Good Design, Good Business in China

We often seem to speak different languages. Architects love to talk about space, light, and "transcending morphology."
Market is changing and a need today for this sort of design. Let's find efficient language
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The goal of the BusinessWeek/Architectural Record Awards is to create a dialogue between these two worlds and honor examples of architects and their clients working together to further each other's goals. Two years ago we brought the awards to China on a biannual basis, believing the message "good design is good business" would find fertile ground here.
This year we honor 13 building and planning projects including a small house in Hong Kong, a new railway hub, an architect's studio in Shanghai, and Finance Street, an 860,000-square-meter, mixed-use development in Beijing.
Far and away the most awards were handed out in the Public category, to buildings that serve a community or unite a neighborhood. Many of these awards went to cultural institutions, such as the Dafen Art Museum in Shenzhen, which attracts tourists to a district already thronging with art-school graduates, and to I.M Pei's design for Suzhou Museum, which juxtaposes the ancient collection of precious ceramics, paintings, and jade with a stunningly elegant exterior. AREP Ville's design for the South Station in Shanghai features a huge, dramatic, flying-saucer shaped roof, which shelters the thousands of daily commuters. The roof's design is not merely about being aesthetically pleasing: its perforated panels filter and diffuse the sun's rays, spreading a soft glow around the waiting hall and reducing the need for electric lighting.
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/apr2008/id20080421_404170.htm?chan=innovation_architecture_top+stories
20700110 Kim sungKi
7th Entry

Starbucks Company

About Starbuck

Starbucks Corporation is in Seattle, Washington, based coffee company. It Buys, roasts, and sells whole bean specialty coffees and coffee drinks through an international chain of retails. Also, It beginning as a seller of packaged, premium specialty coffees. Starbucks has consistently been one of the fastest growing companies in the United States. Over a ten-year period starting in 1992, the company’s revenues increased. Also, Starbucks store locations are increased.

Building a Unique Culture
Starbucks promotes an empowered employee culture through generous benefits programs, an employee sticks ownership plan, and thorough employee training. Each employee must have at least twenty-four hours of training.

Leveraging the Brand

Multiple Channel of Distribution
Besides its stand-alone stores, Starbucks has set up cafes and carts in hospital, banks,office building, supermarket, hotels, airline. Office Coffee is a large segment of the coffee market. Starbucks provides coffee,near the business office around the united.

Brand Extension
Starbucks coffee is also making its way onto grocery shelves via a carefully planned series of joint vertures. An agreement with pepsiCo Inc. brought a bottled version of starbucks Frappuccino to store shelves.

References:

Starbucks.com

20300780, Entry 7

University marketing

In the season of entering university, we can see so many advertiseing and marketing of universities. I don't think students much depends on publicity or advertisement choosing their university. However, it is working.
For my own example, as I was a high-school student, S universtiy was more low level than now. This university has no speciality in any area, and its image makes students who enter this Univ. be looked down on. Since the new adevertising and various brand making strategy were start, S univ. could be a pretty 'good' school attracting more high quality( high score level in entering exam)students.

Coupons Going Digital Too

          What used to be a shameful miser or people with no money do is now having a complete make-over and being a new successful business model for boosting up the sales. Coupons or promotional discount fliers are transforming its classical look and are distributed through phone services.

          Firms using such marketing strategies to increase their sales are cooperating with wireless carriers such as SK Telecom, KTF, and LG Telecom to provide their coupons to as many people as possible through free downloadable coupons and bar codes. Because of its convenience, people now don't have to go through all the booklets or vouchers to find the coupons and easily just press few buttons on their cell phones and download it in a few seconds.

          SK Telecom has been providing such service through "OK CouFun," which lets subscribers to have an access to varieties of coupon and discount promotions that could be reclaim at any given time. This service offers "...savings anywhere from getting hamburgers, attending musicals, renting cars and joining fitness centers" (KoreaTimes). One of the major benefits for using the service is that it's available for free.

          The wireless carriers are expecting more and more subscribers would use the service as economy gets tough and therefore, their efforts to look for more discounts will be increased as well. Since its success is boosting up the sales of the stores, many franchise chains are now asking the mobile service providers to work together in order to attract more varieties of customers.

          In the marketing class, I've learned that lowering the cost, differentiating products, creating strong suppliers and customers relationship, and targeting the niche markets are the key components to achieve competitive advantages. What use to be just an ordinary way of marketing the products or services is now having a totally different look and creates a great bargaining power which increases the sales. E-coupons, as the article illustrates, now became a strong niche market that differentiates its way of promoting organizations' goods and services and also at the same time, tightens the relationship with customers and creates royalty. I've used these electronically available coupons on few restaurants, and the way it works is unbelievably convenient and fast. This article showed me how this kind of marketing strategy can also affect the way people react to the products that the firm provides.

Reference;
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2008/04/123_22703.html
20601008 - 7th Entry

Pure Digital Flips the Script

I read an article about flip camcorder. You know the camcorder market is almost dominated by SONY. SONY is a huge japanese electronic company that has great power to the electronic market. And strangely, the simple and no brand name flip camcorder became the most popular product. The Pure Digital, the brand company of filp camcorder, just change some design and make it more simplier than their huge competitors. As a consequence, they hit a great homerun! The selling index in flip camcorder is more higher than the SONY's product. You may think that the customer considers the brand name importantly. But the design and convenience are more important than brand name. Maybe in Korea, the brand name is the most important factor, but westerners think that the brand name isn't very important. These are differences between two cultural locations. A good marketers must have to figure out the tendency of each different market.

Look at the picture. When I saw the picture, I thought that this may be an MP3 player, but this is a camcorder. Generally, camcorders have many buttons and these can make users afraid of the camcorders. Pure Digital removed the unnecessary and complicate buttons and make the design as a user-friendly product. The proto model of flip camcorder was sold in a drug store. And it make people interested and people began to indicate the weaknesses of the proto type model. Through these helpful feedbacks, Pure Digital innovated the first model and now the flip camcorder is a worldwide sensation in camcorder market.

If you want to become a successful marketer, you have to change the existing market. And this processes are often difficult to execute because creative thinking is necessary to the dominant product. Pure Digital just changed the design and improve convenience of the camcorder. The fuctions of the flip camcorder are poorer than it's competitiors, but they improved themselves by focusing on the needs of customers. The success is not away of you, actually, it's very near and you can derive these ideas an any time. I think the breakdown of stereotypes and prejudices are very important to the success of products. In the global market, these creative destructions are keys to the survival of companies.

references: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_17/b4081076893508.htm?chan=innovation_innovation+%2B+design_top+stories

20700067 entry # 7