Last Blog-iPads at T.J. Maxx

Since Friday of this week is officially the start of the Christmas shopping season, I found the article, $399 IPads At T.J. Maxx: Black Friday Alert , very fitting. 

This article is about the rumor that iPads will be available at T.J. Maxx for $399 on Black Friday.  I found it interesting that the iPad is the fastest selling electronic device EVER! So I wonder, how is it possible for T.J. Maxx to do this? It seems that Apple would have control over how much their products are sold at each retailer.  Also, if the demand for iPads is so high, how did the product get to T.J. Maxx in the first place?

The article does say that Apple usually offers 25 to 30 percent off of Macs and iPods during the Christmas season, inferring that you may be able to get a better deal at the Apple store.

Groupon!

I just recently found out about Groupon and after reading the article, Groupon at $3 Billion Soars like Silicon Valley, From Chicago, I thought, "where have I been?" This business that will generate $500 million  in sales this year distributes daily deals to 29 countries around the world and the business is growing dramatically.  The article says that since May of this year the number of markets Groupon serves has doubled to over 300.  In fact, Groupon has just recently become available to the Baton Rouge community.

For those of you who are like me and don't know much about Groupon, it's a business that offers steep discounts to members on products and services ranging from cupcakes to yoga classes, to dinner cruises, dental exams and the opera!  There are other sites that are similar to Groupon, such as Bargain Bee and Living Social, but as the article says, Groupon differentiates itself by not only offering a deal, but by offering a deal from the best merchants that are the most relevant. It seems that Groupon's competitive advantage is that they offer more deals and tailor or customize the deals more effectively to their audience than their rival sites.

Facebook Offers Local Deals for Mobile Users

I found the article, Facebook Offers Local Deals for Mobile Users, on the New York Times website and it's about how Facebook has recently introduced a new feature that allows retailers to offer coupons and special deals through a mobile application through the Places icon, Facebook's location feature.  I think this new coupon/special deals feature is a great marketing idea, especially for smaller, local businesses that may not be large enough to benefit from having a website.
Although I do think that its a great idea for businesses, the only thing I wonder about is how many people really use the Places feature on Facebook that lets users "check in" at different locations. I know that I do not use the Places feature and not many of my friends use it either.  Maybe since Facebook will start to offer coupons and special deals to users through the Places feature, people would be more inclined to use it and therefore the new local businesses will benefit from the new coupon/ special deals feature.

E-Voting

The article, E-Voting: How Secure is it? , caught my eye as midterm elections are coming up.  At first, when reading the article I thought about the benefits e-voting would offer. For example, it would definitely be easier to vote if you could vote from your home or office or even on your phone, and this would also increase voting participation.  But, when I thought about the disadvantages of e-voting, initially I only considered the risk of people voting multiple times or under a name that was different from their own.  However, the article pointed out an even greater risk, which is that e-voting could expose the election infrastructure to attacks from anyone in the world!  In my opinion this is a risk that definitely outweighs the benefits.

Wanted: Social Media Sifters

After reading the article, Wanted: Social Media Sifters, I was not surprised to hear that companies are now using a type of technology that can find, decode and sort information from social networking sites to answer questions as specific as "Why do men sport stubble?".  Although this question may sound odd, the answer to this question provides information that is important to advertising companies that now can use the fact that most people think wearing stubble is sexy and apply it to their ad campaigns.  This type of technology will allow for companies to get closer to the customer and pursue "markets of one".  It is also extremely helpful because consumers do not always say what they want when asked directly through a questionnaire or a survey; however they are more likely to say what they want on blogs and social networking sites. I agree with the article that it has come to a point where companies must participate in social media, or else they will definitely be at a disadvantage and know less about their customers than their competition.

Google and China

I found the article, Google Maintains Hiring, Seeks Additional Advertisers in China , interesting because I feel that it relates to about what we have been talking about in my marketing group concerning the Heineken case.  Like Heineken, Google is a global brand and therefore, I would give them the same recommendation: to think global, but act local.  By this I mean that Google should definitely go after the market in China, however I think they should customize the sites they offer in order to suit the different country regulations and the different culture.  Although this may involve limiting what is available to users and censorship, I feel that it is something that Google should be willing to compromise on in order to gain market share in China, which is an extremely huge market.

AT&T and iPhone Exclusivity

I think the article, AT&T Chief Isn't Worried About Losing IPhone Exclusivity, makes a good point about why the AT&T chief says that he is not extremely worried about losing customers once the company loses iPhone exclusively.  It was a good strategy, on AT&T's part, to exclusively offer the iPhone when it first came out because that made a lot of people switch to AT&T.  Once people switched they were then convinced to sign long term contracts with family and business plans, which will prevent some customers from immediately switching service providers.  In fact, this is why my family won't be switching service providers anytime soon. 

Even with these long term contracts that the CEO, Randall Stephenson, talks about, I can't believe that he is not at all concerned about eventually losing users to other networks.  Because, eventually, all of  those contracts will expire as well.  I think that although there may not be an instant loss of users, overtime as the contracts expire AT&T will see a major loss of customers to other networks, unless AT&T improves their customer service and can continue to compete on price.