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.