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Is targeting based on age is no longer valid?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.