#5 diferenciation

In the class, my group chose apparel industry for the mini-report, and I found that each companies has a different strategy and differentiate the company and position the company differently.

At first, apparel market value keeps growing during 2009 to 2014 moderately, and it is expected to increase about 5.5%. By 2018, total revenues will increase to $1,694 billion.

I was surprised at the fact that the apparel industry keeps expanding because apparel is not a new emerging industry, like animation industry, rather it is old. I could not understand why apparel industry increases because people have been buying cloths, so the industry should be stable.



Our group chose H&M, and looked at it closer.
According to the company profile,  H&M had about $19,708 million of total revenue in 2013 and H&M made 6.4% growth over 2012.

H&M's strategy to expand is
going into new markets, especially Asia, Oceania, and America, other that European countries,(market development)
starting on line sales (market development & market penetration), and
creating a new fashion brand, for example sports collections (product development).

The competitors of H&M are
Marks and Spencer Group plc.,
Otto (GmbH & Co KG),
Arcadia Group Limited, and
Fast Retailing.

Marks and Spencer Group plc. is a major British retailer.
What is different about Marks and Spencer group is that they started food business (product development).

They keep investing on food business by opening 150 new UK M&S Simply Food stores over the next three years, and starting food business overseas especially in Western Europe.

Otto (GmbH & Co KG) is a mail order company mainly based in Germany and France.
It has a notable characteristic as a mail order company.


There are a lot of way to expand. Product/market expansion grid shows 4 different way to expand. Within one way, for example product development, there are a lot of opportunities, like starting new food business and creating a new sports collection. Each companies identify their own growth opportunity. For me, apparel industry seems that there are no way left to expand, but I thought there are infinite opportunities in every industry.

product/market expansion grid

#4 marketing using Twitter

Twitter in Marketing!

Do you remember about ALS ice bucket challenge? That created a huge movement and thanks to it, ASL Association raised $100 million as well as awareness. Now SNS has a tremendous power in marketing. In the class, we also learned that many companies use SNS, such as Twitter, for their marketing research. We saw the video that shows Domino's Pizza collects customers' real and honest opinions from Twitter. So I looked for other companies that use Twitter for marketing.


First product I found interesting is HUGGIES!
HUGGIES is the brand of a disposable diaper marketed by Kimberly-Clark. Kimberly-Clark has the top market share in the baby wipes industry in the USA with 35.4% in 2013. Kimberly-Clark also has a famous brand Kleenex. Procter & Gamble Co.(P&G) has the second biggest market share with 20.9%. Procter & Gamble Co. has the brand Pampers.
 

In 2013, HUGGIES provides a unique service, TweetPee.
If you put the sensor to a baby's diaper, it will send you a tweet to tell you it's time to change a diaper.


By this unique service, TweetPee, HUGGIES got some customers' attention.
The app that cooperates with the sensor also tracks the number of diaper used, so parents can easily know the number of diapers left at home, and order HUGGIES's diapers on the Internet easily by the app. Therefore, Kimberly-Clark keeps the customer buying HUGGIES again.

Here is the link to the article about TweetPee.



Next is about Colgate.
Colgate is the brand marketed by Colgate-Palmolive Company, and it produces 
soaps, detergents, oral products, and so on.

The competitors of Colgate-Palmolive Company are
1. P&G, whose sales in 2013 was $80,062,000,000
(Colgate-Palmolive Company comes here with $17,420,000,000 sales)
2. Kao Corp. $14,593,150,000
3. Sun Products Corp. $11,401,000,000.



Colgate's campaign is "There's Something In your Tweet"

Let Colgate tip off your friends anonymously through Twitter about food stuck in their teeth. They’ll also send them a $1.00 off coupon for a new Colgate Slim Softtoothbrush to help make sure it never happens again.
You will also get access to the coupon once your friend has received their tip.
- See more at: http://www.simplyfrugal.ca/colgate-coupon-1/#sthash.cI60obkj.dpuf

Let Colgate tip off your friends anonymously through Twitter about food stuck in their teeth. They’ll also send them a $1.00 off coupon for a new Colgate Slim Softtoothbrush to help make sure it never happens again.
You will also get access to the coupon once your friend has received their tip.
- See more at: http://www.simplyfrugal.ca/colgate-coupon-1/#sthash.cI60obkj.dpuf

If you visit Colgate's SlimSoft site, you can anonymously send a tweet to your friend and tell him or her that there is some food stuck in the teeth. Then, both you and your friend can get a $1 off coupon for a new Colgate Slim Softtoothbrush. You can use this campaign to tell your friend the embarrassing situation without hurting the friend's feeling or just joke and make your friend surprised for fun.

Here is the link to the article about the Colgate campaign
Another link to the article


Marketing using Twitter has a lot of advantage. Twitter is free, and companies can reach a lot of people so quickly. However, it is difficult to create a big movement such as Ice Bucket Challenge, and if a campaign is not successful, the campaign cannot get a lot of people's attention. Actually I guess many of you have never heard of these two services I wrote here.

Another problem of Twitter is that many older people still do not use it.The figure below shows the number of Twitter users by age groups. It shows that only 5% of people over 65 use Twitter. Now many countries have aging population, so I think the usual ways of advertising, such as TV commercial and billboard, are still very important.

Number of people who use Twitter 

number of people who use SNS 

I got these figures from this web site.

#3 ☆mission statement☆

#3 ☆mission statement☆

According to Kotler and Armstrong's "Principles of Marketing,"
mission statement is the statement of organization's purpose.

It tells "who we are" to the customers,
and the organization sets more detailed objectives based on the mission statement.

Therefore, mission statement should be simple enough for workers to remember,
distinctive in order to make difference from other similar companies,
and customer-focused to always satisfy customers.

I didn't know about mission statement before, so I was surprised that every company has mission statement, and we can find it on the official website of each companies.

In today's blog, I am going to find mission statements of many companies whose purposes I can't imagine!

First company is.... Twitter, Inc.

Twitter, Inc.'s mission statement is
"To give everyone the power to create and share ideas information instantly, without barriers."
https://about.twitter.com/company

I thought that this mission statement can be used for Facebook.
So let's compare with Facebook's mission statement.

Facebook's mission statement is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what's going on in the world, and to share and express what matter to them.
https://www.facebook.com/facebook/info

Facebook focus on connecting people.
I can also say that Twitter put more priority on immediacy.
And what I feel interesting is that both Twitter and Facebook describes their value for customer as the "power," because in my first guess, Twitter and Facebook provides the place(website) to share ideas.

In the "Principles of Marketing," Kotler and Armstrong explain,
"Mission statements should be market oriented and defined in terms of satisfying basic customer needs. Products and technologies eventually become outdated, but basic needs may last forever."

Both Twitter and Facebook made customer-focused mission statement, instead of explaining their products ,using the word ,such as the place and the website, so that these mission statements can lead their company forever.

My second blog ☆instant noodles in the USA☆

My second blog!

In today's blog, I'll show you the interesting cultural difference I found in Japan, and it is also related to marketing!

After I came to the United States, what I miss the most is Japanese food!
So I went to the super market and looked for instant noodles because it is easy to cook anytime I miss Japanese food.

I found a variety of instant noodles at Shaw's super market.

Then I found an interesting products, "Spoon it."

Can you guess why this product is interesting for me?

?

?

?

I'll tell you:)

Japanese people eat noodles with chopsticks, not with a spoon, fork, nor knife!

 So I was surprised when I found instant noodles named "Spoon it" All noodles in japan are long and we slurp noodles with chop sticks.

 But "Spoon it" is chopped noodles, which are about 1 inch long, so that they are short enough to fit into a spoon. 

I am curious about how American people eat noodles, because "Spoon it" is the only product which is made suitable to be eaten with a spoon. What tool (spoon, fork, or chop sticks) do you use when you eat noodles? Do you feel difficulty in eating noodles with the tool you use?  Or you don't eat noodles....?  

It's so tasty for me! I recommend you guys to eat "ramen," "udon," "soba," and "yakisoba," a variety of kinds of noodles in Japan, when you have a chance to come to Japan!

I found another difference in instant noodles.

It is about a flavor.

These are "CUP NOODLE," a product sell in Japan. We have different flavors, such as curry, sea food, chili tomato, salt, and so on. 

And I found "CUP NOODLES" in the United States, too!

Flavors are chicken, beef,shrimp, and chicken vegetable.

Flavors here are different from those in Japan and clearly named by the kind of meet used in the flavor. This is just my imagination, but I guess this is because in the United States there are alot of people who have different religion, and they care the kind of meet.

On the other hand, Japanese people just care about the taste, such as salt, curry, or tomate, rather than a kind of meet.

The company of  both "Spoon it" and "CUP NOODLES" is NISSIN, a Japanese famous food processing manufacturer, so I felt that NISSIN tried to understand the American market and did marketing in a different way from Japan. 

The last interesting thing about "CUP NOODLES"

Please compare the 2 pictures of "CUP NOODLES" in Japan ans United States.

Do you notice one small difference?　

The answer is S!

In Japan, the name is CUP NOODLE

    and in the USA it's CUP NOODLES.

(Sorry. The pictures are so small to find the difference.)

When NISSIN entered into the American market, NISSIN heard that English speakers thought of only one piece of noodle in a cup when they heared the name, "CUP NOODLE." So here NISSIN use "CUP NOODLES."

My First Blog! ☆my hometown, days in USA, and career goal☆

***** Nice to meet you! *****

 Hi, My name is Wakako and I'm from Osaka, Japan.

My hometown Osaka is famous for its distinctive food, its dialect, and also there are a lot of comedians.

The picture below is "takoyaki," ball-shaped snacks consisting of chopped octopus cooked in batter.



We cook "takoyaki" with a special pan. It is said that all families in Osaka have the special pan for "takoyakai," though in other area the pan is quite rare. Then you understand that "takoyaki" is the special food loved by people in Osaka!

You may also be surprised that I eat octopus! For Japanese people, octopuses are delicious food, not a devil! We eat raw octopus with soy sauce, what we call "sashimi," boiled octopus with cucumber and vinegar, and of course we  have sushi octopus. You should try "takoyaki" and octopus when you come to Japan!

The picture below is my favorite comedian in Osaka.






     I've been in the United States for about 6 months at the end of September. I studied for about 5 months in English program at SMC, so this is my first semester! Ans I will leave after this semester, so this is also my last semester at SMC. :(

 It is very beautiful here and I am excited to see all the colors in the Fall! I am also a little bit afraid of the sever winter, because in Osaka, it snows only a few days a year, and the ground is not covered with snow.

 I am junior in Japan, and my major is English area studies, such as linguistics, international business, literature, second language teaching, and culture. I learned a wide range of subjects, and my favorite is international business. That is why I am taking marketing class. Before I came here to study, I had a part time job in private school and taught English for 12-year-old students. In Japan, English education is compulsory for the students at the age of 12 to 15.

***** my academic and career goal *****  

 I'm really interested in international trade, so my career plan is working somewhere that is related to international trade, such as  manufacture, transport company, or bank.

 In Japan, I participated an internship program in a manufacturer of machine tools. I was mainly in purchasing department, and it was a wonderful experience for me. I learned that every departments in a company cooperate together. So there were a lot of meetings every day! And I was surprised that even workers in purchase department, who did not study engineering in their colleges, know well about machine tools. They said that they naturally learned about machine as they work because they need to work with people in other departments and they need to know about work in different departments. After I went to the manufacturer of machine tools, I got interested in manufacturers because I thought I is so nice to work together toward the same goal. I felt the bond between workers and departments. Right after I go back to Japan, I need to start job hunting, so my future career is one of my biggest concern.....! I want to participate in an internship program in the United States, too.

***** my reason why I came here *****

     I came here because I really want to improve my English and I like going abroad. I still have a difficulty to say what I want to say, so I try hard to be able to communicate freely in English. Also, days in the U.S. shows me a lot of cultural differences. It's interesting! In the next blog, I'll show you one of the interesting cultural difference I found in the USA and is also related to marketing!

See you soon.