories, a mix of established and lesser-known brands are now giving consumers opportunities to choose what gets produced and, in some cases, even what gets designed. The result is both a more engaged shopper and less waste as manufacturers and retailers are better able to estimate demand before garments are produced."

"Burberry is following the lead of startups such as Blank Label (pictured above) and Gemvara, which allow customers to choose between patterns, materials and other details in step-by-step web apps to create “one of a kind” apparel and accessories. Later this year, Burberry will let customers design their own trench coats."

Q1. What aspects of social networking are used?

Q2. What advantages has this over traditional shop retailing?

Q3. Does 'crowd sourcing' compromise 'artistic integrity'?

Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking

Apple has emerged as the most valuable brand ahead of Google, IBM, McDonalds Microsoft and Coca Cola. Apple's iPhone and iPad are considered the most important contributors to Apple's brand lead.

Other interesting results:

- Apple is at #1 with a brand value of $153.3 Billion

- Facebook enters the top 100 brands at #35 with and increase of 246% from 2010

- Baidu, the Chinese search engine, is at #29 with a increase of 141% from 2010

- Amazon is at #14 with a brand value of $37.6 Billion

- Chinese Banks and telecoms feature highly in the top 100

"Developed by Millward Brown Optimor, the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking analyzes the world’s leading brands and the economic and competitive dynamics that influence value fluctuations. It is the most comprehensive annual ranking of brand value, and focuses on consumer-facing brands, rather than corproate brands."

http://www.millwardbrown.com/BrandZ/Default.aspx

Millward Brown is a leading global research agency specializing in advertising, marketing communications, media and brand equity research.

Google Ranking Hacks

Achieving a page 1 ranking for a Google search can be an important marketing strategy if your business depends on clients finding you by using key words in searches. Since web search engines began, there have been continuous efforts to gain a high ranking in search results. Some efforts focus on having a quality website that conforms to search engine guidelines. Other efforts try to artificially improve a web sites ranking by exploiting possible weaknesses in the search engine ranking process or algorithm. The following article from The Age discusses some of these strategies:

Murky world of Google's rankings and how they can be rigged

Edward Wasserman

March 4, 2011

"One extraordinary instance, uncovered recently by The New York Times, involved the big US department store chain JCPenney. For months, apparently, JCPenney was the top-ranked site if you searched for terms as disparate as ''skinny jeans'', ''home decor'', ''area rugs'', ''dresses'' and ''tablecloths''. It drew more traffic for ''Samsonite carry-on luggage'' than Samsonite's own site.

JCPenney's success was traced to an SEO consultant who had, essentially, contracted with more than 2000 web pages that had no discernible purpose apart from linking to sites such as JCPenney's. The retailer's fortunes rose thanks to this virtual ballot-stuffing."

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2381394,00.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_farm

Q1. Is it 'ethical' to use 'content farms' to create a higher ranking?

Q2. Is it 'ethical' for Google to remove a business link from search ranking if it suspects such attempts to get around their search algorithm?

Q3. How important is SEO to e-marketing?

By 2015, companies will generate 50% of Web sales via their social presence and mobile applications.

Gartner latest predictions include a projection for a large increase in sales via mobile and social networks.

www.gartner.com

Market Implications:

• E-commerce providers of all types are offering mobile e-commerce capabilities, such as SMS for couponing, improvements for mobile browser usage of their sites and mobile shopping applications. These vendors will vie for organizations’ mobile initiatives, and their success will be driven by how well they help mobile customers make purchases easily, and by tapping into their social network connections.

• Enterprises will be challenged with determining customer expectations for mobile and social capabilities. The organization will need to enable a useful customer experience that keeps the customer from “unfriending” the organization socially, “opting out” of SMS offers or deleting its mobile application.

Related Research:

• “User Survey Analysis: Evolution of Consumer Internet Preferences”

• “User Survey Analysis: Social Media Adoption Trends”

Q1. What would current on-line retailers need to do to keep up with this trend?

Q2. Why would consumers have a retailer or business as a social network 'friend'?

They Know Where You Are and What You Like

Mobile phones and other mobile devices have the ability to determine the geographical position of the device at any time. As well, this position can be sent to somebody else via the internet. If this 'somebody' else is an advertiser or marketer then interesting opportunities for marketing arise.

Smartphones could soon reveal a person's every move

February 21, 2011

The Age - Julian Lee

"The ability to combine a person's location at any given time with which websites or mobile applications they have visited on their smartphone's browser is opening a new world of possibilities for marketers. Within the next year, half the mobile phones in use will be smartphones such as Apple's iPhone or Samsung's Galaxy, embedded with technology that can pinpoint your position to within a metre."

The director of mobile advertising at Google, Michael Slinger, says: ''Location will be one of the cornerstones of mobile advertising. Merging local businesses with mobile [advertising] is very, very important for us.''

Q1. What are the privacy issues?

Q2. What value is geo-positioning to the consumer?

Q3. Describe one way a business could use geo-positioning for marketing.