Marketing

Remember how exciting Starbucks was when it first burst on the scene? Starbucks was all about community, too (and still is, to be sure). Folks went there not just to buy coffee, but also to meet others and feel like they were part of something. The most amazing thing about it was that often the conversation centered on the coffee itself — and Starbucks even invented a special language for ordering drinks that is unique to its customers. [Read more…] about Creating a sense of community….

The latest trend in fast-food growth has to do with location. Myers is now the chief development officer for Church’s Chicken. He said one of the keys to growing the Church’s brand is making Church’s available to consumers in nontraditional locations. Of the 58 Church’s in Atlanta, nine are in convenience stores (or c-stores), where customers come inside after filling up their cars with gas.

“The original fear was that people would associate your restaurant with the sort of dirty job of filling up the gas tank or changing the oil,” Myers said. “But when you walk into a Church’s in one of these locations, there is always a clean separation of the restaurant from the area of your car. We have 145 c-store locations around the country.”

In addition to adding more convenience store locations, in the next three to five years Church’s hopes to become the Big Chicken on Campus. Church’s has stores near many schools but not on any campuses. In hopes of enticing universities and private contractors to carry the Church’s brand, the company has developed “Church’s On the Fly,” a portable product.

“There is so much competition for real estate these days,” Shumacher said. “If I’m an owner of a small Dunkin’ Donuts and I can either spend $300,000 on a location for a stand-alone store or spend $300,000 on my store and co-brand with Baskin-Robbins and Togo and move into a million-dollar location, all of a sudden co-branding makes all the sense in the world.”

[Read more…] about Co-branding: Fast food finds strange bedfellows

These are the figuers for the US but the picture is very simelar in Europe:

Golden Boomers. “The 45-plus market is the new customer majority, ” says Lori Bitter, as quoted by Kenneth Gilpin in The New York Times. “This isn’t anything we are making up,” she says, “This is real. It’s huge.” Lori is a partner of J. Walter Thompson’s Mature Market Group, and if you don’t believe her, then just take a look at Census Bureau estimates that “roughly half of the nation’s population will be older than 40″ by the year 2010 … Right now, about four million people a year are turning 50,” and that’s a trend that will continue for years … in addition, more than 40 million Americans are already 65 or older.”
[Read more…] about Golden Boomers

Reply from Scott Deaver, chief marketing officer of Avis:

Well, a couple of things work in our favor. One is, Avis is more focused on excellence in customer service than any company I’ve ever worked for. And I mean focused. Everybody thinks about customer service all the time. Everybody’s measured for it. People are dead serious about fixing the things that are wrong and making the good things even better. That focus really does pay off in a better customer experience.

The second thing is, if you dig into research about Avis and Hertz, what you find is that Hertz tends to get credit for high-tech products and innovation. Avis tends to get credit for “people” values. One of the things that enables us to at least go toe-to-toe with Hertz is that we’re focused on those values. We’re true to them. We build in that brand space. We’ve got that real, unique and differentiated position in the car-rental market that gives us a lot of strength. [Read more…] about Why does Avis score so well on customer loyalty versus Hertz?

Lunchtimedeals.com is a simple, real-time, target marketing service for restaurants in the NYC area. Lunchtimedeals.com advertise restaurants? specials, coupons and menus by sending out daily lunch specials and deals to the users of the site.

One of the most difficult questions faced by hungry employees, professionals and tourist is deciding where to eat lunch without digging too deep in their pockets. Many just wander around until they find a restaurant or deli. With lunchtimedeals.com, lunch deals are delivered directly in the user?s email account every morning. All they have to do is print the email and take it to the restaurants where they will save big on their lunch.

Restaurants benefit essentially from the site because it is location based so their specials and coupons are sent directly to users who are in their vicinity. The site also features the restaurant?s menu, accepted credit card, delivery options and other helpful information.

The team at Lunchtimedeals.com believes that the site will become the one stop for all New Yorkers searching for great deals and specials at lunch time.

Consumers, with schizophrenic buying habits–spendthrifts on some products, tightwads on others–are part of a growing trend, says Michael Silverstein, a senior vice president and director for the Boston Consulting Group. “They’re willing to pay a premium price for products and services that possess higher levels of quality, taste, and aspiration–but are not so expensive as to be out of reach,” he says. Silverstein uses the term “new luxury” to describe these products. Think Starbucks coffee, Aveda shampoo, Victoria’s Secret lingerie, BMW cars, and Viking ranges–all of which command a pretty penny and engender fanatical customer loyalty.

Silverstein and his former BCG partner, Neil Fiske, have been studying this phenomenon, which they term “trading up,” for the past 10 years, during which they have analyzed more than 30 categories of consumer goods and services and surveyed 2,300 consumers about their buying habits. Their new book, Trading Up: The New American Luxury (Portfolio, 2003), documents their investigation into the forces driving this trend and profiles companies that have cracked the code to success in this market.

read the full article: https://pf.fastcompany.com/magazine/76/priceisright.html

He loves Armani, is seen just as often near a catwalk as competing in sport, confesses an adulation for Kylie Minogue, even designs his own jewellery. But he’s not gay.

So Ian Thorpe told Australia in a radio interview last November. With interests outside the domain of the traditional Aussie macho male, Thorpe talked about his sexuality for the first time. He was flattered that the gay community identified with him, he said, but he was, in fact, heterosexual.

“You know, I’m a little bit different to what most people would consider being an Australian male,” Thorpe told ABC Radio. But he’s not that different at all. Men – of all sexualities – are taking a greater interest in their appearance. They go to hairdressers rather than barbers, avoid using soap because it’s too harsh on their skin, visit the gym instead of playing sport and even have difficulty deciding what to wear.

They’re spending their time differently…
[Read more…] about Metrosexual – a new marketing segmentation buzzword

In as little as three years? time, older consumers will have become the mainstream market in the UK, accounting for over half of expenditure on food, drink and household products – a revelation that has significant implications for food manufacturers who must ensure that they cater for this increasingly important sector of society.

[Read more…] about Targeting the aging baby boomers