Tuesday 30 December 2008

Google Pos-Campaign

Google Online Marketing Challenge

Post-Campaign Summary (70 points total, maximum eight pages submitted in English)

The Post-Campaign Summary has three components, an Executive Summary (6 points),
Industry Component (24 points) and Learning Component
(20 points). The assessment also includes Communication and Readability (10 points), and relevant use of Tables, Figures and Charts (10 points).
Executive Summary (6 points, one page)

This stand alone document provides your client with a project snapshot and highlights four key factors:
1. Campaign Overview – a basic review of the project by introducing the campaign goals and operational details.
2. Key results – discuss the overall campaign performance as well as the performance of each ad group. Specifically, you will want to reference each group as well as the overall campaign. This section should provide a brief overview of the key metrics.
3. Conclusion – a clear synthesis of the content of the report and key items. This is your chance to tie together the entire package and focus the client’s attention on the most important project aspects.
4. Future Online Marketing Recommendations – simple, actionable and well-justified advice on what your client should do in the future with respect to online marketing.
Develop the Executive Summary after you generate all other content, as it summarizes and will overlap with your content in the Industry Component.
Industry Component (24 points, maximum four pages)
This is the team’s chance to share the results with their client and expand upon the Executive Summary. The ideal approach is to write the Industry Component first and then summarize this content for the Executive Summary. As a rule, you would include most if not all of your Charts, Tables and Figures in your Industry Component and cover the following areas:
1. Introduction – Overview the Industry Component section and introduce it’s core content.
2. Campaign overview:
• Review the major campaign goals (strategic goals as well as metrics: CTR, CPC, and Impressions, etc.) set prior to the project and discuss your general strategies for approaching each goal.
• Operational details (campaign dates, money spent, ad groups used). Review the basic schedule and cost structure you followed, your methods for monitoring the account, etc.
3. Evolution of Your Campaign Strategy:
• What were the major changes you made during the campaign and what led to these changes?
• How did these changes affect your campaign?
4. Key Results – Summarize your results based on three weeks of data, such as:
• Overall performance of the campaign and individual ad groups.
• Discussions of performance of the initial campaign and changes in performance following your optimization efforts.
• Discuss the keyword combinations that were effective and ineffective.
• Highlight your success stories and make quick, but clear references to the failures you experienced.
17
Google Online Marketing Challenge
• When discussing performance, refer to the metrics such as:
- Impressions
- Clicks
- Click Through Rate
- Average Cost per Keyword
- Total Cost of Campaign
- Other metrics provided by the client, such as conversions
5. Conclusions – Synthesize the Industry Component, tie together the entire package and focus the client’s attention on the key project aspects. Take this opportunity to repackage all the information from the data section to display your practical lessons learned to the client. The goal here is to develop a great transition that summarizes the critical results and starts to link these results to the future recommendations in the next section.
6. Future Recommendations – Provide simple actionable and well-justified advice on what your client should do in the future with respect to online marketing.
Learning Component (20 points, maximum three pages)
The teams’ reflection on what they learned should cover four points:
1. Learning objectives and outcomes – what did the team hope to learn? How well did the
team meet their learning expectations? What else did they learn? What key outcomes will the team remember? What were the expected and unexpected outcomes from participating in the Challenge?
2. Group dynamics – what problems did the team encounter and more importantly, how did they overcome these problems? What were some of the expected and unexpected outcomes from working as a group?
3. Client dynamics – what problems did they encounter and as importantly, how did they overcome these problems? What were some of the expected and unexpected outcomes from working with the client?
4. Future recommendations – what would they do differently in the future to improve their campaign strategy, learning experience, group dynamics and client dynamics?
Communication and readability (10 points)
The Post-Campaign Summary should have a logical flow, be easy to follow, use proper English and avoid grammatical mistakes.
Charts, Tables and Figures (10 points)
Teams should intersperse relevant charts, tables, figures to illustrate their results. In addition, teams should label and refer to the charts, tables and figures in the body of the report.

Friday 26 December 2008

changes to google adwords 12/26

Here is some more changes done to our adwords:

By the way we only have about 300 left

General adgroup (CH)
I added these keywords
天然 natural
果醬 fruit jam
果優格 fruit yogurt
草莓優格 strawberry yogurt
藍莓優格 blueberry yogurt
桃子優格 peach yogurt
葡萄優格 grape yogurt

Deleted sweet in English
Deleted natural in CH

Open Biz adwrd
Deleted creativity, added Entrep, creating biz from zero, biz opportunity, poor economy, extra income, salary

Tuesday 23 December 2008

AdWords Log 12.23 - Amraa

I have done the followings to the campaign today:

1. I have finally figured out how to direct certain keywords to certain ads.
One should create different ad-groups with keywords attached to it. Therefore
I have separated all the ads into different ad-groups under 1 ad-campaign called
SnowFactory. You will be able to see each ad by clicking: campaign management --> campaign summary --> Snow Factory (under campaign name) --> you will see different ad campaigns (general (CH), winter present (CH), ox year, opening business (CH), NTU MBA program). To add keywords to particular ad, just press on the particular ad group and under keywords add your keywords.
2. Lowered daily budget to 100NT$. Considering that we still have 7 days to run and only 669$ left, I thought 100 NT will be better.
3. Changed the automatic bidding to manual.
4. Lowered bidding price to 25$ ~ 10$. Next time you add keywords, you may change the bidding price group by group.
5. Included content networks to the ads for 10$ per click.
6. Deleted the ineffective keywords

PayPal Merchant Services (Final version)

Q1

One can see PayPal’s early success from 3 different angles:
1. The entry time: As the transaction quantity and amount of e-tailing increased during early Y2K (year two thousand), incumbent methods of money transferring (checks and money orders; even eBay was fuelled by payments made by regular land mail) were being outdated. Whoever introduced secure, fast, easy funds exchange model on the internet was going to hit the jackpot big time. Although there were some participants in the internet money transfer sector, trouble was that people did not trust these payment systems because they were new and were flawed because they were not trusted as real currencies. PayPal had a few vital differences: 1. It used the dollar as its medium of exchange, rather than trying to create a new currency for online payments, 2. It used email for faster, less troublesome communications; and 3.It used the existing bank networks for making the payment, guaranteeing less fraud, more safety.
2. The viral or network effect of PayPal: As you gain new user, each user becomes a viral marketer for PayPal. To increase their customer base, PayPal began aggressively marketing the firm through special promotions, such as offering $10 to new sign-ups for PayPal accounts. The result was that PayPal surged from just 12,000 accounts in January 2000 to over 2.7 million by August 2000.
3. Minimization of the cost of transactions and authentication: They paid close attention and to the existing credit, debit card payment system and found out a meticulous way of keeping transaction cost to the minimal point. On the other hand, they enabled smaller scale merchants to accept credit card payments made from buyers to the merchants’ accounts through PayPal system. Buyers, on the other hand, were relatively safe to do business online owing to the fact that PayPal payments didn’t show private information (card number, credit history…) to merchants. The bonds created between buyers and PayPal, sellers and PayPal ultimately meant the ever increasing online purchases.

There are more reasons as following: First, PayPal discover the needs before competitors came in the market. First-mover takes all at that time. Second, PayPal seized the appropriate entry time. Not too fast or too slow. If PayPal entered the market too early, people probably not used to purchase online; and if it came in too slow, there might be several company competed for the market. Third, PayPal provided easy access and a safe payment method then. That was important when starting a new online business which builds trust with customers. This is three factors that PayPal made early successes.

This was also attractive for the small businesses or even individuals who can not use credit cards . Moreover than this PayPal offered for the auction sellers a better service for receiving the payments. (a quicker and convenient service by which the sellers do not have to wait before they ship the goods)So basically the reason for Pay Pal costumer-centered business model, which was developed to focus on any consumer problem or need to make their life easier .
Q2

70% of all e-commerce is initiated through web search, and Google is the largest search engine. What’s more, as Google is targeting customers through keyword advertising, content network advertising (needless to mention that YouTube and other most visited sites on the internet are of Google’s). Google has strengths for so many reasons: like the brand, service quality, the potential of users, search engine advantage and of course the technical experience and excellence. Google can offer all these service for free of charge and by the time they can be charged through advertisements. Or maybe they can charge the costumers as soon as they can sell their products through Google. This will be the efficient way for both Google and the online sellers. Because it is clear that besides earning money and increasing revenue the main competition is for the number of costumers which is an important factor to generate revenue from advertisements.

For Google to succeed, it should first acquire large enough customer base that use Google IDs. Although Google search engine is the most used engine, e-mail accounts base is not one of its core competencies. The current 2% of the sales amount and 20 cents on each transaction is a bit more expensive than that of PayPal’s, but compared to direct credit card sales, that is cheap. Google has three aspects as follows: Firstly, Google has much more resources to support the service. Those resources not only tangible, such as technical support and staffing but also intangible, like brand name effect. As a household brand name, people trust Google and it could alleviate the feeling of uncertainty when approaching its new services. Secondly, those who had Google’s account might get more easy access to its payment service. Most of people in the world have Google’s account or at least YouTube one. This will accelerate the growth of users and will be more likely to get in touch with its payment service. Thirdly, Google’s payment service is free to buyers and it costs less to sellers. The pricing creates more bargaining power comparing to PayPal.
The only way for PayPal to stay on the same business would be increase the amount on sites that allow PayPal transactions. Already they have expanded through different modes of transactions – mobile… If that doesn’t work, perhaps it is time for PayPal to invest in new technology, rather than in new business. They might work on RFID + online payment model. Cell-phones fitted with RFID chips are increasing in number. Why can’t PayPal come up with a system that combines the internet payment with daily cash payments? That way, PayPal might become the universal currency of tomorrow.

Shelley's summary

Q1. What explains PayPal’s early success?

The rise of PayPal was not an accident. Followed three-phase strategy, PayPal quickly earned lots of share in the marketplace and had gain revenues in a stable increase.

PayPal serves as a platform between two customer groups, one is cardholder and the other is merchants. PayPal has to rely on both sides to survive and gain profits. As long as one of the two vanishes, the platform will be unable to work. Through discovering the needs of both sides and the careful pricing method, PayPal builds its awareness from offering free charge on the beginning stage. As the first-mover, PayPal took huge risks but also reaped most of the benefits. At the first phrase, PayPal smartly cooperate with eBay to expand its user’s base. This strategy is pretty much like Microsoft’s one, which achieved success on the basis of the wide uses of IBM computers. On the other hand, PayPal expanded its target customers toward eBay’s international sites and thus swiftly opened its international markets.

Although eBay acts as the largest auction sites in the world and it brings traffics and large amounts of visitors and buyers, PayPal found out its brand was easily associated with eBay’s “online-flea-market-roots” impression. To set up an independent image, PayPal must start the business off eBay. Even PayPal met challenges afterwards; it had strengthened its profit model and the relationships with merchants early in the market.

See through PayPal’s strategies, we could find out sighs directly leading to its early success. First, PayPal discover the needs before competitors came in the market. First-mover takes all at that time. Second, PayPal seized the appropriate entry time. Not too fast or too slow. If PayPal entered the market too early, people probably not used to purchase online; and if it came in too slow, there might be several company competed for the market. Third, PayPal provided easy access and a safe payment method then. That was important when starting a new online business which builds trust with customers. This is three factors that PayPal made early successes.

Q2. Does Google represent a serious threat to PayPal? What strategy for payments would you recommend for Google? For eBay/PayPal in defending against Google’s attack?

Google does pose a threat to PayPal despite Google’s CEO denied. The problem is to find out how big the threat is. Google serves as the biggest search engine in the world and takes advantages as a leader in the market. However, it didn’t mean Google can absolutely replace PayPal in many ways. The influence of Google’s payment service toward PayPal is limited.
As Google CEO put it “It makes no sense to compete with what others are doing well….eBay and PayPal are very good partners to us.” It shows the new payment method that Google focused was only on online advertising.

For Google, it obtains advantages as the largest portal but not in payment service field. There are three advantages for Google to start up online payment service. Firstly, Google has much more resources to support the service. Those resources not only tangible, such as technical support and staffing but also intangible, like brand name effect. As a household brand name, people trust Google and it could alleviate the feeling of uncertainty when approaching its new services. Secondly, those who had Google’s account might get more easy access to its payment service. Most of people in the world have Google’s account or at least YouTube one. This will accelerate the growth of users and will be more likely to get in touch with its payment service. Thirdly, Google’s payment service is free to buyers and it costs less to sellers. The pricing creates more bargaining power comparing to PayPal.

On the other hand, Google has disadvantages which are exactly PayPal’s advantages. PayPal is an independent company focusing on payment method services while Base is one of the services under Google. That is, the relationship between Base and Google is inseparable; it makes it impossible for Base to compete with PayPal if Google collapsed (Just in that case, it might not happen). As the first-mover, once consumers get used to the services, it’s hard to change the behavior if incentives were not strong enough. Obviously, PayPal is more efficient and faster than the Google one. That makes it harder to compete.

If Google does want to share the market, it should firstly expand the users especially those merchants to have its account. To increase the incentives, Google could provide bonuses for new users and strengthen the links with its other services. Most importantly, Google should improve its quality in itself to follow up PayPal and continue to provide lower prices to attract new merchants and consumers.

For PayPal, it should target on both existing and new users’ segments in the same time but put more resources on new market. As a platform, the more people involved will attract lot more users. Also, PayPal should continuously improve its services to fight against Google. The bar for Google to surpass PayPal is still high.

Saturday 20 December 2008

PayPal

Q1. What explains PayPal’s early success?

One can see PayPal’s early success from 3 different angles:
1. The entry time: As the transaction quantity and amount of e-tailing increased during early Y2K (year two thousand), incumbent methods of money transferring (checks and money orders; even eBay was fuelled by payments made by regular land mail) were being outdated. Whoever introduced secure, fast, easy funds exchange model on the internet was going to hit the jackpot big time. Although there were some participants in the internet money transfer sector, trouble was that people did not trust these payment systems because they were new and were flawed because they were not trusted as real currencies. PayPal had a few vital differences: 1. It used the dollar as its medium of exchange, rather than trying to create a new currency for online payments, 2. It used email for faster, less troublesome communications; and 3.It used the existing bank networks for making the payment, guaranteeing less fraud, more safety.

2. The viral or network effect of PayPal: As you gain new user, each user becomes a viral marketer for PayPal. To increase their customer base, PayPal began aggressively marketing the firm through special promotions, such as offering $10 to new sign-ups for PayPal accounts. The result was that PayPal surged from just 12,000 accounts in January 2000 to over 2.7 million by August 2000.

3. Minimization of the cost of transactions and authentication: They paid close attention and to the existing credit, debit card payment system and found out a meticulous way of keeping transaction cost to the minimal point. On the other hand, they enabled smaller scale merchants to accept credit card payments made from buyers to the merchants’ accounts through PayPal system. Buyers, on the other hand, were relatively safe to do business online owing to the fact that PayPal payments didn’t show private information (card number, credit history…) to merchants. The bonds created between buyers and PayPal, sellers and PayPal ultimately meant the ever increasing online purchases.

The result of being based upon banking services and offering the lowest cost per transaction through e-mailed payments established PayPal's business model. The promotion, marketing and 'network effect' then turbo-charged PayPal to become the de factor standard for online payments.

Q2. Does Google represent a serious threat to PayPal? What strategy for payments would you recommend for Google? For eBay/PayPal in defending against Google’s attack?

Although PayPal, along with eBay, has become the main method of online shopping, and platform, Google is a large threat to PayPal. 70% of all e-commerce is initiated through web search, and Google is the largest search engine. What’s more, as Google is targeting customers through keyword advertising, content network advertising (needless to mention that YouTube and other most visited sites on the internet are of Google’s).

For Google to succeed, it should first acquire large enough customer base that use Google IDs. Although Google search engine is the most used engine, e-mail accounts base is not one of its core competencies. The current 2% of the sales amount and 20 cents on each transaction is a bit more expensive than that of PayPal’s, but compared to direct credit card sales, that is cheap. Trust is another thing that is hard to establish between two parties. At the moment, Google is allowing only those who have credit or debit cards. Those who don’t hold any of the two cards (bank account holders) should be enabled to connect their accounts to the Google account. As for the merchant base, Google, perhaps, could initiate the same promotional tactics of free money transfers up to 10$ for a limited amount of time just to increase the base. After the amount of merchants that have account on Google is large enough compared to PayPal’s, the rest will be history.

The only way for PayPal to stay on the same business would be increase the amount on sites that allow PayPal transactions. Already they have expanded through different modes of transactions – mobile… If that doesn’t work, perhaps it is time for PayPal to invest in new technology, rather than in new business. They might work on RFID + online payment model. Cell-phones fitted with RFID chips are increasing in number. Why can’t PayPal come up with a system that combines the internet payment with daily cash payments? That way, PayPal might become the universal currency of tomorrow.

Friday 19 December 2008

Deniz's Input or PayPal case

Question 1) What explains PayPal’s early success?PayPal which was founded in 1998 allowed its costumers to use their own e mail address, credit card or bank account to send or receive online payments. PayPal expanded its service among US and as well as this , in almost 14 countries , PayPal also highly used among the EBay users too. SO PayPal became an important part of eBay s growth and revenue. For the international growth which offered local services and seven currencies. Besides the costumers they also increased their partnership networks which enriched their both quality and potential revenue. PayPal accounts were also easy to set up “five minutes “ (as mentioned in the case pg 2)which sounds user friendly. After all, they also formed auction market place. This was also attractive for the small businesses or even individuals who can not use credit cards . Moreover than this PayPal offered for the auction sellers a better service for receiving the payments. (a quicker and convenient service by which the sellers do not have to wait before they ship the goods)SO basically the reason for Pay Pal costumer-centered business model, which was developed to focus on any consumer problem or need to make their life easier .
Question 2) Does Google represent a serious threat to PayPal? What strategy for payments would you recommend for Google? For eBay/PayPal in defending against Google’s attack?
It seems Google is not just a threat to web sites like PayPal or e Bay , the aggressive enlargement of Google is going to be a threat for every single business model on internet. Google has strengths for so many reasons: like the brand, service quality, the potential of users, search engine advantage and of course the technical experience and excellence.
What Google doing now is a result of their aggressive enlargement, some how all the web sites in the cyber world is related to Google. SO Google is using this advantage now. Google s way is offering more convenient way for the users that they do not have web sites are also enjoying the Google advantage . Google can offer all these service for free of charge and by the time they can be charged through advertisements. Or maybe they can charge the costumers as soon as they can sell their products through Google. This will be the efficient way for both Google and the online sellers. Because it is clear tat besides earning money and increasing revenue the main competition is for the number of costumers which is an important factor to generate revenue from advertisements.
For PayPal and eBay it is really a big threat which may decrease their revenue by avoiding the web users to buy the products through Google Base while they are searching, which is minimizing the role of Pay Pal or EBay. For both of these web sites, they should be more innovative and maybe they can company with Yahoo or MSN even maybe change the way they are working . Another way is to increase their consumer range . (both sellers and buyers)They can do this by decreasing the per cost for transaction or maybe if this increases the traffic on the web site they can use this data base for some different aims. (like advertising)

Thursday 18 December 2008

more keywords

Taiwan yogurt 台湾酸奶
Tapei Yogurt 台北酸奶
Taiwan desserts 台湾点心
Asian yogurt 亞洲酸奶

Google Adwords update

Thurs. Dec. 18th

I made some changes to our campaign and also came up w/ more keywords.
Amraa what does "" mean again and was "expense ticket" "消費券" a negative keyword?

創業 =undertaking 6 clicks, 462 impressions, CTR= 1.3%
雪 = snow 2 clicks, 1405 impressions, CTR= .14%
禮品 present, 3 clicks, but only .45%CTR, QS 4/10
優格 superior standard QS 7/10, 2 clicks, low CPC $8.51,



Total cost= $111, I think we can increase our
I increased daily spending to $140
I added a negative keyword; artificial flavor
I deleted “Expense Ticket”pore score 2/10 .23% CTR
I added keyword Christmas Dessert
I added yogurt online
I added food gifts 食物禮物
Christmas Present 聖誕禮物 (results below), I deleted it b/c only got 2 clicks buy had 370 imp at high cost
Bid $44.71 Clicks 2 Imp 370 CTR 0.54% AVG CPC $28.68 Cost $57.36

Negative words
人为味道 artificial flavor
玉米糖浆 corn syrup

Keywords
在网上健康酸奶 healthy yogurt online
命令酸奶 order yogurt
圣诞节点心 Christmas desserts
聖誕節假日 Christmas Holiday
在網上酸奶 online yogurt
食物禮物 food gifts
2nd campaign
清淡的酸奶 light yogurt

"消費券" Expense ticket Why do we have this keyword, it has a very poor score?

Andrea's PayPal input

What explains PayPal’s early success?
The payment method for Paypal was very attractive to consumers and auction sellers. For consumers they could choose the funding source from credit card, bank or Paypal account. Recipients of the funds had an option of where they could transfer their funds. For sellers they didn’t have to have a credit card, which was appealing to those who didn’t have credit history or couldn’t pay the fixed fees. Sellers could also send out the sold product without having to wait in the mail for the payment. It was a fast and efficient payment method.
Paypal’s marketing campaign brought in many new users due to the attractive award given as well as to existing members who referred.
Does Google represent a serious threat to PayPal? What strategy for payments would you recommend for Google? For eBay/PayPal in defending against Google’s attack?
I definitely think Google is a threat to PayPal because of its long existing brand awareness and high market search share. Since they already have a huge user base and are very credible existing users will easily accept their new payment offering. If users are already happy with Google’s service and perceive it as being secure they will most likely use it.
Google has found a way a unique business model to offer users and merchants added value. For users it is a type of 1-way shopping. After searching they don’t have to leave Google’s site to purchase. This business model also opens opportunity for sellers who don’t have a website. Google also uses its existing strengths for instance by matching knowing which keywords generate leads for an advertiser to how search drives sales. They could now offer advertisers more advice on ways to increase sells.
A reason they would be competing with PayPal is that through Base consumers don’t have to go to the marketer’s site where the payment may be done through PayPal. This would take away PayPal’s business when the consumer purchased through Base.
For Google I think its existing payment method with Base would work but they could also add it a payment method on the merchant’s site. But since Eric Schmidt stated they aren’t competing with PayPal this would go against what he said.
For ebay/PayPal to defend against Google they need to come up with an innovative service different from any others or be the best in the online payment industry. They need to have attractive prices to merchants and provide a very secure site. I believe PayPal is already currently doing the things I mentioned, therefore if they keep this outstanding service they should succeed.

Wednesday 17 December 2008

An idea

Why not also put NTUmarketing account in the blog? Then we can directly record what we've changed after changing something on google campaign!

Tuesday 16 December 2008

Last Case Question

Q1. What explains PayPal’s early success?

Q2. Does Google represent a serious threat to PayPal? What strategy for payments would you recommend for Google? For eBay/PayPal in defending against Google’s attack?

Questions for PayPal case next week

1. What explains PayPal’s early success?

2. Does Google represent a serious threat to PayPal?
What strategy for payments would you recommend for Google?
For eBay/PayPal in defending against Google’s attack?

Thursday 11 December 2008

Adwords Payment Information

I paid NT 2000 at 12/11 12:44 pm.

On the receipt it says we can track our payment by contacting: adwords711@google.com

Tuesday 9 December 2008

Yannick

Yannick's marketing manager says their division will come up with available time during
weekdays so that we could go meet them.

Actually, I've directly contacted with their manager so we don't need to submit any
proposal now.

:)

Sunday 7 December 2008

Mary Kay Case Final Writeup

Q1. Was embarking on a totally new, unproven strategy the answer, or should the company stick to what had always worked in the past?

It is obvious that Mary Kay has to do something to not only catch up with competitors, but to address its internal challenges. Installing a greater IT structure is the first step which needs to be met before it can improve any part of the business. Embarking in a totally new business strategy of e-commerce wouldn’t align with Mary Kay’s Golden Rule philosophy or direct selling business model. On the other hand, with the demographic changes, the company has to find the best way to offer efficiency and convenience for consultants. Given the fact that consumers of cosmetics are well educated and informed about health/beauty products, active involvement and close interaction with existing and potential customers is crucial for Mary Kay. This is the attribute of Mary Kay’s sales method, network marketing organization (NMO). For Mary Kay, besides the products, its sales force is the main business driver and key component of its success. Mary Kay’s pricing strategy is of great importance. Although switching to internet based sales will enable the company to vertically integrate the value chain, hence maximize efficiency, and increase sales revenue, but doing so will have cannibalization effect on consultants’ businesses.

Although the executives in the company believe it’s not easy to adapt consultants to technology (due to generation gaps) on pg9, at the end of the first paragraph, it says: “sales force was finding the new technology valuable.” We think once the consultants feel the value of technology, they will most likely adopt it. If company sales and revenue increase with complementing the internet and direct contact, consultants due to their gain, as well, will push themselves to adapt to new technology. By saying this, we don’t imply online sales but rather online communication and relationship building. So we think the company should stick to its business model but with a few developments.

Q2. What approach should it pursue?

The demographic change of customers has already been projected as a declining sales figure of Mary Kay. Technological "laggardness" (phone, mail based order, non-relational database) combined with new-generation female salespeople have produced increasing back-orders, unmet sales orders, inaccurate forecast, inefficient inventory control, decreasing retention rate. Mary Kay should develop their operation quality by investing more in IT. In a postmodernist era where people are trying to keep in touch with other people for socialization, it is strength to keep in direct contact with customers. Considering the emerging problems and socialization era, we believe Mary Kay needs to combine their direct sales method with e-commerce.

Management of the company should refer to e-commerce as a leverage point, or a booster for independent consultants. Since maintaining healthy relationship with sales force is so vital for the existence of the whole organization, Mary Kay should direct sales leads generated online to independent consultants. General information of new arrivals, new research results, company history, membership procedures should be put on the main website. Orders will be made, and recorded online. This coupled with relational database management will enable the company to accurately forecast demand, better plan production, precisely control inventory, decrease stock out and back-order, increase transaction efficiency/customer satisfaction, and reinvigorate sales figures.

Direct selling will still be an option for those who choose it but we will also have a blog for customers and consultants to stay connected. The blog in addition to the current consultant’s web-pages will provide a way for consultants to keep in touch and obtain feedback. To better monitor demand, consultants’ websites should be connected to Mary Kay’s mainframe. If consultants receive sales leads from the main website, then the company can charge a miniature percentage off the sales. Above all, there is a way for Mary Kay to overcome its current challenges and at the same time continue to meet its current consultants and customers’ needs. They should keep their business model but can add in e-commerce and adapt themselves to the current changes in society. (since the company’s goal in the very beginning was to increase the quality of the lives so they should stick to this idea)

Saturday 6 December 2008

Mary Kay Case Write-up

Q: Should it embark on new strategy or stick on to the original plan? What approach should it pursue?

Health/beauty products are experience goods, yet most of the time, they are bought on impulse. It is said that cosmetics makers sell “the hope of becoming beautiful” not the beauty itself. Compared to the era of Mary Kay and its competitors Avon, Oriflame’s rise, average consumers of cosmetics are well educated and well informed of which ones are better choices. Excluding the last fact and considering that the product itself is not a need-based commodity, but rather want-driven product, Mary Kay’s sales require active involvement and close interaction with existing and potential customers. This very attribute of the sales method created the so called network marketing organization (NMO), which is highly dependent on real time, viral sales carried out by consumers themselves. For Mary Kay, besides the products, its sales force is the main business driver and key component of its success. Although switching to internet based sales will enable the company to vertically integrate the value chain, hence maximize efficiency, and increase sales revenue, but doing so will have cannibalization effect on consultants’ businesses. The speed and the reach of internet will arm those neglected consultants with deadly weapon called – WOM over the internet.

Although the rationale of sticking on to its original plan seems to be the obvious plan, but the demographic change of customers has already been projected as declining sales figure of Mary Kay. Technological laggardness (phone, mail based order, non-relational database) combined with new-generation female salespeople have produced increasing backorders, unmet sales orders, inaccurate forecast, inefficient inventory control, decreasing retention rate. Considering the emerging problems of the old way of conducting business, I believe that Mary Kay will still have to switch on to e-commerce mode.

Management of the company should refer to e-commerce as a leverage point, or a booster for independent consultants. Since maintaining healthy relationship with sales force is so vital for the existence of the whole organization, Mary Kay should direct sales leads generated online to independent consultants. The company’s main website should serve as a navy aircraft carrier. Main products are rocket missiles. The fighter jets are independent consultants. The carrier ship attracts millions of villains to itself (the customers), yet missiles are carried and dropped by independent jets. General information of new arrivals, new research results, company history, membership procedures etc will be put on the main website. Orders will be made, and recorded online. This coupled with relational database management will enable the company to accurately forecast demand, better plan production, precisely control inventory, decrease stock out and backorder, increase transaction efficiency/customer satisfaction, and reinvigorate sales figures. Owing to the online democracy, consultants should be allowed to run their businesses online. To better monitor demand, consultants’ websites should be connected to Mary Kay’s mainframe. If consultants receive sales leads from the main website, then the company can charge a miniature percentage off the sales.

Thursday 4 December 2008

Deniz's Input MARY KAY

Q1.)Was embarking on a totally new, unproven strategy the answer, or should the company stick to what had always worked in the past?
It is obvious that Mary Kay has to do something to catch up the competitors. But I do not think it can be a good idea for the company to embark on a totally new strategy. This is why; the very core of the company is built up on direct selling model. And for such companies like Mary Kay the pricing strategy is an important issue .However if they start online sales, pricing will be transparent and will destroy the business model of the company. (Because the consumers of the company are also the sales personnel of the company for the end users of the Mary Kay products)As explained in the case, all these sales personal has developed the business model by socialization or on relationship bases. However internet or e-commerce is “high-tech” not “high-touch” way of selling, so it will completely destroy all the image of the company and trust .
Besides, as mentioned in the case , although the executives in the company believes that it is not easy to adapt these sales people to technology(because most of them are housewives or over middle-aged )in pg9, at the end of the fist paragraph, it says: “ sales force was finding the ne technology valuable” I believe that, if the company can increase the sales and revenue, since these people are also have interest they will also push themselves to adapt to new technology. By saying this , I do not mean the online sales or so but it is obvious in the case that the company is missing a lot business opportunity and even current consumers by its poor organization and communication. (Which can be solved easily by current IT)SO I think the company should stick to its business model but with few developments.
Q.2) what approach should it pursue?
Mary Kay can spent more on R&D and can enlarge their product quality and range. (On pg23 exhibit 8 for Avon)this can be helpful for the company to increase their sales/revenue. Besides this, they can still concentrate on more IT to develop their operation quality. (to decrease the delays or wrong orders) They should keep their business model but can also adapt themselves to the current changes in the society. (since the company’s goal in the very beginning was to increase the quality of the lives so they should stick to this idea by adapting themselves to changing needs)Maybe another Tupperware sample can be settled to secure the rights of the sales consultants.
Whatever they choose as a target strategy they should still keep the idea of direct selling. It is clear that internet is almost whole parts of our lives however , it is also clear that in postmodernist era people are trying to keep in touch with other people for socialization. And definitely direct selling is the way people can achieve this goal. Maybe Mary Kay can develop a blog (a social network area )also as an alternative to keep in touch with the costumers too. (actually they are doing something similar to this one on their web site)

Wednesday 3 December 2008

AdWords translation

So far we have come up with 3 ad groups. The corresponding themes are: Winter/Christmas, Beauty/Health, New business/Entrepreneurship. The three text ads with their corresponding keywords are as follows:
(Keep in mind that although Google adwords allow you to write 35 characters per line, but when it becomes Chinese characters, 2 character spaces are devoted to one Chinese character. Therefore, 17 character spaces for Chinese, 35 character spaces for English.)

1. 雪坊優格 冬季最美的甜點
Snow Factory Yogurt – Most delicious dessert of the winter season
  100%林鳳營鮮乳製造雪白優格,搭配繽
Snow white yogurt made of Lin Feng Ying 100% pure milk, packed with
  紛的天然果醬,最時尚的聖誕禮物。
Numerous (in color and taste) natural fruit jam, most appropriate Christmas gift
(Keywords: 布丁-pudding, 甜食-sweets or dessert, 下午茶 – afternoon tea, 聖誕節 Christmas, 冬天-winter, 冬季-winter season, 雪-snow, 爬山-climbing mountain (the only place people can go to sea snow in Taiwan is to climb up Yu Shan – the Jade Mountain, or Ali Shan – Ali Mountain), 鮮奶 – pure milk or cow milk, 鮮乳 – another way of saying pure milk, 甜點 dessert, 果醬 fruit jam, 天然 natural, 時尚 in fashion or contemporary, 禮物 gift, 優格 yogurt, 優酪乳 drinkable yogurt or milk yogurt, 奶酪 a type of cottage cheese, 乳製品 dairy product, 林鳳營 Lin Feng Ying – the name of the milk producer, 果粒 fruit pieces , 果肉 fruit tissue or fruit meat is the literal translation of fruit pieces, Christmas, x-mas, winter, )

2. 雪坊優格 時尚美容聖品
Snow Factory Yogurt – Most fashionable (up to date) sacred beauty product
  純手工優格,100%天然食材,僅市售1/2
All hand-made yogurt, 100% natural ingredients, contains only half
  的卡路里,享瘦同時,美麗加分。
The calories of the same products sold on the market, lose weight and beauty up simultaneously.
(Keywords: 手工 hand-made, 天然 natural, 食材 ingredients, 卡路里 calories, 熱量 calorific capacity, 瘦身 lose weight or become thin, 瑜珈 yoga, 美容 beauty, 美白 skin whitening, 曬黑 sun tan or become dark of tanning , 肌膚 skin, 減肥 lose fat, 發酵 to ferment or the process of milk turning into yogurt, 代餐 food substitute, 消化 digestion, 零食 snacks, 美女 pretty girls, 鮮奶 pure milk, 鮮乳 pure milk, 莎拉奶奶 Granny Sarah- the competitor of Snow Factory, 植物的優 – Zhi Wu no You – the name of the most famous 7-11 yogurt, 林志玲 – Lin Chiling – the endorser of Zhi Wu no You who is also the most famous model of TW, 楊丞琳 – Yang Cheng Lin the second endorser of the Zhi Wu no You, 優沛蕾 –You Shi Lei – another famous yogurt brand, 大滿足 great satisfaction – advertisement line from You Shi Lei, 才不會忘記你呢 – won’t forget you – famous advertisement line from Zhi Wu no You, Christmas, x-mas, winter, )

3. 雪坊優格 研究生創業夢想
Snow Factory – Graduate Student’s dream of starting an enterprise
  三位台大商研所學生,製作香滑細緻的優
Three NTU MBA students, made smooth and delicate yogurt,
  格,一同來感受細心與耐心的創業故事。
a story of business based on attention to detail (or circumspect) and patience.
(Keywords: 商研所 MBA, 台大 NTU, 台灣大學 NTU, EMBA, 大學生了沒 Student yet? – name of a celebrity show that endorsed Snow Factory, 大學生 – college student , 研究生 graduate student, 蘇立文 Su Li Wen , 黎懿慧 Li Yi Hui, 周慶麟 Zhou Qing Lin – names of the Snow Factory founders, 創業 – pioneering a business, 創新 innovating, 微型企業 small business, 創意 - originality, 中小企業 small-mid size business, 白手起家 – from rags to riches, 政大法律系 – Cheng Chi university Dept of Law , 故事 story, 感人 touching (story), Made in Taiwan, Taiwan)
Negative Matches: 鬼 – ghost (due to story), 吃到飽 – all you can eat, 樹 tree (Christmas tree), 公公 Grandfather (Santa Clause is usually referred to as Christmas Grandfather), 聖誕帽 Christmas Hat, 舞會 Party, A片 – Adult Video (due to pretty girls), 肥皂 soap (due to beauty product), 資源 resources (due to natural), 石材 minerals (due to natural),

Also, here is the ID, and Password to our AdWords account on google:

GMail Acc:
ID: ntumarketing
PW: networkmarketing

Q: What's the name of the class?
A: networkmarketing