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Starbucks–Why the Starbuck’s Logo Hype ?

admin — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 12:14:00 +0000

Howard Schultz, the owner of Starbucks has a story worth telling. He is a master at what he does and he brought it several key concepts to the marketing world.

He figured out that by providing speciality coffee, he could charge the customers a premium and change the attitude of traditional coffee which was considered “cuppa Joe” , thus bringing in the concept of customer engagement . Unlike the other companies running during the 1990, he outwardly rejected the franchising model and decided to spend the profits and marketing resources on its stores, employees and thereby improving the customer experience.

This lead to word of mouth publicity of Starbucks and created a more powerful brand which has dominated the coffee business ever since its launch. The customers promoted the brand free of cost through word of mouth and the there is a sense of customer ownership of the brand more powerful than any other brand.

There are examples of companies where logo change did not work – Gap who changed its logo had to revert back to its original logo within a week after massive criticism on twitter and Facebook. So much so, the company even tried a failed attempt to crowd source the new design to the customers who were annoyed by Gap’s initiative to change the logo.

How the customer would be associated with the new logo is still to be seen.

Getting your car serviced!

rohit — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 16:41:14 +0000

Ahem! Getting the car serviced seems to be a very simple task but try getting it done in a populous city. Whichever day of the week you choose for the servicing, you cannot escape the Murphy’s law. Crowded and unmanaged. Every time the service manager would say “please try to bring the car in a less crowded day for a better service”. WOW! I spend lakhs of rupees to buy a car and i spend on maintaining it at the authorized service center because i feel that i will get a good service just because they are “authorized”. ALAS! they are seldom OK.
I tried to get my HYUNDAI SANTRO serviced because of some sound problem from the rear bottom of the car and after leaving the car for two full working days, i discover that everything is OK except that sound. I started laughing after the mechanic told me that because of the rush we could not do it. Is it Hyundai to blame or is it the franchisee to blame?
Whatever it may be, Hyundai service needs to be improved because its strategy of positioning its cars as a family car does not fit well without good after sales service.

Rogues

Cost of no CSR!

rohit — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 17:18:03 +0000

how many think that csr is a waste? Coca-cola, the world’s largest beverages maker, should pay Rs 216 crore compensation for pollution and depleting groundwater, a Kerala government panel has said.
The nine-member committee, also recommended setting up of a tribunal and compensating the losses suffered by villagers in Plachimada, Palakkad district. The panel report, submitted to state water resources minister NK Premachandran in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday, held that besides heavy withdrawal of ground water, the bottling plant run by Coca-Cola’s bottling arm, Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages, had “inflicted harm on the farming and environment in the area” by dumping solid waste.
Sludge from the plant, supplied to farmers as fertiliser, contained dangerous levels of cadmium and lead, says the report, breaking up the damages into losses incurred under various heads between 1999 and 2004. While agricultural loss is pegged at Rs 84.16 crore, pollution of water resources is at Rs 62 crore, the cost of providing water is at Rs 20 crore, the damage to health at Rs 30 crore while wage loss and opportunity cost is at Rs 20 crore.
The plant was shut six years ago after protests against the company.
Coca-Cola, however, rejected the report. “It is unfortunate that the committee in Kerala was appointed on the unproven assumption that damage was caused and that it was caused by Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages,” a Coca-Cola spokesman said.
Rival beverages company PepsiCo has also come under fire in the state over water consumption by its plant, also in Palakkad district. Last week, a Kerala assembly panel had said the company should cut down the use of water by 60% at its bottling plant at Puducheri.
Denying the charges, a PepsiCo spokesman had said: “Palakkad is a model plant and is one of the most water efficient units in the PepsiCo system.”

rogues

Microsoft XP to be obsolete soon!

rohit — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:01:36 +0000

components of hard drive

Hard Drives will soon be available in a new format which might not run with XP. Currently the drives are manufactured in 512 bytes format which will be replaced by the 4k bytes format. The 512 byte format has reached saturation levels. i.e. it is becoming difficult to reduce its size further. Whereas 4k byte format has scope to reduce the size and increase efficiency simultaneously.
Experts in a discussion said that the industry has agreed to phase out the old formats by 2011. Except XP all other new operating systems are likely to support this new format. Some say that this new drive will still be compatible to XP but the data transfer speed might suffer.
I was trying to figure out why this 4k and not more or not less. Is this an incremental innovation strategy to milk the customers or is it the best solution? This move by the hardware industry might reduce the life cycle of technological products further.

Rogues

Turbulence in automobile industry..

rohit — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:47:18 +0000

turbulence

After the season of recalls, it is now time for the major players to reshuffle their stakes. The reason may be the unpredicted growth in automobile sales all over the world in the month of February. The recovery of JLR sales have increased the SPI of TATA Motors which in turn triggered Daimler to sell its 5.34% stake. Daimler, also plans to enter India by investing more than Rs.4000 crores for which it had collaborated with Hero Honda. However, the deal was called off. Now, after raising cash from stake sale at TATA, Daimler might strategically enter India and other developing nations.
In another move, Suzuki has raised its stake in Maruti-Suzuki to 55%, up 0.8%. Analysts say that Suzuki might go for further increase in stake in near future. Maruti, which sells every second car in India, has established itself as the crown jewel in Suzuki’s global operations and is a rare bright spot for sales across the world. It already contributes nearly 80% of Suzuki’s profits, and in volumes too, it has eclipsed its parent’s tally. So it is wise for Suzuki to leverage on this rare asset.
As the small car market is heating up, every major motor company is planning to launch small cars, whether they have experience or not. Ford for the first time, has launched a small car ‘Figo’ targeted at middle class people of India. Honda has also launched ‘Jazz’, a small car, but at a higher price(Rs.7.21 lakh) to target the niche market by making it a limited edition car. Except Toyota every car company plans to launch new products in recent months.
These big news in the automobile market in just a month calls for an in depth analysis by investors and consumers before taking major decisions. Is it a consolidation phase, where first movers might end up as market leaders or is it time to en cash on the growing automobile industry?

Rogues

China:War against Overcapacity

rohit — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:05:33 +0000

The largest developing country, China has pledged to improve the industrial efficiencies so as to grow sustainably for few more decades. Chinese officials, after doing a root cause analysis found that most of its fragmented industries were running under capacity because of high bargaining power with few large organizations. In a move to exploit rare and inimitable resources, China will try to consolidate the industrial sectors. It has be observed over the last century that big economies start with small companies but to sustain the growth, big is better.
The notice issued by the government is focused on electrical power, coal, steel and iron, cement, nonferrous metal, coking, paper making, leather making and dyeing and smoothed out policies and schedules on how to wash out industrial overcapacity in 2010-11. In order to force industries to cut over capacity, the government will charge extra tax on utilities and it is also planning to levy environment tax on companies not abiding. This move makes it clear that the growth in China is here to stay and it is not just a coincidence!

Rogues

The rise of Advertisement industry

rohit — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:13:13 +0000

brand ambassador

The advertisement industry experienced drastic fall in revenues during the economic downturn last year. WPP, the world’s largest advertising company saw a fall in profits by 11% in 2009. Organizations in all major sectors in order to cut short their losses reduced the advertisement budgets handsomely. It is said that the health of the economy can be judged by the amount of advertisements. If its low then something is wrong and vice verse.
Interestingly, brand ambassadors form a very expensive, important and affective part of traditional advertisements. As an indication of good times for advertisement industries, Aamir Khan, a Bollywood star recently clinched an advertisement contract worth Rs. 35 crore which is more than double his next highest! It is not just him but other powerful and famous men have attracted similar growths in most of the developing industries. WPP in particular has grown this year because of its capability and resources to exploit the opportunities in developing nations like India, china and Brazil. The first two months of 2010 recorded business worth $2 billion which is 50% of the entire 2009 earnings. According to the PITCH-Madison Media Advertising Outlook 2010, after a tough 2009, the Indian advertising pie is expected to be worth about Rs 21,145 crore this year, a 13 per cent increase over the previous one. Happy times hmmm!
Hence, it is wise to infer that the advertisement industry is back on the growth track which would in turn fuel other industries.

Rogues

Impact of price war in telecom sector

rohit — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:44:00 +0000

victim of price war

Apart from decline in profits for telecom companies, this price war has also affected the cash rich BPO industry of India. It is seen that because of the declining profits, telcos are reorganizing their contracts with BPOs to get better price points. The cutting edge competition between the telcos have forced them cut their operating expenditures drastically.
Moreover, the volume and revenue per user has reduced against predictions because of people opting for multiple SIMs to make use of the best schemes by various service providers. As a result BPO organizations like Hinduja Global Solutions, Firstsource and others have seen significant dip in their bottom lines in the last quarter. The only party enjoying his war is the consumer. They are just enjoying!
The question is how long will this price war last? Is it time for consolidation as seen in the airline sector a year ago?

Rogues

The patent war: Apple blames HTC

rohit — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:42:20 +0000

In a recent statement, Steve Jobs, head of Apple said that HTC had used around 20 of their patented technologies to fuel the growth of its competitors like Google. Therefore they have sued HTC whose products are used widely in the smart phone market. He emphasized on healthy competition which would create more value to consumers by means of better innovation. However, we have seen before that Apple is no saint in this regard. Nokia, RIM and Apple were already in a patent war which is yet to be settled. This case against HTC is just another brick in the wall.
What makes such huge organizations commit such mistakes? Is it an intentional mistake or an innocent mistake?

Rogues

e-commerce vs Me-commerce

rohit — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:13:39 +0000

me-commerce

E-commerce entered the technology market after the evolution of internet as a medium to communicate. It so happened that this technology was widely used to increase operational efficiency and save costs for the channel partners. The entire e-commerce industry focused on transactions rather than relationships. This feature was one of the key in many unsuccessful e-ventures. Lately, we can see that people are doing online business in a much different way. The influence of SNSs (social networking sites) in the e-ventures have become very important. Microsoft is planning to launch its outlook 2010 which is compatible to SNSs, auction sites like alibaba’s taobao has these features and many such ventures. This concept of making the e-ventures more social is now being termed as Me-commerce! The benefits it give to the consumers include large number of all size vendors, personalized service and access to reviews from like minded people. The organizations that have hugged this concept would definitely benefit from the first mover advantage. So, is it time to say e-commerce goodbye?

Rogues