Digital advertising: do brands and consumers think the same about it?

Nowadays, each individual has his own Smartphone, a laptop or a tablet. The days that used to gather people around a movie that is interrupted every now and then by an advert are gone. The rise of internet streaming services, video gaming, and social media platforms just made it worse. We would think that that's it, TV advertising does not worth it anymore, people are spending much more time online than watching television. Obviously, technology change and people habits are changing even faster, but brands are still extremely reticent about allocating a large portion of their advertising budget to the internet.

Black Friday, Boxing day and Cyber Monday: Aggressive customer behavior

I had the chance to witness Black Friday, Boxing Day and many other special shopping holidays and I was fascinated. Long queues, a surprising patience, and some pretty crazy chaos as well. On one hand, for retailers as well as for customers these are huge sales opportunities. On the other hand, they are a lot of pressure. Excited, confused and frustrated, a number of shoppers exhibit an aggressive and potentially dangerous behavior.

Even though these exceptional dates find their origins in the US, The figures show that they are very profitable in Europe as well and it is fair to say that these events acquired strong European identity. Thus, the holidays shopping periods uncovers many facets related to the consumer behavior and it deserves a closer inspection.

Everyone is awaiting Black Friday. But what is the story behind it ?

What is known to most of us is that “Black Friday” is the day of the year when retailers propose the biggest bargains and shoppers descend to the stores or goes online to take advantage of the low prices proposed to buy what was seen as unaffordable before.  

Is targeting based on age is no longer valid?

Segmentation and targeting a group of people based on their age is a very frequent practice. Almost all companies create boxes and fit themselves inside. Market segmentation provides marketers with an identifiable group of submarkets to target. Based on age, for instance, A target group might be the mature market, aged 50 years old and above. Others companies might focus their efforts on the age group 10 to 19 years old and it goes on and on.
What became obvious today to many leading companies is that people who reached 50 years old do not want to be categorized in this group, some of them want to look as young as possible and in the group 10 to 19, some of them try to imitate their older idols, a sister, a parent or a famous person and to look much mature. Besides, Nowadays the percentage of people who reached 50 and above represents the largest category in many countries, especially in the developed one. Thus, it might be a great mistake and missing opportunities to target a certain group based on age. Some people belong to certain age categories but behave like being part of another and ignoring this would result in achieving a growth that is smaller than the organization's potential.

Fear appeals marketing strategy: Brexit and US vote success

The second half of this present year was full of big events. First, the British people decided to leave the European Union and Now the United States people decide to have Mr. Trump as a president. Big decisions, but what about the outcomes? For The Brexit, we saw the Pound's value decreasing to levels never reached before, Businesses thinking of relocation, people protesting "Brigret" and the government is still uncertain whether to trigger the article 50 or find a way to regain the European Union before it is too late. The second event is quite new, how successful the united state will be under Mr. Trump presidency cannot be predicted at this stage. 

What concerns me the most and what I wanted to share with you in this article is on which basis those decisions have been taken? In my opinion, Fear appeal advertising has something to do here? 

Let’s find out first what it is. Then I will outline how fear can be a major motivation in decision-making.

Social media: The brand's most valuable asset

We witnessed the first world revolution in 1995 when we started checking the online content to the successful access to social media networking sites and platforms. In only 10 years we changed the way we communicate, we opened up to strangers with confidence through social media, the way we purchase and how we consume. Then we have seen the second revolution with the appearance of users generated content around 2005. We watched a dramatic shift in the way the consumer interacts with the internet. However, enormous challenges appeared as well. The businesses had to adapt their brands and communications. Through content generation, comments, likes and follows, the power became into the consumer's hands. The Internet changed the world and the consumer-oriented brands that can listen to their customers got more chances to survive the engaged era.

Reviews and stars rating effect on customer experience.

Lately, Customer or user experience becomes a hot topic. Analysts found that providing people with enjoyable experiences across all the touchpoints is highly important. This actually incentivises the users/customers to potentially make repetitive visits or purchases.
online users rely considerably on reviews and stars rating left by old buyers. In fact, these elements impact heavily the user's buying decision.

Personalisation: the effective way to communicate

As a new user of Twitter, I spent some time looking at some accounts and selected few to follow. Some of them have a six digit number of followers. I thought they might be worth following. Some of them followed me back. I appreciated that and I was grateful. I decide to send a message to express my gratitude. I was surprised; the answers were really nothing close to what I thought. I was disappointed. The answers were mainly ads, and links to direct me toward some web pages. I do value each person work and I do understand how valuable for them the time they spend writing but if my presence on the web is only considered as a potential client or a source of revenue, I would appreciate bing approached differently. Maybe my expectation are high but hang on it is the person who is speaking here not the marker and I believe that we are in a world in which all clients got higher expectations that we should do much more to meet them. 

Porter's five forces model: You need to know your business environment

Michael Porter is one of the marketing pioneers. He is a father and a great researcher, a business leader, a magnificent author, and an awesome teacher.
The first article I wrote " Which automobile would satisfy a Brazilian customer" http://jar.ma/1P_vGi involved the "Porter's five forces model" which is a great model, in my opinion, to analyze a competitive environment in general and get a perfect knowledge of it and the forces or factors affecting it. Today I am devoting this article to discuss the model deeply and I am using the gasoline industry in my examples to explain each force.

Concerned about the brand experience? consistency matters

Most textbooks and articles published in the last decades have pressured the importance of external communication like PR and publicity. It is only lately that little more attention has been accorded to internal communication and to how training matters to brand success. In my opinion, the brand experience concept encompasses the real core of branding rather than any other brand concepts based on analysis and cognition like brand equity or brand personality ... so on.

Customer loyalty: how service quality influence customer retention?

Customer loyalty, what a great word in such a competitive world. It became very known to everybody that retaining a customer is less expensive than attracting and stimulating interest in a new one. Different marketing studies showed that acquiring a new customer can cost as much as 8 times more than keeping an existing one. Loyal customers tend to spread a positive word of mouth among their circles, friends, and families about the business and they have more incentives to recommend it and are unlikely to change it, especially for price reasons. 
What should be done? the secret could in the service quality, isn't it?

Social networking: create a long lasting relationship with your customers

Social networking! who could before imagine that being instantly and continuously connected with our beloved one will be that easy? Today, various social media platforms are used by millions and millions of people from different locations, different ages and mainly from different devices. What it for? keep connected, informed and more importantly seeking help for decision making? those platforms became a key tool for almost every business.

Personal data vulnerability: where does my personal information go?

The Brexit was a huge phenomenon, it attracted everyone's attention. The major reason for which the UK people voted exit was that they do not want any more people from other countries on their own. The news still devotes the first pages to this event. One of the articles was particularly attractive to me. "Chinese tourist influx prompts police call as some baffled residents fear for their privacy" released by Oxford mail. Kidlington residents qualified a group of tourists as invaders. They didn't like them snooping around their properties, walk in their gardens and take pictures of their belongings. What was even more captivating is that this influx pushed some residents to call the police and record complaints. Privacy, it was and it will be forever dear to us, to each of us. 

Pokemon Go: success secret

I was very surprised when I first heard about Pokemon Go through social media. Most of my Facebook friends suddenly started publishing pictures of the old known Pokemon in the real world, sometimes in weird and funny places. One of my closest friends went mad for it and I felt the urge to download it. I was curious. I needed to see by myself what drives them that crazy. what was the secret?

New nutrition labelling: does it improve the consumer's behavior?

While eating healthy and preventing obesity lies under personal responsibilities. In 2008, New York city was the first to apply the nutrition labeling legislation. By labeling, the government decided to play a bigger role in the population health through helping and encouraging the consumer to make healthier choices. At the time, the legislation was limited to the restaurants. Generally speaking, the fast food outlets become obliged to visibly expose the calories on their menus especially for their usual available meals as part of the new consumer protection scheme. Nowadays, the food industry is seriously locked between a number of regulations developed to improve public health. Do this kind of regulation change the customer's habits? do they encourage healthier consumption? do they have any impacts on manufacturers and retailers revenues?

What is big data ?

Popular among scholars, entrepreneurs, and business circles, Big data is a new term relatively vague.  The internet, mobile devices, and cloud computing together moved a great deal of our personal and professional lives into the data system. each of us is generating a huge, valuable and varied flow of information. We are in an era in which each device is online and the data is continuously growing. While a lot of data may have always been big, the way it is used is what matters the most and it has been proved how complex and long process it is. On one hand, knowledge is power, but little knowledge if added to poor judgment, a lot of damage can be the result. On the other hand, Being able to effectively manipulate data and extract the right information is considered a competitive advantage. Professional agreed on the fact that it is much easier to target and offer based on the data generated. The big data is expected to impact all the sectors from energy to education, for this purpose, techniques, and technologies have been developed to analyze this flow of information. 

Digital Customer Experience: does it matter?

Any company’s relationship with its clients goes beyond just raising the product rating or increasing the number of positive reviews. Customer experience is for many companies a competitive advantage, an engine of growth and profitability. Its importance shifted to become a key focus for researchers and practitioners.

Paid, earned and owned media outlets (SMO). Are you familiar with them?

Critical for the development of a marketing communication strategy, most of the companies consider all the three types of media, namely paid, earned and owned media as part of their external marketing communication plan. Although largely used nowadays, it is still important to mention that the quantity does not guarantee quality. With such power in hands, companies should be able to make a well-informed use of them. This present article will empower the reader with the most useful and important details.