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Customer Manufacturing Update |  |
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Dear Mitchell,
Welcome to the July 2006 Customer
Manufacturing Update. We trust you missed us
the last two months. We have been working hard on
the breakthrough methodology that forms the basis
for this month's white paper.
If you have friends or colleagues who would appreciate receiving this e-zine, feel free to forward a copy to them using the "Forward e-mail" link at the bottom of the e-zine.
Brand positioning and brand communication are
important and difficult topics for most marketers.
How to position your brand and how to communicate
that position are critical to success. This month's white paper, "Customer-Focused Brand Positioning" looks at a breakthrough methodology to overcome those deficiencies.
GE's management under Jack Welch was famous for its position that if you can't be #1 or #2 in a market, you should plan to exit the market. Strong leaders make money and well positioned followers can make money, but also-rans rarely make money. If you ascribe to this truth, it is important that you realize what constitutes a "market." We are reminded by Wal*Mart that all markets are local. Sam Walton built Wal*Mart one store at a time, one town at a time by focusing on being the best store in town. His ability to create a great store in each town eventually lead him to create the largest retail company in the world. However, even the largest store in the world still deals locally. We are reminded of this by Wal*Mart's recent decision to exit the South Korean market. Wal*Mart never managed to gain a market position greater than #5 in the South Korean market with a 4% market share. Even though the discount store market sector in South Korean has been growing 17% per year, Wal*Mart has not been successful and posted large losses in the market. It seems clear that the retail customers in South Korea did not need another discount retailer. Their needs were adequately met by Shinsegae, Samsung Tesco, Lotte Shopping, and Carrefour. Wal*Mart did not add any value and shoppers did not shop. Just another reminder that being #1 or #2 in your market also includes defining your market ... correctly. And as others have said before, all markets are local.
From time to time we run across ads we consider to be pretty cool. We even think they may be effective. This one is for the RAV 4 from Toyota. Our North American readers will note, at the end of the ad, that the driver is on the "wrong" side of the car. Our UK readers will realize differently ... of course. In any event, this ad is quite clever in providing a humorous message as to the ends people will go to get what they want. You may need to watch it twice to get the whole point. It is a short video clip and you can download it using the link below.
In the April issue we talked about Jet Blue needing to raise average seat prices by $10 to break even. We noted that Northwest had instituted a policy of charging a premium for certain coach seats such as aisles and exit rows. We thought this was a novel idea. We appear to have been in the great minority in our views regarding Northwest, but we stand by our belief that all airline seats are not equal and charging a premium for a "better " seat makes a lot more sense than other pricing practices. That being said, we recently found an even more interesting airline seat pricing practice: the one used by AirTran. While we fly a lot, we haven't had the opportunity to fly Airtran until recently. It was then that we discovered their novel price to value approach. On AirTran you can purchase a deeply discounted seat that is not assigned until your arrival at the airport, or you can purchase a "discounted" ticket (they want you to know they have great prices on all their seats) with a seat assignment at the time of purchase. We love it when companies price to value and for the airlines that has always seemed like a challenge, but then again maybe that's because for too many airlines, passengers are an obstacle to the efficient movement of airplanes.
We appreciate any feedback you can provide to help us make sure these Updates give you value each month. Feel free to respond to this e-mail with any comments or suggestions for future topics or ways we can make these Customer Manufacturing Updates more valuable to you.
Thank you for your interest, and if we can provide
any
additional assistance in sales, marketing, strategy, or
innovation to help you increase your sales,
let us know.
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