Event: Networking Dating

The Social Phobia is a serious problem of people in recent years, but most of people know less of it and do not know how to help the group. To make more people understand the group, our team has held an event about it. The topic of our event is Networking Dating.Social Networking can be defined as the practice which is make connections through individuals to expand the number of one's business or social contacts. The people can make friends all around the world from it. And it is not the only benefit of social networking. It also diversified because the internet make individuals be able to access to social networking sites from all around the world. You can make the friends The attendees meet much more new friends and exchange their contact information, enjoy the delicious food and drink and play funny games during our event. 

It appeared so many problems during the event, it can fall into five aspects. This section is written to work out the way to solve it.

First of all, we should make a detailed understand of our event, especially the purpose and the key point of the event so that we will not deviate from the core theme.

To do a better promotion for our event, we should have creative awareness at first, design the attractive and distinctive posters to let people take notice of it. Then we should be consistent, do not be afraid of promoting the event to the strangers, to be brave to introduce it on a simple and interesting way. Next, we should pay attentions to the people who are interested in the event. For example, the people who have skimmed our website and show their interest on it is the group we should communicate with forwardly. 

Then, we should make much more detailed plan for the event, such as an extra plan for the accident. And we should check out the feasibility of the plan before take actions to make sure everything can go well. For example, the time of the each activity should be confirmed again and again to find out the problems and solve it on time. What’s more, the price of the tickets should be fixed according to the actual conditions, it will be influenced by the major consumer groups.

The biggest shortage of our event is implement, so we should devote much more effort on it. First, we should know about the use of each equipment we need for the event and practice it before the event to make sure it will not occur problem during the event. Next, we should let the attendees know clearly what they can do and what actions are not allowed before the event, it was ignored by us. And we should be force to control of the attendees if they refuse to meet our request. If they are still incoordinate, we should say sorry to them and ask the group to leave , so that we can make everything go well as expected. Then we should working with the members well during the event. Before the event, we should confirm each one’s work and think about that if accident occurs, who to solve it. Who to guide and who to control, those are all should be considered well before the event. And during the event, the members should use the radio to keep contact any time, to know the current situation and what to do next. What’s more, the issues of volunteers also should be paid attentions to. We should make sure the attendance of them before the event, if they will not come, we should make a sense of how to divide the work at that time. To be a successful event leader, we should be flexibility, be good at people skills and organizing, we also should be passional and make a good sense of time management. 

Last but not least, the event will not finished just after the holding, we should take the follow up it. For example, collect the advice from the attendees and confirm if they have understood of the purpose of our event. Then we can know what else should we do for the event.

This is the first time for us to hold an event, so we were not thoughtful and still have too much knowledge and skills to learn. The most important things we have learned from it is that there are many differences between practice and theory, we should in consideration of the actual changes before the event and do some plan for it, so that we will not be perplexed when the accident occurs. And making thorough preparations is the key to success, we should be diligent and do not play tricks. Make sure everything is ready before the event and check out the every details to prevent the problems. Thanks for such a forgettable experience to let us learn so many skills, and I think we can hold a much better event in the future.

Behaviour learning theory and marketing application

Behavior learning theory is defined in terms of the connection between stimulus and response. Behaviourists regard the consumers as a’black box’ with stimuli and response, while stimulus means an external events that an individual perceives and response represente the behavior of this person who react to this external event. Therefore, people’s behavior learning is always associating the stimulus and response, which means when the relate stimulus happen, and there is a relate response. Behaviourists will not focus on the dynamics of this learning process but the learning as a response to the external environment. Pavlov, is one of the major proponents of this learning approach, who raised a theory named classical conditioning. And he ensures that stimulus will influence the response relationship. In classical conditioning, there are three views he believed.

-All life is passive in nature, which can teach them how to repeat or through air conditioning; and, learning is a repeat of the connection / association between stimulus and response (stimulus - response) or (S - R).

- Learning could exist through conditioning; as such classical conditioning also known as respondent conditioning.

-When a stimulus with another stimulus matched pair, learning has become a condition, that a known response is the same reaction when used alone.

Pavlov through a series of experiments describes the process of conditioning to his dog. Pavlov began his experiments on dogs by measuring the amount of saliva of dogs, change. At first, he gave the meat (unconditioned stimulus) of dogs and nature, there are a lot of saliva (unconditioned response). He only bell (neutral stimulus), no meat, no drooling. In the next stage, he combined two, meat and bell (stimulus, stimulus conditions and conditions of us). The dog saliva (unconditioned response). He repeatedly paired in a period of time. At the final stage, Pavlov rang the bell and did not give the meat (conditioned stimulus) and the dog's saliva was separate (conditioned response). The dog becomes accustomed to the sound of the bell drool with envy

Thus, classical conditioning occurs in a person with a specific behavioral response with an unrelated stimulus, which is previously associated with stimulus. If a person is exposed to a series of repeated pairing of first and second between stimuli and occur gradually, a person's second economic stimulus and began and the first related, and draw the corresponding response, as the first alone or in combination with others.

Hence, Pavlov learning theories could be used in marketing segmentation for consumers. Give an example of a brand, Nivea cream.

Before conditioning

Girl—love, happiness, beautiful

Nivea Cream (Neutral stimulus)—No response

During conditioning

Girl+ Nivea Cream-- love, happiness, beautiful

After conditioning

Nivea Cream--love, happiness, beautiful

Consumer Motivations

Key Points

Needs are the essence of the maketing concept. Markets do not create needs but can make consumers aware of needs.

Motivation
-the driving force within individual that impels them to action.
-the processes that cause people to behave as they do. It occurs when a need arises that a consumer wishes to satisfy.
-Once a need is around, a state of tension exists that drives the consumer to attempt to reduce or eliminate the need.

Model of the Motivation Process

Types of needs

• Innate Needs

-Physiological(or biogenic)needs that are considered primary needs or motives.

• Acquired Needs

-Learned in response to culture or environment. Are generally psychological and considered secondary needs

Types of Consumer needs

• Utilitarian need

-a desire to achieve some functional or practical benefit
-rational motives

• Hedonic need

-an experiential need, involving emotional responses or fantasies
-Emotional motives

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Examples

consumer motivation for clothes

• utility

Some people think the practical value is the most important things for them to collect the clothes. The people who has this buying motivation pay attention to the  quality and utility of the clothes. It depends on the consumers' view of value and consumptive attitude

• safety and health

Modern consumers pay more and more attentions to their own safety and health, and put it in the first place when they buy the clothes. So the clothes made from pure natural material is more and more popular in recent years.

• covenient

The pursuit of convenient has became the purpose of modern people's consumption. So "The simpler the better" .

• cheap

This motivation is depend on the low cost of the clthes. The consumer with this motivation usually compare the price of the clothes when they buying, and they perfer the things with discount. It is realted to the low income of people, and it is popular motivation for most consumers.

• novelty

Consumer with this motivation pursue the novelty, peculiar and fashion, and they are always creative and desire to change. During the process of their buying, they pay attentions to if the style of clothes match the fashion instead of the quantity and price. They are the head person of new styles.

• compare unrealistically

The motivation of it is to show the differnces and superiority of themselves. They always pay attentions to the luxury Brand, and do not notice the quality and price, even not pay attentions to the safety or health. In recent years, the differences between richers and poor has been increasing, so the motivation has became stronger.

• special hobby

It depends on the consumers' special hobby. For example, the girls like rabbits, so they always choose the clothes with lovely rabbits.

Brand Experience

Jordan Brand is a brand owned by Nike. It has independent research capacity, but it still follow the Nike’s sales strategy. The series of Jordan Sport includes basketball shoes, training shoes and polo shirt. But the series of Jordan lifestyle create the new design inspiration such as baseball uniform and unique jeans.

We cannot ignore Michael Jordan when we mention the Jordan brand, he is the president and chief spokesperson of the Jordan. He was a very famous NBA basketball star, and now he is a successful businessman by his over 20 years’ business management.

Jordan brand produces the basketball shoes mainly at present. It is different from the other sports brand, the company center his design in the basketball, it provide the more comfortable feelings of sports for the consumers and devotes itself to the most forward and excellent basketball shoes. And in some ways, Jordan brand is the leader of basketball shoes industry and it is also the main feature of Jordan.

Jordan brand is unique because of its special marketing strategy and sales method. The marketing strategy can be summarized as the following aspects.

l Jordan brand group

l Official website sales

l Jordan brand’s China tour

l Co-branding project

l Copy of product

l Lottery sales

And Jordan brand has two sales methods which are physical sales and official network sales.

And Jordan has a very successful and unique sale methods named independent ID project. When the website shows the shoes with customizable color, the consumer can choose the color and material they liked and create their own logo. It increases the freedom of product design and meet most of consumers’ satisfaction.

Jordan brand is good at cooperate with other international brands and add the other brand’s characteristic to its own design. it is unique, so it is very experience. But it can increase connectivity to the other brand and achieve much more popularity.

Experiential Marketing for Starbucks

Starbuck, a famous brand comes from America, which becomes the most popular coffee shop in the world. How Starbuck have a lot of influence in some extent, especially as a successful brand. It’s about the inherent logic of the Starbucks culture marketing.

The first one is environmental implant. Starbuck provide an environment combining with traditional and modern coffee culture through visual, auditory and tactile, it makes the customers leave a mark of the first layer of contacts. Pictures and displays of the coffee culture, a large bar which lined with a variety of utensils for DIY and tools, some small sofas, smoothing music and always neatly Starbucks snacks, all of these provide a comfortable environment to the customers. Insides, especially the voice of the barista making coffee, can implanted to customers invisible.

The second one is product placement. Starbuck do the best to provide product in high quality. Starbucks purchase the best coffee in origin, and baked in Seattle. The following work include transportation, baking, preparation, increasing the ingredients, water filtration, and finally the coffee provides to customers, all of the working asked to be in high requirements. The staff id trained to be coffee lovers, know more knowledge of coffee than they can give customers a detailed explanation of the product characteristics of each coffee’s culture. Freshly ground coffee also become an attraction, allow customers to enjoy the scene if seductive aroma roasted coffee, increasing consumer real Starbucks coffee experience. In addition, the logo of Starbucks created according to the origin of the coffee and coffee characteristics design icon stickers to show the origin of coffee beams for each individual, so that consumers would think of various coffee origin and characteristics when seeing the product packaging.

The third one is advertising. The most interesting one is Starbucks do not spend any money on advertising. Starbucks operators who told that their shop is the best advertising. Even do not spend money on advertising, they are still very good at marketing. Starbuck choose to use some if the strategic alliance to help promote its products. Because based on experience in the United States and China Taiwan, and the mass media after the flood, its advertising began to lose credibility, in order to avoid waste of resources, Starbucks deliberately do not advertise.

All in all, Starbucks has its own strategic to gain attraction and success. 

Decision Making: the failure of the Royal Bank of Scotland

The decision taken in 2007 by the RBS Board to acquire ABN AMRO is now generally acknowledged to have been a critical strategic error.  

There were multiple factors behind RBS’s failure. Some of these were generic factors which made the entire global financial system vulnerable to crisis. These included unconstrained credit booms in several countries, inadequate global capital and liquidity requirements for banks and an inadequate regulatory response to the rapid growth of complex and opaque credit securities markets. But there were also factors specific to RBS that explain why it was among the banks that failed as the crisis developed.

While external factors were undoubtedly important in RBS’s failure, banks are run by people and those in board and senior management positions are responsible for the decisions they make. It is only with hindsight that it is clear that there were specific decisions taken by the RBS Board and senior management which placed RBS in a more vulnerable position than other banks when the financial crisis developed between 2007 and 2008. They included:

l Keeping RBS lightly capitalized in order to maintain an ‘efficient’ balance sheet

l Adopting a business model that was highly dependent on wholesale funding and therefore choosing to run with a high level of liquidity risk

l Expanding commercial real estate lending with inadequate gave rise to substantial losses, eroding RBS’s capital resources

l Rapidly increasing lending in a number of other sectors which subsequently gave rise to substantial losses, eroding RBS’s capital resources

l Expanding the structured credit business in 2006 and early 2007 when signs of underlying deterioration in the market were already starting to emerge

l Proceeding with the ABN AMRO acquisition without sufficient understanding of the risks involved

l Funding that acquisition primary by debt, which in turn made RBS’s capital position worse than it might otherwise have been

l Adopting the role of lead partner in the ABN AMRO acquisition, thereby initially acquiring all the assets and risks on behalf of the consortium

These decisions need to be considered in the context of what was, at the time, a widely held, but erroneous, view about the stability of the global financial system. Some of the decisions appeared reasonable at the time and were not dissimilar to those taken by other banks. They turned out badly for RBS once the benefit of hindsight. Other decisions could, in the opinion of the Review Team, be considered ‘poor’ or at least questionable at the time, for example where they seem to have been based on an inadequate appreciation of the risks involved.

In summary, the Review Team concluded that the judgment of the RBS Board in respect of the ABN AMRO acquisition was not characterized by the degree of moderation and sensitivity to strategic risk appropriate to bank. 

The Culture Influences

Gender differences and personality theory in this regard. Our culture has greatly promoted the development of our beliefs and values.

The first, social roles and status affect consumer behavior:

The people his family, his job, a group of his friends, like a position - All of this can define the role and social status. Social role is a group, a person should have, and according to his profession and his position at work, his position in the family, his gender attitudes and activities around you and look forward to his people. At the same time, it reflects the importance of social status and level of social or community groups for this role. Some people are more valuable than others. And the social role of consumer behavior and his purchasing decisions have a profound impact position. Especially for from all the other "visible" product person. For example, consumers can buy a villa of Porsche quality cars, but also the success of the community, on behalf of the outward signs of this car.

Secondly, cultural factors also influence consumer behavior

Cultural and social environment is essential when it comes to understanding individual needs and behavior. Throughout his existence, a man is his family, his friends, his social and cultural environment, values, preferences and common "teach" their cultural influence behavior. For example, in the West, usually drink or dinner at home, invite colleagues or friends. In Japan, on the contrary, to invite someone home often do not adapt to local customs. It is best to do in a restaurant outing with friends or colleagues. If Japan provides you the gift, courtesy, they offered him the same gift in return.

Sub-culture:

A society is composed of several sub-culture, a means of identifying. Subcultures who share a common experience based on similar or identical to the value of life of the general public. Asian culture is nationality, religion, race, age and sex of the individual, and so on.

Social class:

Social classes are more or less defined as a homogeneous group, and according to another form of caste lines. Although this is a very large group, we usually find out who belongs to a social class with similar values, lifestyles, interests and behavior. Suppose often between our social classes are divided into three categories: the lower class, middle class and upper class. People from different social classes often have different desires and consumption patterns. People usually do not often buy the same product, do not choose the same kind of holiday, do not always watching the same television program, do not always read the same magazine will not have the same hobby, not always in the same type of retailer and store. For example, consumers from the middle and upper classes generally consume more balanced and healthy food than the lower classes. If some retailers, of course, everyone patronize, more specifically for the upper classes, such as Fresh Market, Whole Foods Market. While others, such as discount supermarket, the lower classes, in order to attract more consumers. Social perception of the brand or retailer is playing the role of consumer behavior in the decision to purchase.