Category: Marketing in everyday life

Challenges of using social media in target marketing

I wrote before about the findings from research conducted by myself, Moira Clark and Paul Fennemore on how social media enables organisations to obtain very detailed insight about markets and target customers, and to deliver tailored propositions. However, at the moment, there are still a number of challenges preventing organisations from achieving the potential value … Continue reading Challenges of using social media in target marketing

The downside of choice

Earlier today I was at an information session, meeting people interested in post-graduate education at the institution where I am employed, Oxford Brookes University. I was doing my best to show the potential candidates all the options that they had access to. We talked about the different modes of study (i.e., full time vs. part … Continue reading The downside of choice

When waiting is good for business

This week I came across an interesting counter-intuitive (for me) finding: slowing down service may improve the perceived quality of the product. Watching the video of Steve Souders’ presentation at Velocity 2013 (below), from about minute 3:08 onwards, I learned that: -       Designers of the Blogger platform installed an artificial delay between the moment a user … Continue reading When waiting is good for business

How can we make danger more palpable?

I was clearing my e-mail inbox, and came across this link to a news article on the BBC website. It illustrates a very common marketing trick, but with a twist. The old trick Products have a mixture of tangible and intangible attributes. Tangible attributes can be seen and felt and, thus, offer a good clue … Continue reading How can we make danger more palpable?

Benefits of using social media in target marketing

The practice of profiling the different needs and preferences of customers in a market, in order to decide which groups to focus on and how best to serve them, is a well established one in marketing. The process may be broadly divided in three steps, namely: Moira Clark, Paul Fennemore and myself set out to … Continue reading Benefits of using social media in target marketing

So this is how Facebook sees me

You know what they say: on Facebook, you are not the customer; you are the product. Facebook collects our identity and activity (updates, likes and shares) information. This information is processed by Facebook’s algorithms, and churns out targets for advertisers to promote their products to. Naturally, Facebook keeps their algorithms secret. Though, much has been … Continue reading So this is how Facebook sees me

Too big to fail

I was interviewed, recently, for a school project on financial services. One of the questions concerned the reasons why, sometimes, a bank is described as 'too big to fail'. Here is my take. Anything to add to help this Y12 student? Question: Why was Bank [name of bank] described as 'too big to fail'? Financial … Continue reading Too big to fail

The importance of asking ‘why’

My friend Tim Kourdi brought my attention to this presentation by Professor Clayton Christensen about a market research study done with milkshake consumers: If you abstract from the presentation's background and the fact that he keeps describing the act of buying food items as 'hiring' ***seriously, what's going on there?*** this is, actually, a neat … Continue reading The importance of asking ‘why’

Data collection? There is an app for that

I guess it was only a matter of time. There are apps for virtually any aspect of our personal and professional lines. So, I suppose that it was only a matter of time for a researcher to come up with an app to help with data collection. The researcher is Dan Ariely, a behavioural economist … Continue reading Data collection? There is an app for that

Electronic surveillance: Minority Report minus the precogs

Details are emerging about the USA’s National Security Agency (NSA) secret surveillance programme to collect and analyse data from computer and telephone networks. It is hardly a surprise that the North American government has a surveillance programme. Rather, it is the secretiveness, the extent and the intrusiveness of the programme that is causing shockwaves. The … Continue reading Electronic surveillance: Minority Report minus the precogs