Article review on review of marketing articles

Article 1: Marketing to Teenagers: The influence of Color, Ethnicity and Gender

Summary
The teenage market is an important customer segment in the US as well as global market. Teenagers usually don’t have any financial responsibility on their shoulder and that gives them a significant buying power. Most of the teenagers spend their money on clothes, jewelry, food, entertainment and beauty products. Teenagers are usually more tech savvy than the previous generations and spend a considerable amount of time on the internet, video games, phones, television and social networking sites. They accrue money for spending by getting paid for jobs and receiving allowances and monetary gifts. Brand loyalty is very important for teenagers and some of their favorite brands include Apple, Facebook, American Eagle Outfitters and Abercrombie & Fitch. Apple by using the buzz marketing has become one of the favorite brands of teenagers.
Marketers try to reach teenagers mainly through electronic mass media like internet, magazines, TV, radio and product placement. The basic marketing strategy for teenage customers should be simple, straightforward and buzzy and products offered should be cool and trendy enough to grab their attention. Social media like Facebook and Twitter are one of the important platforms to market products for teenagers through the use of continuous updates, catchy music, sexuality and humor. Marketers should be insightful about the purchasing behavior of teenagers and the factors influencing their purchasing decisions. This insight would help in developing brands and concepts appealing to teenagers. Marketers should note the factors influencing the purchasing behavior of teenagers such as gender, ethnicity and the choice of color. A survey conducted in a Pennsylvania high school on students equally distributed ethnically with 120 students being male and 90 female reveals that the color choice differs due to gender, ethnicity and the product type and therefore, markets should keep the choice of color of genders and ethnicity in mind while developing their products for teenagers. For example, in order to grab the attention of African American male and female teenagers, the product colors which could win maximum attraction could either be black and blue.

My Opinion

The article does a fine job of showing how the fundamentals of marketing work for teenagers. As we know that the marketing medium is changing in recent years. Traditional marketing Medias are getting replaced by E-marketing Medias. This article clearly states that the next generation being more tech savvy, it is important that companies start using more of the internet channels for marketing. Facebook, Twitter and other social media are the new mode of reaching the teenagers efficiently. However, the basic fundamentals of marketing have remained same over the years. Although the medium has changed we know that the factors influencing the teenagers have remained almost similar. Brand loyalty was always a big factor for teenagers and it continues to be the same in the current generation irrespective of their tech savviness. Therefore, companies need to understand the factors that influence the buying behavior of teenagers and their fascination with brands. Apple with its buzz marketing has set precedence of how to capture the young hearts and become their popular brand. The article clearly gave a nice example of how ethnicity and gender have influence on color choice of a product. If companies run a market research on such parameters before starting the E-Marketing campaigns then it can come up with an E-Marketing strategy for each different segment of customers. This approach will be more effective in sending the right message to the right customers.

Article 2: An Integrated Framework for On-line Viral Marketing Campaign Planning

Summary
The advent of web has revolutionized marketing by providing companies with the opportunity to enhance their service and reaching out to maximum number of customers within a short time. This marketing evolution has introduced one of the important marketing techniques of modern time – the viral marketing. Viral marketing with the help of internet and social networking sites disseminates information about a product or service through self-replication like a virus. By employing the strategy of word of mouth, viral marketing allows consumers to share the marketing messages in a manner of biological virus. The main platform of viral marketing is the social media on the internet which allows the companies to increase the brand’s popularity by spreading the marketing information speedily across to a large number of current and potential customers like virus. But in order to make this successful, a proper viral marketing campaign planning should be in place.
An online viral marketing campaign planning involves four phases. In the first phase the company and its business context are analyzed. All the aspects of internal factors including the product line, internal strategy and resources of the company and the external factors including market perspective, competitors, consumer needs and brand positioning are scrutinized. The analysis of internal factors is useful in making a financial plan while the analysis of external factor determines the feasibility of the online viral marketing campaign. The second phase of planning involves making objectives and defining targets. The model used for setting objectives involves cognitive, behavioral and financial aspects. Next comes defining the target customers which is done by classifying consumers on the basis of profile, psychological and behavioral class. The third phase involves creating message and selecting tools. Taking into account the overall objectives, the message is created and then the right tools are selected on the basis of consumer needs and usability. The fourth phase involves testing, realizing and seeding the campaign.

My Opinion

This article mainly talks about the new E-Marketing technique called Viral Marketing. Viral marketing is not a new concept though. It was always there in marketing and many companies used viral or word-of-mouth marketing to create a buzz for its products. One example is Eureka-Forbes which never used print media or other marketing campaigns apart from word-of-mouth or viral marketing techniques until recently. However, viral marketing has taken a completely different dimension with the advent of internet and social media. Now a message, photo or video can reach millions of customers in a matter of hours. Viral marketing also has its downside as bad publicity also gets viral in no time. To make a viral marketing campaign successful the article suggested that business context, defining objects and targets, creation messages, selection of tools and seeding the campaign are the four steps a company should cautiously follow. However, it is not always easy to predict how a viral marketing will end up. For example, many albums before and after ‘Gangnam Style’ album release have adapted to YouTube trailer video to kick-start a viral campaign over the internet but not many have enjoyed the success Gangnam Style did. Viral Marketing through internet is still in its budding stage requiring more data and research to find out a pattern to freeze on a model which can assure of high probability of success.

Article 3: New Brand Extensions: Patterns of Success and Failure

Summary
All of us want to know the recipe for success. Marketing managers also want to know if a product launch will be successful or not. Even an intricate and innovative design of a product and a well-developed marketing plan cannot ensure the success of a product in the market. Product extensions of an existing brand are also no exception. Though success cannot be predicted beforehand, the sooner a predication can be made about the success of a product in the market the better it is for the company to take further decision. This article reinforces the findings made by the research of Ehrenberg and Goodhardt (2000) and Wellen and Ehrenberg(1988). The old study and the current study both corroborate the fact that successful brand extensions quickly establish the repeat purchase levels and penetration of established brand of similar size. It is seen in the current study that many of the successful brand extensions show ‘almost instant’ success pattern. On the other hand ‘falling’ brands may not show the patterns of a failing product instantaneously, rather the falling patterns begin to manifest few months after the launch of the product. The first thing differentiating the ‘rising’ product extension from that of a ‘falling’ extension is the repeat purchase levels. However, any kind of marketing input that helps increase the sales for ‘falling’ products is not yet determined. This clearly indicates that mere launching of a product is not enough from marketing perspective. It is essential for the company to make sure that it creates a marketing plan to convince the buyer of the product being worth buying more than once. Once the product extension is launched, the marketing team often begins to give less priority to that product over the scope of new product introductions. The marketing strategy should be planned in a manner that with the passage of time customers begin to adopt the new product extension as the same brand extension.

Opinion

Managers always want to know whether a product will be successful or not in the market. This article tries to analyze a pattern of new product introduction and how a successful and unsuccessful product can be identified. It states that the successful product extensions exhibit almost instant characteristics of other successful product launches. However, the problem is even ‘falling’ products may show instant success pattern and hence it is not possible to distinguish between a successful and unsuccessful product extension immediately after launch. As per the current article this can be predicted within few quarters after launch of the product. If we look at some of the older works done in the field by Goodhardt or Ehrenberg, we see that they predicted that unsuccessful products start showing that it will fail in the market in many cases after a year. The finding of their study that repeat customers are the main points of difference between successful and unsuccessful product launches is really insightful. But the timeframe after which a product extension can be deemed as a success or failure is not clear from the article. It seems that the timeframe can vary from instant to up to a year. With the advent of internet and E-Marketing the reach of marketers to its customers has quickened and so does the customers’ ability to gain information about a product. In many cases customers now can compare a new product with the features of other products even before making the purchase and go through the reviews of other customers before making the purchasing decision. Because of the E-Marketing and widespread information availability to the customers, the prediction time for successful and unsuccessful product will definitely reduce in future.
Summary
The EU is the largest foreign investor in China. The European business houses view the emerging Chinese market as a market of great future potentials. Simultaneously, the Chinese economy is going through a major structural change by becoming a global investor. The current state of China’s growing restrictiveness and Europe’s unilateral openness is not sustainable. Therefore, a comprehensive legal framework is required for EU China investment. The EU wishes to enter a negotiation that will combine the existing investment treaties of the member states into a single European agreement and extend this policy covering investment liberalization of the Chinese market. Amidst the Eurozone’s debt crisis, the growth of Chinese investment in Europe has caused fears about economic security especially due to the lack of transparency of Chinese firms and their frequency in using tax havens.

Article 4: Europe Needs a Dynamic International Investment Regime with China

Summary
The EU is the largest foreign investor in China. The European business houses view the emerging Chinese market as a market of great future potentials. Simultaneously, the Chinese economy is going through a major structural change by becoming a global investor. The current state of China’s growing restrictiveness and Europe’s unilateral openness is not sustainable. Therefore, a comprehensive legal framework is required for EU China investment. The EU wishes to enter a negotiation that will combine the existing investment treaties of the member states into a single European agreement and extend this policy covering investment liberalization of the Chinese market. Amidst the Eurozone’s debt crisis, the growth of Chinese investment in Europe has caused fears about economic security especially due to the lack of transparency of Chinese firms and their frequency in using tax havens. China has a lot of wealth for investment and it is now willing to expand beyond its national boundary. If it starts investing heavily in Eurozone then many companies in near future will be controlled by China or Chinese companies. This will surely create a market distortion. With no rules existing at a European level for managing capital assets flowing from outside it will be chaos when the capital flows in from China. EU and China are committed to get this problems resolved. The interest is different between EU and Chinese investors and so coming to a common agreement will not be an easy task. USA is also trying to enter into an investment treaty with China. In the past, all the multilateral agreements have failed between the parties but it is high time that the policymakers reexamine the structure of investment and show some flexibility to reach an agreement.

Opinion

EU-China investment is a very important topic in the current economic world. Two powerhouses want to invest in each other’s market to establish the individual supremacy. But due to the lack of framework and policy it is difficult for either party to make an investment in the other market. EU has done some investment in China in the past but that has become an old story now as Chinese market has grown to become more and more restricted. The situation seems to be different in EU. EU wants foreign investment and China has the required wealth but opening the market to Chinese investors without proper policy and framework will create mayhem in the market and the market will be then controlled by the Chinese players. However, if an investment agreement can be reached then it will be beneficial for both the parties as EU and China will be able to exploit each other’s core competencies. This will not only help the two regions but will also help the business community. Many large business houses which do not have a footstep in China will be able to invest in China. If US, EU and China can come together and form some common investment treaty then it will improve the macroeconomic parameters of the world. The agreements may not be equally beneficial for all the parties but it will benefit the larger mass.

Work Cited

Akcay, Okan. 2012. Marketing to Teenagers: The influence of Color, Ethnicity and Gender. International Journal of Business and Social Science, Kutztown University, Vol. 3 No. 22.
Grifoni, Patrizia. D’Andrea, Alessia & Ferri, Fernando. 2012. An Integrated Framework for On-line Viral Marketing Campaign Planning. Canadian Center of Science and Education, International Business Research vol 6.
Gavin, Brigid. 2012. Europe Needs a Dynamic International Investment Regime with China. EU-China Investment, DOI: 10. 1007/s10272-012-0425-8
Singh, Jaywant. Scriven, John. Clemente, Maria. Lomax, Wendy. Wright, Malcolm. New Brand Extensions Patterns of Success and Failure. Journal of Advertising Research.