Marketing Surverys

Recently I have noticed and increasing number of marketing surveys. It seems as though whenever I shop online I am asked to complete a survey about how I liked shopping on their website, and how I felt about my purchases. I can understand why these are beneficial to companies, but I believe that they are seen more as an annoyance to customers. I know that I usually don't want to complete a survey after I have already spent all that time shopping and filling out my payment information. The last thing I usually want to do is answer more questions. I also wonder about how often companies really take these surveys into consideration. Do they really take any of the information we give them and make changes?

In Response to Professor Johnson...

Should John smith sell the names? Also, What in the Statement relates to John Smith's dilemma?

After reading the John Smith case I believe that he should NOT sell the names to the car company. At first I thought it may be a good idea because it would avoid making him lay off some of his employees. but after further thought I believe that he could come up with other ways of making money in order to keep his employees and still maintain good ethics. Selling those names to the car company is no honest, he would be breaking the trust of all those customers who gave their names, therefore creating a bad image for himself and his company. 

At the store I work at in the summer called Sundance Clothing Company in Chatham, MA we are always asking customers for their name and email addresses to send them coupons and advertisements. Every time we ask for their name we promise to not sell their email addresses to any other companies and to not abuse the privilege. If we were to turn around and sell those names, that would be a breach of trust, and our customers would not be able to rely on us as trust worthy people. A strong customer base is a huge part of the store, there are many returning customers who wont shop anywhere else, if we were to break their trust, they wouldn't trust the company, but they also wouldn't trust our opinions when trying to sell them clothing either. Trust is such an important part of of a businesses relation with its customers.

In the Statement of Ethics of the American Marketing Associations website, "Avoid knowing participation in conflicts of interest. Seek to protect the private information of customers, employees and partners." This is what applies to John Smiths dilemma. This falls under the category of fairness. It is unfair to customers to sell their private information to a company so they have the upper hand in selling them their new car. 

If you owned a company would you buy names and personal information of customers from a marketing agency so that you would have the upper hand in the market of a certain product? 

Marketing Will Not Persuade People to Buy a Product That is Not Selling

There are a few myths about marketing, one is that if you market a product that is not selling, it will not make it sell. Marketing is a good technique for products that is actually going to sell. However if a product is not something that consumers want to buy, it is not going to sell even with the best marketing strategies. Yes marketing could potentially boost sales of a product a small amount, but it will not make consumers buy something they do not really want or need. Marketing can be the most influential aspect of selling a product, but only if they product is something the consumer would need. If you invent a product with no use to consumers, even the best marketing will not help it sell. Marketing costs a lot of money, and if you are not marketing a profit from the product, and still buying advertising, your product or company will not succeed. The products or service has to be useful to the consumer before a marketing team can successfully market it to increase sales.

Do you agree with this marketing myth? Or do you believe that marketing can sell even the most useless product or service?

In Response to Christine's Post...

Do you think showing the ad's before the game was a good marketing strategy or not?  

I personally do not think that showing the ad's before the game was a good marketing approach. I think that many people wants the Superbowl for the soul reason of seeing the ad's, and being entertained by new commercials they have never seen before. Showing them before the game took away that element of surprise, and gave viewers the opportunity to see them before they normally would have been able to. Superbowl commercials are supposed to be the "best" of the year because people spend so much money to have them played during the Superbowl, however since they showed them before the Superbowl I think they paid all of that money and lost the novelty of the marketing scheme. Superbowl commercials are "rare" and have high standards to live up to, the fact that they played the commercials before the Superbowl changes the way viewers see them, they are no long Superbowl commercials, they are just average commercials. 


Do you think the commercials on this years Superbowl lived up o the expectations?

In Response to Nichole's Post...

Nichole asked: What other strategies do you think are most affective within marketing campaigns?

I never notices how successful using animals in commercials was until Nichole pointed it out. Now I realize that every time a commercial with an animal on it comes on the television, at least one person in the room comments on how "cute" the animal is, drawing everyone's attention. This is a very strategic tactic for marketers to use, it draws in customer attention and therefore they remember the product.

I think that children have always been used in this way to bring in business as well. I have seen commercials for some car dealerships where the owner will have their son or daughter on the commercial with them explaining how great the service is. It is hard to believe that a small child really knows about the service of their families dealership compared to others, but it is still a good marketing gimmick. The innocence of the child makes it seem like more reliable information because we would like to believe that parents would not make their child lie to market a product.

Another strategy that I think has been affective in marketing campaigns is, using the ideal body type to market diet products and certain food. They make it seem like if consumers buy this product, they will look like the people in the advertisement do. However with air brushing these people probably don't really look the way they are portrayed on television or on a billboard. These people do not have average body types, they are making people think that they can look that way just by buying a diet pill or a reduced calorie diet shake. This however is false. It would be more difficult for most people to lose weight and look like the people on billboards than simply taking a pill, but those are the things they do not tell you in the advertisements.

Do you think having models and celebrities with "the perfect bodies" selling diet pills is false advertising?

Suggestive Marketing

I am curious about the affect suggestive marketing is having on today's economy. Have you ever noticed that when you search for something online, the internet recognizes it and adds relating to your search continue to pop up. They are trying to narrow down your interests, buy taking notice to what you are searching for and therefore show you adds that they hope will interest you. For example, I recently bought a pair of shoes from an online shoe store, and for days afterwards I was noticing that advertisements for women's shoes continuously appeared on the sides of Facebook, and other websites I was on. They were even similar websites, with similar looking shoes on them, they caught my eye, and I actually did look at a few of the sites that came up. The internet is narrowing down our interests and figuring out what kind of person you are by recognizing the websites you visit. Shopping online has caused my computer to give me adds for mostly clothing stores. However someone who is into video games or electronics may get a lot of adds for those. This is becoming known as part of our "electronic footprint" its going beyond what we put on Facebook and Twitter, now the internet is recognizing the sites we go on beyond just social media. These days most people have their own laptops, but I'm sure some families still use desktop computers, the problem arises when the whole family had different interests and the children are getting adds for whatever mom and dad are doing on the computer. This could potentially become a privacy concern. The internet is marking its users as children, teenagers, young adults, parents, senior citizens, and so on. They are marketing toys to the users who are on websites playing games, and clothes to teenagers shopping online.

This is potentially a very large advancement in marketing, but do you think this is crossing the line between simply marketing a product and an invasion of privacy? How do you think this new form of marketing could affect the way people use the internet?

In Response to Lyndzi Gray

Lyndzi posed the question, Since so much useful information can be learned in a marketing course then do you think it should be a required class to take? 

I believe that Marketing should be a required class for all majors. Although it does relate to Business majors  more than some others, all students could benefit from a course like Marketing. Marketing helps people learn how to navigate in a world full of competition. The point of Marketing is to publicize a products better than the competitor, therefore making more of a profit. But the competition does not end there, people need to know how to correctly market themselves in a job interview,  where they will be competing with other candidates for a position. They need to market the skills they have in a positive way, therefore making themselves look more capable than their competition. Marketing is really about competing to see which product, service, or person is the best fit for the consumers or companies needs. Competition is a huge part of life, and it is only growing because of the increasing access to computers, internet, social media, and other resources that make marketing a large part of everyday life. In order to find job, you have to know how to market yourself, no matter what the job is. I believe there is improvement that would be brought to any company of job, if everyone had a class in marketing, every student would learn how to plan improvements, make suggestions and make changes in whatever carer they chose. A background in Marketing is a positive advantage for anybody looking for a job. 

Do you think knoledge in marketing would be a positive addition to any job today?