Last Tuesday we all went to the Design Museum in central London. It wasn't what I expected it to be at all. It was much bigger than the Museum of Brands and had more of a modern feel to it. There were many products and items from modern day that were featured, such as shoes, cars, and paralympics wheelchairs. I found all of it very interesting. However, there were a few displays that stood out to me more than the others.
The "new age" lights that were upstairs in the Digital Crystal area were different from any lighting I have ever seen before. When I first saw them I walked by them because I figured they were just normal lights. However, when you look closer you can tell that they are somehow different. These lights are made with LEDs and are designed this way on purpose. They are meant to create a more elegant and soft lighting source. It even looked like the lights inside were almost moving/vibrating if you looked closely, which I thought was pretty cool. I think when the designer first thought of these they wanted to have an alternate lighting source for a time when you don't necessarily want harsh lights in your face, such as at night or before waking up in the morning. They also probably wanted to cut down on the costs of non-LED lighting and came up with a solution. I thought this display was very creative.
The other display I really liked was the man with the "thought bubbles" made out of the Swarovski crystals. I did not know what it was at first until I read the description about it, but just thought it was very insteresting to market and design crystals in this way.
After the Design Museum, Brooke, Jess, and I decided to go to Harrods. I had never been there before and was overwhelmed by everything I saw inside. I actually learned a lot about marketing here. Everywhere we went there were ads and people trying to sell you an expensive designer item, whether it was perfume or clothing. One of the things that I noticed was that the Lady GaGa perfume was the main focus in the Perfume Room. They had a central location and even had buff guys with no shirts on standing around offering the perfume samples. This is meant to better attract women to their display since there is a half naked man holding the bottle. None of the other perfume brands had men handing out samples with no shirt on. The Lady GaGa brand must have paid more to have the better location and advertising within Harrods, much like cough medicines pay for better shelf locations within a store. I just thought that all of this was very interesting since it applied to what we have been learning in marketing so far.
The second of the 4P's are Place and Promotion.
Place - The place or placement of products can be very important to how they sell in a marketplace. At Portobello Road the vendors are arranged into stalls of different sizes, with many products laid out on tables or hung on a clothes rack. This way, the products better grab your attention as you walk by and you will be more tempted to purchase an item since you can clearly see it on a table. This especially applies to food vendors because all of their food/produce is fresh, as you can clearly see from the positioning/placement of the products and the fact that most of them make their food, such as crepes, sausages, and hamburgers, right in front of you. All of this is done for a specific reason: to get the consumer to notice their product in the fastest way possible.
Promotion - In my opinion, promotions are the most important aspect of marketing and the 4P's because no matter what the actual product, price, or placement of an item is, consumers always need to think that they are getting a good "deal" and they will be more likely to purchase from your stall. There were many promotions at Portobello Market. Everywhere you looked there were signs with deals, such as the donut I ate. All of the fresh pastries were "3 for £3" (or £1.20 each). With this promotion they are enticing you to purchase more than one donut/pastry, specifically at least 3, in order to get the better price per item. Another deal I noticed was on women's scarves; there was a promotion for "Up To 50% Off!" There was even a deal on prepackaged chocolate where you could by "3 for £1". They connect with their target markets more easily this way because they give off the illusion of being nice and offering you a good deal on the products you want, and will therefore (hopefully) generate loyalty to that particular product or vendor during another visit. Vendors would rather you purchase items, even if it is at a discount, than walk away without buying anything at all. By using these promotions, vendors are trying to get you to purchase more than one item and in return they will give you a discount.
So on the same day we went to Museum of Brands we also all ventured into Portobello Market, which is probably one of the biggest and busiest markets I have ever been to. There are tons of items to purchase, including food, clothing, British/London souvenirs, and jewelry. The atmosphere is very fast paced and energetic, especially when walking between the different stalls and when the vendors try to sell you things. I was very proud of myself when I resisted the temptation of spending a lot of money and walked away at the end of the day having only purchased 2 items besides food. This market is a very good example of the 4P's in marketing, which stand for Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. I was able to connect it to numerous things including the first two P's: Product and Price.
Product - The product is a service, good, or idea that satisfies the wants or needs of the consumer. In the case of Portobello Market it was mostly goods, with the exception of the occasional palm reader service. There are many different aspects of products including quality/value, image, brand, packaging, and warranties/guaruntees, but not all of them apply to the market. The majority of the items in Portobello Road were food/fresh produce and clothing/souvenirs. I noticed that the quality of the food seemed really good and authentic. I ate a German sausage and it was delicous because it was cooked right in front of me and not kept under some heat lamp like cafeterias sometimes do. This is what made some of the different types of food stand out from eachother. The market also featured many different clothing brands and types, satisfying the wants or needs of any type of consumer. There was pretty much something for everyone to enjoy here and this shows that vendors chose the right type of products to sell.
Price - Portobello Road is pretty much known for the prices that they feature. You can find a bargain at pretty much every stall you look at. Jenn and I split purchasing a British flag for £2 and I bought a bracelet for only £5. I noticed that a lot of the vendors tended to sell some of the same products, but it was a competition to see who could sell it at the lowest price. Otherwise a consumer might want to buy the same item at a different stall and the vendor would lose out on a sale. I think this is why many of the same products were sold around the same price. The prices of items were also semi-flexible. For instance, you could bargain with a vendor to bring the price down. Depending on how badly they wanted a sale they would lower the price to make you feel like you are getting a "deal" or they could simply refuse your offer. I think bargaining helps to reduce the amount of cognitive dissonance a consumer may have had after a purchase.
This was the first post about Portobello Road and the 4P's. The other 2P's will follow in another post.
Just recently this past Saturday we all went to the Museum of Brands in London together as a class trip. I found this museum to be somewhat different than other museums I have been to in the United States. It was more of a niche museum that focused on mostly global and some British brands from the Victorian Era into today.
I thought one of the more interesting aspects of the museum was how in the branding section it showed a number of famous brands that have evolved in different ways, such as logos/symbols, packaging, coloring, and even slogans. I chose to look closely at the Nesquik product because as a little kid I always used to love chocolate milk and it was really weird to look at how much the product had changed in appearance since it was first created. It started off having a cartoon character on the packaging called Mr. Mix and ended up with a bunny, just like it is today. The shape and color of the container went from small and orange/brown colored to large and yellow/blue/brown. It just amazes me how a product we've all grown up with knowing and liking a certain way did not always start off that way when it was first created. The advertising and marketing of the product to the target market even changes. Nesquik seemed to be orginally aimed at children, but now there are even adults who love the taste of Nesquik chocolate milk.
Another thing I liked about the museum was the different advertisements in the Victorian Era that were aimed at different target markets. There were some that I was clearly able to distinguish from the others, while others weren't as clear and were sort of left up to you to figure out who they were aimed at. One of the advertisements that stood out to me was for cigarettes. I know there were a lot of cigarette ads there, but some of them were more appealing than others. This one featured an almost angelic type woman and had a tagline along the lines of "Support Gallaher's Two Flakes Tobacco, who belongs to no ring or combine". This stuck out to me because I could tell it was trying to make smoking appealing to women and used the line about having "no ring", which I took to interpret wedding ring, to make it seem like smoking is cool and by smoking this particular brand of cigarettes no man or ring can "own" or "control" you. Therefore it is also appealing to women who wanted to be independent and not told what to do, unlike how a wedding ring back in the Victorian Era could.
The museum had many other brands and advertisements on display, but they all had one thing in common. Even back many years ago advertisers and marketers used strategies and appealed to target markets in order to sell their products. I had never really thought about this before until I witnessed all of the different things featured in the museum and this changed the way I thought about products, advertising, and packaging concepts in history.
The "new age" lights that were upstairs in the Digital Crystal area were different from any lighting I have ever seen before. When I first saw them I walked by them because I figured they were just normal lights. However, when you look closer you can tell that they are somehow different. These lights are made with LEDs and are designed this way on purpose. They are meant to create a more elegant and soft lighting source. It even looked like the lights inside were almost moving/vibrating if you looked closely, which I thought was pretty cool. I think when the designer first thought of these they wanted to have an alternate lighting source for a time when you don't necessarily want harsh lights in your face, such as at night or before waking up in the morning. They also probably wanted to cut down on the costs of non-LED lighting and came up with a solution. I thought this display was very creative.
After the Design Museum, Brooke, Jess, and I decided to go to Harrods. I had never been there before and was overwhelmed by everything I saw inside. I actually learned a lot about marketing here. Everywhere we went there were ads and people trying to sell you an expensive designer item, whether it was perfume or clothing. One of the things that I noticed was that the Lady GaGa perfume was the main focus in the Perfume Room. They had a central location and even had buff guys with no shirts on standing around offering the perfume samples. This is meant to better attract women to their display since there is a half naked man holding the bottle. None of the other perfume brands had men handing out samples with no shirt on. The Lady GaGa brand must have paid more to have the better location and advertising within Harrods, much like cough medicines pay for better shelf locations within a store. I just thought that all of this was very interesting since it applied to what we have been learning in marketing so far.
