Blog 5

Socialization has been a common denominator of every culture in every period of human history, I see it as part of human nature. Relationships are part of many aspects of our lives; love, friendship, work, school, sports, etc. A lot of the activities we perform in our lives are related with others. A social event allows us to get to know new people and strenghten the relationships we already have, it is also an opportunity to share ideas, express opinions and understand different ways of thinking. Techonology and its constant evolution have provided the entire human sociaty with a tremendous platform to continue building these relationships and to continue expressing our opinions and ideas in a fast and convenient way, taking away the variable of distance, which in most cases was essential to build these social moments.

Thinking about my own expirience I have been using facebook for about 3 years, most of my friends and family uses it, and now that I live away from Mexico it is a great way to communicate with friends and family, to share pictures and to see what others are doing. It is also an easy way to lose time! But when I look at my younger brother (who is 19 now) it is amzing how often he uses facebook, and not only him but also his friends, when I look at his wall every once in a while I can’t see comments or post published more than 8 hours ago! Everyone is constantly uploading something or sending comments, new “frienships” are created, people become fans or members of X club, and invitations are traveling back and forth. Pushed by the inertia of facebook my parents have started their own facebook! Something that seemed impossible happened! My parents are it their late 50’s and they are amazed by all the things they can do with this social platforms. My Dad has scanned more than a 1000 pictures!!! Just to share old moments with his family and friends.

What has happened in my family is happening with many people, facebook and other social media networks have become very popular on a wide segment of the online population. Looking at some of the statitics from the groundswell chapters we can confirm this; more than 20% of online americans use social media plantforms monthly and 22% of the teenagers update these networks daily!!!

These huge amount of diverse people and the huge time they spend on these networks opens a great opportunity for companies because they can use this platforms to promote their products in an easy, not expensive and tailored way. When a company identifies a specific segment in an specific region companies can start by understanding the behavior of this segment, how much time they spend on these online platforms, what kind of material they see and share, and by doing this you can come up with insights about their bahavior and use them to create an strategy to communicate with them using social media networks. As the reading mentioned the most important thing to focus is on how people connect with each other, how that relationship works, and by understanding this, companies can start to build relationships with their target consumers. After starting these relationships it now becomes easier to experiment and try different things in order to understand better your consumer and aim better your marketing efforts not only the ones in social media but in other channels, because the social media networks can tell you a lot about what consumers expect from your products in many different places.

For example, beer, I am really interested in this category and I think that social media can help a lot beer companies to understand better their consumers.

For instance when I look at most of the pictures my friends upload to facebook I am looking at parties, I can say that 80% of the pictures I see every week are from last weekend party! And most of the comments around these pictures talk aout the highlights of the weekend! Most of these parties include beer, so by understanding how a segment likes to party you can come up with insights that might help you develop better initiatives in the on premise and off premise channels.

I looked at the facebook page of MillerLite, they have oer 250k fans and there is a lot of participation. These brand has just launched the new Vortex bottle which is a big innovation on the product and one of the major activities of the brand, as part of their advertising campaing they have launched through facebook the “Have you found the Vortex bottle” campain, where they are asking their consumers to upload pictures when they find this new product. The campaing has had a great response, I could see lots of pictures of consumer with the new product on their wall. They are also publishing their TV commercial, and most of their printing ads and events. This a major tool because users canpost a comment under this uploads and say if they liked it or not and why and also offer some idea of what will they like. For example they uploaded pictures of the new Miller lite home draft system, it is being tested in several markets now, and besides the pictures Miller announced: “Lite fans - the Miller Lite Home Draft system is currently being tested in six markets across the country. You can find this 1.5 gallon draft-beer system at select locations in Dallas/Fort Worth, TX, Columbus, OH, Phoenix, AZ, Jacksonville, FL, San Diego, CA, and Denver, CO. Try it and share your experiences back here with the other members of Miller Lite Taste Nation.” Over 5000 people have commented something about this post of MillerLite, most of the comments I saw are like “Bring it to Michigan” or “I want to buy it now and cant drive to dallas!” but other contain some interesting ideas that might create new insights, there one comment that says “this is perfect for a tailgate or to a pool party in summer...bring it on in time for MLS season and warm weather!” there are other that say “Do the math. This draft system has 1.5 gallons and a case of 24 bottles or cans is equal to 2.25 gallons. I guess it boils down to what is cheaper. I think I'll stay with my Miller Lite cans...” This last one makes me wonder what is the price strategy and in what kind of stores is it going to be sold?. On the other hand you migh find valuable feedback of the product, I found this comment “Have them in Michigan, Walmart is selling them, not impressed, c02 leaked out very fast”

As everything the social media networks have disadvantages, the readings discussed a lot the threatens to institutions because of the lack of regulations on these networks which I think are the main disadvantages. People who participate on your network are free to comment positively or negatively about one of your posts, and can also point out disadvantages of your product. What started as a platform to promote a brand can end up as a platform of bad press for your brand, that’s why brands need to be careful on the way they manage their communication.

Overall I think that if a company understands properly the technology and the way people interact with each other in a given network the benefits they can find are endless and can help them undestand better their consumers and thus create better startegies for their brands, I think there are a lot of succesful examples such as MillerLite or Victorias Sectret in MySpace as mentioned in the readings.

Blog 4

“In God we trust, everyone else bring data” W. Edwards Deming. I love this phrase, it resumes the importance of data in the decision making process, every company in every industry needs to understand what is going on before trying to do to something. I consider the retail industry as one of the hardest industries to make decisions, they deal with a lot of individual clients who buy many different products, some of them are very loyal and some are constantly evolving in their needs and wants, retail companies need to keep satisfying these consumers every week to keep their businesses growing. Helped by technology retail companies have been able to collect all the data generated by each individual purchase. Many companies have information about their clients but having data is not the hardest part, knowing how to use is the hardest part, and if done properly it can be a powerful leverage.

When I think about Walmart, as the reading mentioned, I think about the largest and most complex retail company, with thousands of stores, millions of consumers, billions of dollars, and trillions of bytes Walmart has created the biggest data base of consumers shopping habits. Walmart is aware of the importance of data mining and has invested aggressively in technology that allows them to understand better their consumers. I don’t think that there will be a time were Walmart or any other retailer will fully understand their consumers, they change constantly and retailers must stay on top of this changes. Since every consumer is different and their shopping habits may vary by location or purchasing power retailers such as Walmart must look for insights to understand specific segments of consumers and act on consequence of those insights. Examples such as the increase demand of strawberry pop tarts or beer during hurricane season in Florida are not “common sense” behaviors, in fact without a proper data analysis it might be impossible to detect this opportunities. These are examples of why Walmart is the biggest company in the world, I think they are taking advantage of all the information they have and besides pop tarts and beer in Florida during hurricane season I am sure they know what happens with consumers in Los Angeles during the Mexican Independence Day, in Arizona during deer hunting season or in Austin during football season. These knowledge and understanding of consumers help Walmart create a tremendous amount of interesting and profitable insights that help them continue to grow. I think Walmart still has a huge challenge (And it will keep being one) but up to know they have done a great job.

Many consumers (including myself) go grocery shopping once a week. They go with a big list of products they need at home. The worst thing that can happen to someone in this common scenario is to find everything except one or two products! You just hate the fact that at the time of your shopping the store was out of stock of product X and you will need to go somewhere else just for this single item. It is really annoying and if it’s happening constantly it might become a reason to switch grocery stores. This pain is not only for the consumer, it’s even bigger for Walmart and for the suppliers. But not falling out of stock in a store that holds tens of thousands of different products is a hard thing to accomplish. Take for instance Family Size Doritos. How many bags should Walmart hold in the store Y? How often should they refill the shelve? Should they have the same amount of inventory in Monday and in Saturday? The inventory should be the same in summer and in winter? The football season impacts the demand? If yes how much? How many shelve space should I give to this product during the super bowl weekend? Who am I going to take away from the shelve to give that space to Doritos? Why? All these questions are key questions in order to never be out of stock of Doritos Family Size. And this is only one product! Walmart needs to think about similar issues for every product in every store! That’s again the reason why Walmart is investing big in information technology that allows them to try to accomplish all these challenges. With this said and thinking about the last question regarding the impact they are having on their suppliers I definitely think that they are making them better and more efficient. Maybe Frito Lay has the capacity of knowing to detail their consumers but this is not the case for most of the suppliers, so being a supplier of Walmart has the huge advantage of having proper technology to try to reduce stock outs in the stores. I am sure that all this comes with a cost to suppliers(less profit), but if I were a supplier I rather pay the cost of information and efficiency than loosing consumers to competition just because my product wasn’t there at the right time, at the end of the day I think that the technology that Walmart provides to suppliers increases their efficiency and their profitability.

Having too much information as Walmart does starts becoming a threat to their consumers privacy. The problem is not that Walmart knows that I like buying beer and pop tarts when a Hurricane is coming, the problem is that they know my purchasing power, my address, my social security number, my debts, my mortgage, and my driving records….I don’t even mention some of those to my wife, I will definitely wouldn’t like Walmart to have them!!! Especially if I don’t get anything in exchange, there are no promotions and no loyalty cards. I definitely think that the government should regulate the information Walmart gathers from its consumers. Why are they gathering all that information? What is the purpose? And most important how do they guarantee the security of that information? They shouldn’t have that information because it has nothing to do with grocery purchases, and I insist that the government should get involved in this.

Product or Brand? : The alcoholic beverage industry

Before coming back to school I was working for a convenience store chain as a buyer and category manager for Beer, wine and spirits. These categories are really interesting, consumers have very strong connections with their favorite brands. I have heard many times that Beer and Spirits are among the select group of categories that are "bulletproof" against store brands. I have seen some store brands in these categories but it is pretty unusual. As a consumer I just don't feel like buying a Kirkland Rum or a Hill Country Fare Beer. About a year ago I was part of a blind taste of different beers, at that time I was loyal to a specific brand and I was pretty sure I was going to distinguish it from the other five beers. Most of the participants, including myself, confused their favorite brand. The point of this blind test is to prove that consumers don't buy beer for its taste only, they buy it mostly because of its brand, its image and its marketing campaigns. I thought about doing this same blind taste with Whiskey, Rum or Vodka but I figured out that it was going to be even harder to distinguish a specific brand (especially because most of the times consumers mix the spirit with something else), so for the spirits category the idea is pretty much the same.

Personally and professionally I enjoy this industry, and I am working hard to find opportunities within the industry for my career. Fortunately, I got an internship at MillerCoors Brewing company, I will be working within a brand team (I don't know which brand yet) and I am really excited about this opportunity and I feel that this assignment can help me to continue preparing myself for the upcoming challenge.

I am a consumer of these products, and there are certain attributes that I consider when choosing a brand. Price, flavor, freshness of the brand, who else drinks it, were can I buy it, etc. But I am just one consumer, and I want to understand better what makes a consumer choose one brand over another especially when the quality and flavor are pretty much the same.

What makes a consumer loyal to a brand? How important is the color, the image, the name of the brand? How are consumer evolving as they grow older? Do they change their likes and dislikes? Consumers change brands depending in what environment they are drinking? Or depending with whom are they sharing that moment? Maybe it depends on the time of the day, morning, afternoon, evening, or depends whether its a Weekday or weekend? Do consumers ask themselves before drinking, do I have to work tomorrow? How is their decision map? I have heard from several companies that the brand of the product people have in their hands says a lot about their personality. I want to know why.

I found a very interesting academic article named The case approach to understanding brand choice by Arch G. Woodside and Robert A. Fleck Jr. They did a study of two beer consumers, a heavy user and a light user. They conducted three 2 hour interviews with each consumer. The questions were about beliefs, intentions, attitudes, demographics and psychographics. One common factor about both consumers is that they claimed to be loyal to two or three brands, and they would take their decision based on the particular scenario of each consumption moment. For example If you are having your friends over you want to make sure you buy the beer they like, and you may change your choice based on this. Another very interesting thing is that one of the consumers who claimed to be very loyal to 2 brands changes his preference depending on where he was drinking beer; When he is buying beer to take home he always chooses one of his favorite brands, but when he is out at a bar or restaurant he is open to try new brands.

When talking about flavor one of the interviewers mentioned that temperature alters a lot the taste and he could confuse his favorite brands for this cause. So temperature at the time of consumption plays a very important role on the like or dislike of the product.
One statement mentioned by a participant said "One of the great pleasures of life is sitting in front of the TV at night and having several beers" There is a very strong connection between beer and relaxing, this might be one of the reasons why beer brands have a strong connection with consumers, beer is like a reward, the prize after having a long and hard day. This idea leads me to another one: alcoholic beverages are consumed during parties, weddings, date nights, watching sports, relaxing moments, family gatherings, friends reunions, etc. All these are the most valuable moments in life, and maybe thats why these brands are more meaningful to consumers.

The base of consumers is huge, the number of segments is big, I hope I will be able to understand better the common denominators that consumers consider when choosing a beer or spirit brand.

Blog 2

Since I started learning about marketing the most important part of every marketing aspect is the consumer, every strategy must be based on understanding what a consumer needs and wants. After looking at this readings I can reaffirm that the consumer is the most important but it is not that easy to understand their needs and wants just based in what "they think" they need and want. As a consumer I often suggest improvements or point out disadvantages of certain products or services but I almost never consider the implications that those changes could have in aspects such as price or quality and I am sure almost nobody does, consumers do not have the knowledge nor the experience to suggest valid possibilities to solve a certain problem.

Given this, consumer understanding is important but what its really essential is to translate that understanding into something we can really use to create a true solution, that is the challenge!

The straight forward solution that comes to my mind is to listen the most consumers as possible and try to understand their life, try to get in their shoes and in their mind, based on the knowledge generated try to live their life for an instance and ask whether or not he would be interested in this product, service or proposal. Now I get why Clinton got into the White House!

I have heard a lot of times the case of new coke but today is the first time I really realize why it was a disaster. Coca Cola trusted their consumers when they said they wanted a more sweet product, and at first glance this might sound obvious, but it is definitely not the right thing to do. Why? Because people do not really realize what they are suggesting.

I have been thinking about times I have participated in surveys or focus groups. Most of the times you don't even want to be there, you are either participating because you get a $20, because your stupid friend agreed and you were trapped or because you didn't want to seem rude with the nice lady. Either way you want to finish as fast as possible, you do not think things through and might not even understand what you are dealing with. This is the reason why good marketing researchers understand not what people said but what he really meant by what he said (seems confusing, and it is!!! And that is the reason I guess its so hard to do and also the reason why we still see a lot of companies spending millions in R&D and in consumer research and still launching pure crap).

Over analyzing and over spending on the planning stage of a project is way cheaper than launching a failure. In today's market where we are facing a more diverse, changing and demanding set of consumers its crucial to go a step beyond surveys, scanner databases, panel data and actually step in our consumer shoes and try to understand first what are they saying, then why are they saying it and at last what do they really mean??? Quite a challenge......

Blog 1: Persona

Alberto is a 27 year old male, he is at a very important stage of his life, he has been married for a year and he is about to become a father. Alberto is a hard working guy; he considers his career a top priority and works hard to balance it with his personal life. He loved his past job mainly because he found an endless amount of new challenges. He is not a routine person; he likes to stay busy but always dealing with different things, he is also very competitive and enjoys working in a competitive environment. Alberto is an ambitious person and risk taker and even though six months ago he was at a really good and comfortable stage of his life he decided to quit his job and get back into school to earn an MBA degree, he likes to keep himself aiming higher.

As I mentioned Alberto feels very passionate about his career progress but he tries to keep that out of his weekend. Family is very important to Alberto; he shares everything with them and constantly looks for advice among his family. He tries to spend as much time as possible with his family and friends, he enjoys going out for dinner, watching sports, and spending time outdoors.

Alberto has many hobbies, he loves to watch sports (especially with friends and family) such as football, baseball, soccer, tennis, golf or basketball, he is always well informed about the results, and the latest news. He also likes outdoor activities such as fishing and hunting, and he recently started to play golf.

His married life has been really exciting; his wife also enjoys spending lots of time with family and friends so they do that really often. They both enjoy movies and at least once a week they get to watch one. Traveling is something they both want to do, even though they haven’t been able to travel that much in the past year they have spent a lot of time planning different trips that they will eventually do. In the last months they have been working really hard to prepare themselves as much as possible for their upcoming daughter, they are really excited about it!

Alberto is very careful with his expenses; he is always looking for good deals and considering every option, but that doesn’t mean that he is not looking for quality; he rather buy an expensive item once than buying a cheap one three times. He also likes to spend more than usual once in a while. He enjoys going to a nice restaurant, buying a nice bottle of scotch or getting nice seats for a soccer game.

Alberto likes technology specially because it makes his life easier and saves him valuable time. He does not buy every new gadget but has the most useful ones. He has an I-phone and really loves it; he is constantly checking his email and reading the news (especially sports news).

Looking at the different cohorts I think Alberto fits in the Chad and Tammie cohort.