Just Marketing

How Zong Qinghou became the richest man in China

2012-12-09T00:01:00.000-05:00

Back in 2003, my former student, Nancy Dai, and I wrote a case study on the rise of the Chinese beverage giant Wahaha. We called the case “Cola Wars in China: The Future is Here.” The second half of that title was obviously a play on Wahaha’s cola beverage brand, Future Cola, and the size and pace of growth of the Chinese market. It was also a reflection of the optimism we found in the Wahaha

The Facebook spurious legal notice

2012-12-02T00:01:00.000-05:00

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Ho Ho Ho Happiness

2012-11-25T00:01:00.000-05:00

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Prisoners of war

2012-11-11T00:01:00.000-05:00

At 11:00 AM on November 11th, we will gather at cenotaphs, pause at work or at school, and reflect on past wars, on the sacrifices of our troops, and on the debts we owe those who fight. I pause to think about the folly of war. I think about all of the victims. That includes the countless civilians killed. I reflect on the puzzle of why civilian casualties remain “countless” in a world where

Hobson's choice on Tuesday

2012-11-04T00:01:00.000-04:00

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Value and values

2012-10-28T00:01:00.000-04:00

If you're a marketer, consider this dilemma: what would you do if you know a product you sell is crap, but the customers love it, want more of it, are willing to pay a premium for it, and can’t get enough of it? Would you make and sell more of it, or have nothing to do with it? The ethical choice is to have nothing to do with it, you say?

Too much innovation

2012-10-21T00:01:00.000-04:00

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Service economy conundrum

2012-10-14T00:01:00.000-04:00

Here’s a series of questions I puzzle over about service companies in the 21st century. Why is it that in a service economy, telecom firms, insurance companies, airlines, cable providers, and utilities are among the most hated by consumers? Why is service so bad? Why is it that you dread having to call your phone company to tell them they made an error on your bill? Why do insurance

The company outsmarting big pharma in Africa

2012-10-07T00:01:00.001-04:00

This is a guest post by Laurence Capron and Will Mitchell. Laurence Capron is the Paul Desmarais Chaired Professor of Strategy & Director of "M&As and Corporate Strategy" Program at INSEAD. Will Mitchell holds the Anthony S. Fell Chair in New Technologies and Commercialization at the University of Toronto. They are coauthors of the book Build, Borrow, or Buy (HBR Press, August 2012).

Apple, directionless?

2012-09-30T00:01:00.000-04:00

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Sh*t managers say

2012-09-23T00:01:00.000-04:00

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Money on the mind

2012-09-16T00:01:00.000-04:00

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Differentiation vs. centrality

2012-09-09T00:00:00.000-04:00

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In praise of bling

2012-09-02T00:01:00.000-04:00

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Apple vs Samsung, rulings by courts and consumers

2012-08-26T00:01:00.000-04:00

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What's love got to do with it?

2012-08-21T15:54:00.000-04:00

This is a guest post by Prof. Aaron Ahuvia. Aaron is Professor of Marketing at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. His other appointments include an Associate Professorship at the School of Art and Design on the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus, a regular Visiting Professor’s appointment at the Ross School of Business where he teaches Social Marketing. He received his PhD in

Corporate brand takes the podium

2012-08-05T00:01:00.000-04:00

If you’ve been watching the Olympics, you’ve noticed that Procter & Gamble has more airtime than Phelps and Bolt combined. Yes, I said Procter & Gamble. Not Tide, not Febreze, not Gillette. P&G. When did P&G start corporate branding? More importantly, why? It used be that P&G never used its corporate brand. Unilever does. Nestlé does. S. C. Johnson (a family company) does. Johnson

Bieber, DeGeneres, and "Like" marketing

2012-07-29T00:01:00.000-04:00

There’s a classic question about marketing that everyone asks at some time or other: does marketing create needs or just uncover them? The answer has always been: both. It is absolutely essential for marketers to understand what customers want. And it is just as important for marketers to be able to influence what the customer wants -- to create needs. These two objectives are

Price discrimination: when is it seen as fair?

2012-07-22T00:01:00.000-04:00

Back in 2000 Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com apologized to consumers for a “random price test” in which the same item had appeared for sale on the company’s web site at different prices for different consumers. It appears consumers were upset at the differential pricing. When I discuss price discrimination (the technical economics term for differential pricing) in class, some students get upset

Why do your customers buy from you?

2012-07-15T00:01:00.000-04:00

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Store Wars, second edition

2012-07-08T00:01:00.000-04:00

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At the CSSG 2012 Conference

2012-07-01T00:01:00.000-04:00

Every year the Customer Strategies for Sustained Growth conference brings a group of about 30 business school academics from around the world to INSEAD’s campus on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau. The objective of the conference is to promote thinking about sustained growth and to talk about ways of introducing this thinking into business school curricula. In these recessionary times

What happened to disintermediation?

2012-06-24T00:01:00.000-04:00

With the rise of the web in the 1990s came predictions of disintermediation. In a world where the upstream players (the makers of products and services) could reach end customers directly through the internet, there was no longer a raison d’être for intermediaries. This was particularly true for information industries – banking no longer needed branches, music artists no longer needed

Missing label

2012-06-17T00:01:00.000-04:00

You’d think this is a pretty easy marketing problem to solve: branded goods companies in the developed economies come under fire for poor labor practices in the world’s manufacturing and assembly hubs such as China, Indonesia, and Bangladesh. The routine is now familiar: the press “uncovers” dismal practices and blasts them, consumers are “shocked!, shocked!,” to discover the sweat-shop like

Just Marketing

Top 10 posts

How Zong Qinghou became the richest man in China

The Facebook spurious legal notice

Ho Ho Ho Happiness

Prisoners of war

Hobson's choice on Tuesday

Value and values

Too much innovation

Service economy conundrum

The company outsmarting big pharma in Africa

Apple, directionless?

Sh*t managers say

Money on the mind

Differentiation vs. centrality

In praise of bling

Apple vs Samsung, rulings by courts and consumers

What's love got to do with it?

Corporate brand takes the podium

Bieber, DeGeneres, and "Like" marketing

Price discrimination: when is it seen as fair?

Why do your customers buy from you?

Store Wars, second edition

At the CSSG 2012 Conference

What happened to disintermediation?

Missing label