Marketing

Assignment 1

According to the case You are Pre-Approved! (2011) college students spend a lot of money and the Credit Card Marketers know this too well. These marketers have taken advantage of this situation and have developed an advertisement strategy that specifically targets these students. College and university students should not be left in the hands of these marketers because they take advantage of their vulnerabilities and afterwards, the students are left with huge debts that they are unable to pay. For this reason, it is unethical to target to let credit card marketers on campus.

Since most college students are big spenders, the use of a credit card would lead to an expensive spending habit. This will result in huge debts that have very serious implications. According to reports, recent suicides by college and university students have been linked to huge credit card debts. Most students try to take more than one job so as to pay the debts, but at times, the debts overwhelm them pushing them to suicide. Late payment of credit card debts or the accumulation of huge amounts of debts can reflect on a student’s debt record reducing their chances of getting employed or to access higher education (Roy, 2011)..

College students are a vulnerable group and should be excluded from accessing credit cards. This is because most of them are not wise enough to make wise decisions concerning their spending patterns. Accumulation of huge credit card debts has serious implications and wherever possible, these students should be selectively excluded from credit card marketers on campus.

Assignment 2

Competitive pressures and changing of customer preferences force many marketers to consider position of their brand. However, huge investments on the company’s brand often lead to failure to produce any noticeable improvement in the market share or the overall image of the brand. McKinsey and Company successfully repositioned their brand which increased their market share thus maximizing their profits. To do this, they followed three major steps that they attribute to their success (Copeland, 2001).

First, the repositioning of the brand should be relevant to the consumer preferences. McKinsey and Company was fully aware of the customers’ preferences therefore devising a strategy that would attract more customers. In addition, customers’ attitudes should be well examined to determine the situations in which the brand is bound to bring powerful insights. Second, the company acquired the permission of customers in the repositioning of their brand. The repositioning of the brand should be logical according to the customers for it to be well accepted in the market. This gave the brand emotional benefits from the customers making it easy to move customers from the current brand to the anticipated one. Third, the company was committed to keep its promise to its customers thus delivering on the promise. Constant survey of the market is also important to get customers’ views and check on the performance of the new brand. Prior to launching the repositioning of a brand, trials should be done to assess performance of the brand and signals from customers (Copeland, 2001).

By following the above mentioned steps keenly, McKinsey and Company was successfully able to reposition their brand giving them a competitive edge over other key players in the market.

References

Copeland, J. (2001). Marketing Practice. McKinsey Company. Retrieved January 26, 2011 from HYPERLINK “http://www.marketingritson.com/documents/mckinseyonrepositioning.pdf” http://www.marketingritson.com/documents/mckinseyonrepositioning.pdf

Roy, A. (2011). You are Pre-Approved!