For me, I think I learned more about gathering market research and the challenges to it. I am more of the type of person who enjoys doing the market analysis part, but I never realized how difficult it can be to get the data. It all starts off with asking the right questions and what method you use. Obviously, the survey, interviews, and focus groups are the more common methods. However, I noticed that a lot of people had picture surveys or photo collages that I thought were very creative and informative for their research. As they say, a picture speaks a thousand words. However, a lot of people mentioned in their presentations that they learned to ask for captions from their pictures or explanations as to why those people chose that picture to answer the question. I guess, we need to ask what the “thousand words” are that go behind the picture, instead of trying to interpret the meaning behind them.

Along with choosing the appropriate method for your research, I found out that actually obtaining the data is really difficult. Depending on your target market, some people are just hard to get a hold of. Also, people in general don’t like to give of their time for a market research project unless there is some immediate reward for them. Since we don’t have any funds for this, it was a challenge to find people in your segment that would talk to us. In our project, we were looking for stay-at-home dads (SAHD). Some SAHDs aren’t necessarily proud about it and aren’t going to willingly volunteer their information, much less time to be interviewed. In order to interview some SAHDs, I went to Central Market’s play area on a Friday afternoon when I thought SAHDs would be taking their children. I had to watch their behavior and kids to assume if they were or weren’t SAHDs. A few of the fathers who I thought were SAHDs had very young children (in their toddler years) that were too busy to be interviewed at the time, because they had to keep a watchful eye on their children. When I did approach the fathers, I found it a little bit weird to be “Hey I’m doing a research project, and I was wondering if you were a stay-at-home dad.” However, if I didn’t ask, we would just be assuming that they fit within our segment. Overall, I found out from this project that gathering the market research data can be really difficult, and that doesn’t even include the analysis part.

Another concept I learned was the complexities of segmentation. I thought it was a simple group of people, but I found out that you can get very specific, especially with their behaviors and actions. When you think about it, there are many different ways to separate people. You can use age, location, marital status, and all of their behaviors. By getting your purchasing patterns, you can start to see that there are certain demographics that are clumped together by the way they make purchasing decision. You can work the other way too like in our project and choose a segment that you want to make and market a product to. I think that this is crucial when a particular segment is a growing trend, such as the stay-at-home dads or cougars.

From our project, I realized that even though we chose the SAHD segment, it could be split up even further to those who had older children that went to school and those who had younger infants and toddlers. This makes a huge difference in the product that we make because it affects the SAHDs behavior as to whether he finds his own things to do while his kids are in school or whether he take the kids out during the day to do activities. Another factor of the SAHD segment that we did not foresee was that some of them are more open about being a SAHD than others. It usually correlated with their age. Those that were older and had older kids were not as open to talk about their life to us unless we were a close acquaintance or relative. The younger SAHDs seemed to have the growing trend with them, and it is more widely accepted now.

I felt very comfortable with this project because it was consistent and did not go at an overwhelmingly fast speed at a certain time during the semester which is often the case in other classes. I feel as if everything was planned very well. I believe our team has worked well together although we are very different people. We usually split up the work evenly and went from there. We did not usually have too many questions until the very end of the project when we needed to get your feedback on our product ideas.

The process of the project went well if we did not know that we would be producing a product later in the semester. As one group said earlier, they already had an idea of their product before they conducted their research, so they were already biased as to what they wanted to hear from their data. I feel like our group was not aware of the product project (or it was in the very back of our minds) to where we were really looking at our data before we threw out product ideas.

In terms of working in a group, I feel like we needed more time in class to work on the final project, perhaps have a project work day because the teams were so large and it was hard for everyone in our group to get together at the same time. I also think that more learning would be facilitated if each person had more responsibilities and the group was forced to discuss the project more often. Smaller 3 people groups would allow everyone to have more of a say, as well as more time to interact with each other and discuss their ideas and learnings. I might feel this way because I am slower to speak than most others, and I do not get the chance to voice my opinions especially in a short amount of time with a large group of members (perhaps they were just more outspoken as well). Overall, I feel like the group experience was necessary for this project, but I don’t think that this group particularly helped or hindered my learning or enjoyment of the course material.

Domino's Crisis 101

In response to the short blog post Crisis 101: Now Measured in Minutes on http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/, I found that quick responses from companies are crucial in the time of crisis. Because Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, Twitter, and Youtube can rapidly spread a message, companies now have a 24-hour window to perform damage control for their brand.

The blog mentions two companies: Amazon and Domino’s who had a bad publicity crisis and did not react in timely fashion. One of my friends actually told me about the Domino’s video this past Friday and showed me a clip of it. I had not heard or seen it before and was automatically intrigued by this social media nightmare and was wondering why I did not get wind of it sooner. I figured that perhaps I should start watching the news or check my online news more often.

I found another article http://adage.com/article?article_id=136086 that detailed the Domino’s incident a bit more. This past Monday April 13th, a disgusting Domino’s Youtube video was posted showing two employees sticking cheese up their nose, farting on some meat, and other unseemly things to a sandwich before supposedly delivering to an unwary customer. Domino’s found out about it but delayed reacting to it right away, in fear that it would make the offensive video seem worse. Finally on Wednesday, Domino’s posted a Youtube response thanking the community for alerting them of what was going on and helping them find the employees who had posted the video. The video also told its viewers that the store had been sanitized and that Domino’s would review their hiring process a bit better. Domino’s opened a Twitter account to combat customer questions about the incident. The original video was pulled off Youtube, but it had already received almost a million views. Critics state that Domino’s should have reacted sooner on Tuesday instead of waiting for Wednesday to put out a response. They should have at least let out a Tweet or message showing the public that they were aware of the situation and were handling it appropriately. According to the blog, users might have different opinions or comments on the company if they got some response from the company at least. However, the critics were proud that Domino’s later spoke to their demographics on Youtube, Twitter, Myspace, and more notably Facebook to alleviate the crisis.

I believe that this mishap will actually build customer loyalty especially as many people see how well Domino’s handled the situation in the days afterwards. Although the response could have been faster, I think users will be impressed at the social media presence that Domino’s has, especially to communicate to their customers as well as keep track of what people are saying about their brand. In the next few weeks, I hope that Domino’s really takes advantage of this publicity and build up their social media tools to boost up their sales and build a stronger customer experience. I think people will be checking Domino’s Facebook page to see what the company or other users have to say. Domino’s needs to capture these users now and make an interesting website so that users will want to check the site again.

All in all, I believe that Domino’s handled the situation fairly well despite the time lag. The comments on the blog seem to agree with the author that a quick response should be part of Crisis 101 training. I think in the future, incidences such as these will happen more often and will be handled similarly but more timely, especially as companies learn from Domino’s, Amazon, Motrin and all the other companies who have suffered from the backlash of social media. It is a fair learning lesson for all of us, particularly marketing folks who need to be aware of what people are saying or watching about their brand in real-time, and also how to use social media tools to market their companies in terms of building stronger community and communication with their customers.

Gaining Insights and Building Customer Experience through Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube

Some questions beforehand:
I included 3 main technologies to focus on, but the bulk of my research so far is on Facebook. Is it okay if the paper is not evenly split? Also if I have enough information on Facebook and Twitter for the paper, may I cut out the Youtube portion?

Also, some of what I will be covering may be future services that could be offered in the future. Is it okay to draw out a vision for what might be the future of customer insights in the social media arena?

Paper Outline

I. Introduction
A. Creating a more interactive user experience with the product or service to build loyalty
B. Gaining customer insights through Web 2.0 tools and better segmenting your target market accordingly
C. Web 2.0 Technologies used:
1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Youtube

II. Facebook
A. Building the user experience with different Facebook tools for the customer to interact with the brand and product; let them share what they think about the product with others and meet other fans like themselves
1. Facebook applications, fan profile pages, videos and photo sharing, gifts, etc
a) Coke – second largest fan page; Sharing videos and photos of their Coke products
b) Dr. House – fifth largest fan page with almost 3 million fans; Not doing enough marketing with this page if it indeed the show; Suggestions for what they could be doing
c) Skittles – Mix the Rainbow music game – engages user
d) San Antonio Spurs - Facebook application with 15,000 active users; invite friends that you have who live in San Antonio – using demographics; ask for email to send updates, news, etc; User interaction with discussion board, photos, fan waves, fan rankings, predict team wins, etc
B. Gain customer insights about who they are, what kind of friends do they have and what do their friends do or like, what products do they endorse, etc
1. Traditional Facebook fan profile pages, groups, etc
a) Research for demographics, online behavior, network of friends, events, groups, etc
b) What do users have in common? Where are they different? How can you use any of this knowledge for marketing purposes?
2. Facebook Connect future opportunities – third party websites use Facebook API in order to access the user’s social network for their own website to show the user what their friends are doing
a) With an online retail shop that implements Facebook Connect, a Facebook Connect user could view what their other friend who has turned on FB Connect as well has been purchasing and reviewing.
b) With an online music shop, you could see what your friends are listening to and how often they listen to particular songs. The music industry could better market to users by knowing what friendship circle and profiles match with what music.

III. Twitter
A. User Experience
1. Customer Service interaction – ask simple questions and get a quick response
a) Whole Foods
b) Southwest Airlines
2. User Feedback – What do the users think about the product or service?
a) Jimmy Eat World – the band
B. Gain Customer Insights
1. Search.Twitter.com – what is being said about their company or product in real time
a) Obama’s Election Campaign and Inauguration
2. What are the most viral links that are being put up? Which ones are the most popular? Is this data readily available now or going to be in the future?
3. Learn something about your followers; not an extended profile right now, but may be in the future. Is there any valuable information in the common followers?

IV. Youtube
A. User Experience
1. Enable viewer comments, ratings, favorites, and replies to create a dialogue between video and the viewer
a) Obama’s weekly reports – no comments enabled. What is a better way for users to provide feedback to his thoughts? Wiki? Blog? Discussion boards?
2. Have users make their own videos as a marketing campaign with various incentives to the best video
a) One Million Uses for Post-It Notes
b) Oreo Moments
c) Kraft Cooking Challenge
3. Have users post their videos showing their customer experience
a) Southwest Airlines rap – over 1 million views
B. Gaining Customer Insights
1. What are videos that are catching the user’s attention? What feedback are you getting from company videos?

What do customers want out of an advertisement?

What I am curious about is how marketers and advertisers intend to gain the attention of those they are trying to reach, especially as the market gets more and more cluttered with ads. If we treated advertisements like a product we are selling, then what kind of customer experiences and insights would be helpful for us in getting our product out?

In the Persuaders movie, the fact that consumers are being bogged down by so many advertisements and interruptions is quite prevalent. We choose to TIVO our TV shows and skip the commercials or register for the “National Do Not Call Registry” to get away from telemarketers or buy satellite radio to avoid the interrupting radio commercials. Some of these ways were mentioned in the UnME Jeans: Branding in Web 2.0 Harvard Business School article which I will be pulling some of my ideas from. This only shows us one customer insight: we hate to be interrupted and will go pretty far in order to avoid it. We don’t show patience towards advertising. What can advertisers do then, if they aren’t allowed to interrupt us? What do we really want? Or would accept?

This past Super Bowl, I saw a commercial for Jack-in-the-Box that was more or less like a mini drama series that left a cliff-hanger and told you to go visit a specific website made just for the commercials. I almost did it too, if there was a laptop open at the time. The point being was that it was entertaining and catchy. I actually wanted to watch it. The same goes for iPod’s earlier musical commercial with the dancing figures that jammed out to Jet’s “Are You Gonna Be My Girl?”. I instantly loved the commercial because the song was so catchy and then again, entertaining. Advertisers are picking up that customers will watch advertisements…if they are entertaining. Some advertisements have gone to the extreme of entertainment, in which you found the commercial so funny, stupid, fun, or whatever it was, that you left what the advertisement was for. This might be the example of Burger King’s Dancing Chicken website. Entertaining, but not helping your business.

What else do consumers accept about advertising? When given an opportunity to connect with and experience the brand, users are more likely to pay attention to what you have to say. Web 2.0 is perfect for more customer interaction and invites those that you are advertising to, to actually communicate about your advertisement. For example, think about Facebook Fan Pages. Why are we fans with Victoria’s Secret? It is just advertisement. Isn’t it? Perhaps that may be true, but it is interactive advertisement. We like that. We want to get to know the brand, hear the inside news, and receive coupons for free stuff. When advertisers start treating their work as a more relational communication instead of a brand message, consumers are willing to listen.

Another customer insight that the UnME Jeans case points out is the impact of peer-to-peer sharing of advertisements. I think of the Microsoft TV commercial with Kylie, a 4 ½-year old who declares that she is a PC. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhre2C4THT4&feature=related I actually didn’t watch this on TV, but saw it shared on a friend’s Facebook wall. I believe that whether it is traditional media like a TV commercial or a Web 2.0 webisode, we are more open to it. Advertisers need to make their ads so that they can easily be shared with others, either through social networking sites, bookmarking sites, blogs, YouTube, photo collection websites, etc. When advertisers understand what customers want out of their ads, then they are much more able to create successful ads, whether that is in traditional or Web 2.0 media or a hybrid of the two.

Dr. Rapaille's 3 Stage Technique and Song Airlines

Dr. Rapaille’s 3-stage technique is a unique approach to market research that uncovers the primal instinct or reptilian code (as Dr. Rapaille refers to it) behind a product or product category. Dr Rapaille started this by trying to understand autistic children who couldn’t speak and tell him why they did what they did. His theory is that everyone has this reason to do what they do, but that it can’t be easily explained by their reasoning. His 3-stage marketing research technique is a way for him to understand the code of people’s purchasing behavior. In the Persuaders, many of these luxury brand names are willing to pay money to Dr. Rapaille for that code, in hopes of beating their competition with better advertised products.

The 3-stage technique starts off with the reasoning step in which Dr. Rapaille asks his focus group about why they would logically buy a product in this category. What words do advertisers use to describe their product? Dr. Rapaille considers this step to be appealing to the group’s intelligence and sees it as essentially useless to finding the reptilian code, but needs the focus group to get these ideas out of their heads before he moves on.

The second step is the emotion step. Dr. Rapaille asks the focus group to explain to him the concept of the product or product category as if he were a 5-year old child from a different planet. The purpose is to get to their emotions in how they perceive this product that is relayed through their story on this product to the child. Many of the participants leave uncertain about what that step was all about.
However, the focus group participants are in for another shock with Dr. Rapaille’s third and last step. This step is called the primal core in which the reptilian code underlying the product or product category can be revealed. Dr. Rapaille sets up the room with just pillows and paper and pen while taking the typical chairs away. He asks them to write down their associations with the product or product category during the first time they experienced it. From this, he extracts what he calls as the reptilian hot buttons or code that explains why we buy what we do.

One of the examples of a product category code that Dr. Rapaille gives is for SUVs. He orders that SUVs be made larger and with dark windows (the typical Hummer) because SUV consumers are going for domination. Yes, that is right. The SUV code is domination. I am not sure if I would label it domination. I think that my biggest reason to get an SUV is safety, but perhaps safety is part of dominating the smaller cars that may not fare as well in an accident, in which case I am buying for domination.

As for Song airlines, I really like the idea of them targeting the 30-40 year old women who have 3 kids and are not particularly loyal to any airline. I enjoyed their feel-good commercials especially with the Downtown song that would probably be familiar to that age group. The colors were especially vibrant which makes one feel young and free again, which is a nice feeling when you are arranging travelling plans. I particularly appreciated the variety of bold colors for their airplane seats and excitement of their flight attendants. Song airlines seemed like a viable option to fly when the company launched.

However Song airlines may have spent too much money on commercials that didn’t related to their airlines. They made a great brand recognition, but most people had no idea what the product of that brand was. I think that hiring Andy Spade was a decent idea for creative thought and understanding the emotions and culture that needed to be Song airlines, but they shouldn’t have given him that much control of their marketing. He is specialized to focus on the emotion and forgot about the actual airline company that he needed to be helping. There needed to be a greater link between Song as an airline to the Song as the cultural verb. Overall, they seemed to be on the right start, but unfortunately Delta couldn’t afford to keep them in business anymore and had to shut down Song in 2005.

Ugly Packaging or Weird Product? I'm not going to buy either.

In Kenna’s Dilemma: The Right – and Wrong – Way to Ask People What They Want, the author explores and explains several principles of how we ask the wrong questions or perform the wrong marketing research tests and wonder how we can get more accurate results. It seems that most of the time, the problem is realizing how people behave. It isn’t necessarily a bad test or a poor product, just the underlying way that people tend to react. The lessons in the chapter should be applied to how we do our market research because the human behavior factor is a huge influence on our results.

One of the lessons that resonated with me was the sensation transference concept. The chapter states, “they [customers] transfer sensations or impressions that they have about the packaging of the product to the product itself…most of us don’t make a distinction – on an unconscious level – between the package and the product” (160). In a way this human behavior is slightly disturbing because it doesn’t make any rational sense, and I think we would like to see ourselves as being rational. However, when I examine my own behavior, I notice that often times I buy the packaging more than the product. It goes along with the saying that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. We still do and buy the book with a cover that suits us. For marketers, they need to be aware of this and package their product to match the product, as well as fit their target audience. I believe green household products have done a good job at this, because they always have simple lettering, white or clear bottles, that signify the environmentally-friendly aspect of the product. I think this concept can be applied also to blogs. The design and layout of the blog is crucial to whether or not a visitor will see it as credible and relevant enough to read. If you compare corporate blogs to personal blogs (especially the typical teenager), you’ll see a huge difference in what it says about the blogger (more or less the product in this situation) and the target audience. Marketers should also be careful when it comes to changing the packaging. Pepsi recently changed their can to be a different font, and although I’m not a Pepsi fan, I perceive this “new” Pepsi to be the basic cola…all based on the font.

Another lesson that I saw relevant to marketers, as well as very pervasive in my own experience was the problem of weird/different/new products being classified as bad. The chapter puts it this way, “people reporting their first impressions misinterpreted their own feelings. They said they hate it. But what they really meant was that the chair was so new and unusual that they weren’t used to it” (173). In order to get over this problem, marketers need to allow people to experience those “weird” products twice, not just once. They should put out coupons and provide money-back guarantees, in order to get people to buy the full-sized product. I also think that they need to make the product cool and acceptable before it reaches the market. Celebrity endorsement is perfect for this situation or hiring influencers to hype the product up. Influencers can blog about how the product may be new and different, but is still good, which can warn people what to expect. My first thought on such a weird product is the introduction of gaucho pants. It has been quite a while, but when they first came out, it was strange and unusual-looking. No such fad had ever come out before. However, as more people started wearing them (particularly my older sister), I started getting warmed up to the idea of wearing them. I bought my first pair and was amazed at how comfortable they were. No wonder so many people opted to buy them, even though they were weird at first.

The lessons learned in this chapter can pertain to so many products but it is really up to marketers to understand their market and how they are prone to react. Realizing that consumers often view packaging and product as one and tend to shy away from “different” products, marketers can address these problems better.

How to Create Customer Experience Using Social Media

How do companies use Web 2.0 to create a relevant and engaging customer experience to market their products? With blogs, wikis, Youtube, facebook applications, myspace, twitter, podcasts, etc, the Web 2.0 social media options seem to be endless. I’m interested in examining how different businesses can use these tools to not only create an experience that will successfully link to their product, but also how these marketing campaigns can find out more information about their customers and what segment they should be targeting.

In my previous blog, I mentioned the Mountain Dew Dewmocracy marketing campaign that spurred fans to vote for their favorite flavor of Mountain Dew drink. After the voting ended and the raspberry-flavored Voltage was chosen to be part of the Mountain Dew line, Pepsi started a new marketing campaign in which consumers could create their own commercial to advertise the new Mountain Dew Voltage. I believe that it was a contest to see who could make the best one and it would be launched as a real TV commercial. However, most of the videos were posted on the website during the time span of the campaign. When I checked back now, they are using online games to attract users to win Voltage gear. With the easy and convenient sharing of media via Youtube, and the overall faster speeds of the Internet, companies can leverage the user-generated content of videos to promote their products. However, a 50-year old retired senior won’t usually be posting Mountain Dew videos, so Pepsi has segmented their population quite well to the generation of teenagers and young adults who use this form of media to communicate. If you don’t believe me about the video communication, just check out the video option on Facebook wall. If you think no one uses it, think again. A few of my friends in California had a music video wall posting war, where every other day a new video was posted on someone’s wall. The guys would post a Kelly Clarkson video one day, and the girls would respond with the Backstreet Boys the next day. This only proves social media is a huge hit and communication tool among my generation, if only companies can use it correctly.

Social media is still a new horizon for some companies though, and something like viral videos is a hit or miss. In the case of Burger King, you may create a huge make the chicken dance viral website, but it has nothing to do with your brand. In traditional media terms, it would be one of those commercials that you talk about to your friends and then can’t remember what it was advertising. Great entertainment value and possibly experience for the customer, but horrible brand advertising.

Specifically in my paper, I want to analyze a few companies and how their social media campaigns were successful or not in creating a customer experience. I’m not sure if I should focus on a specific social media though or a specific company or pick a few. How much information should I need for a 10 page paper? I found an interesting article on how Cheeto’s has a Random Acts of Cheetos where consumers can upload their own RAOC videos on their www.orangeunderground.com website. Click here for the article.

It is similar to Mountain Dew’s second campaign. The video marketing campaigns may be easy to find, but less diverse in terms of the targeted segment. Although I haven’t done enough research, I might want to look into Facebook Applications and what companies have created popular ones and what experience made it so popular for consumers to download. As you can see, I’m still processing my thoughts. Do you have any suggestions or ways to narrow my focus?