Selling luxury fashion products online
This seems to be a trend these days. bluenile.com, redenvelope.com, eluxury.com...all tries to be the market leader in this category,
What does it take to be successful in this arena? I believe the most important thing here is customers' trust. Unlike electronics, fashion products do not have obvious features that customers can compare. moreover, there is more replica of luxury fashion items than anything.
It is really important that a company like these win consumers' trust about the quality of the product. Moreover, a good reputation about service and terms of sales is very important.
Shipping is another issue. Fashion items like handbag is very delicate. Having a good packaging for shipping and also a good shipping company are requisite in composing a winning formula.
The use of database also gives these companies a competitive edge. The ability to search by color, style, occassion, and season will give the site more functions.

"You're Fired"
I am impressed with Donald Trump. His new show, the Apprentice has won audience's heart, become the must-see show for MBAs, and become a paid advertising for his properties.
It is interesting how CEOs can benefit from a celebrity status. Trump has always been the media darling with his beautiful wives. Added to his recent exposure in the Apprentice, he has just strengthen his position as the most-entertaining CEO in the country.
Looking at his business, it makes perfect sense why he seems to be an active attention seeker.
If Trump can maintain a celerity status, more and more people will be interested in knowing about this guy, serch him onine, and then find out about many different entertainment facilities that he has.
I think pretty soon he will start a job-seeking site, career advice book, selling DVDs of the apprentice.
Another benefit I think Trump is getting out of the show is recruitment of active, aggressive, and intelligent young employees, whose adventurous spirit fit perfectly with the Trump's culture.

IS Branding IMPORTANT?
Companies all over the world spend millions or even billions annually in their brand-building activities. More companies sway from any temptation of going into a price competition. Is it that important?
What about in markets where customers are highly price-sensitive. Do these bargain hunters care about how good the brand is? Do they even care about the quality of the product? Will these people pay more for a Hugo Boss shirt if they can cover up just by paying $5 for a local brand?
I think before marketers should start their brand building activities in markets like this, they should first try to educate their consumers to appreciate quality. Teach the market to spot premium products. I think brand building activity (saying that one brand is better than another) will only be relevant if the market where that brand is selling has already appreciated quality and know how to compare a low quality product from a high quality one.

Customer Demography
Apart from Psychography, demography is the most common tool used to classify consumers. I suspect this method comes from a western thinking. In some countries where homogeneoity does not exist, demography may be a tool that may mislead marketers in classifying consumers. In the US, where there is a strong common culture that overpower many different sub cultures, demography might work, since the culture affecting consumer behaviors is similar. Therefore, assuming the culture constant, we can say that different consumer behaviors are results from different demography and psychography.
So in a more heterogeneous countries, a good marketer, in my opinion, should find out another 'cultural factors' that might be an important driver in consumer behaviors.
In Indonesia, there are 13,000 islands, thousands of languages and many different cultural backgrounds. In a place like this, a behavior of a 20-year old man from one island may be significantly different than that of a 20-year old man from another island. What causes this? Is it just the difference of characteristics of the geographic area? Or is it something more.
I believe the sub culture plays a crucial part in this difference in behavior. Religion, for instance plays a very important part.
Bottom line, a good marketer should find out what factor that drive the consumer behavior in different places with different cultures.

Marketing to Teens
Pimp Juice (www.letitloose.com) is a new energy drink from the rapper Nelly. This drink uses an offensive name and the 'don't care' attitude strongly asociated with the hip hop culture.
Marketing to teens is unique. Good but yet unethical marketers tend to utilize the teens' rebellious nature as one point of vulnerability to attack.
Making teens think that by using a particular product, they have become a rebel, is making those teens think that they need the product.
To take this a little further, marketers might make a community of teen users. This way, the marketers can create a feeling of acceptance to teens who use their products.
This is not an ethical move, and I do not think it is appropriate to use. However, ethics aside, I think this is a very very smart strategy.

Myth-Driven Products
Today the fashion world is dominated by the western coutries. European coutries has been associated with high quality designs and fashion items. Fashion trend in the world world is set by several key players, all coming from the West.
I think many times people associate European countries with culture and art, making them very credible in term of creating beauty.
Countries like Chine should be able to do the same thing. If jewelery designers in china position chinese culture as a leading culture, market chinese craftmanship as one of the best in the world even after hundred of years, they might be able to build the same crediblity in the fashion world.
Using jade as diamond, marketing jade as a premium stone. educating consumers about the value behind jade. Also creating a myth, legends, and culture behind the stone just like what deBeers did with diamond. I believe that China can return to the glory in its past when they still were the dominating culture in the world.

Making Customers as Evangelists
In the movie industry, consumers are highly brand-insensitive. They just want to have a theater with nice facility they can go to.
Today, many theaters are offering gift cards. Instead of calling it gift card, what if these companies call the card movie debit or something. So basically it is a prepaid card. what is different is that this card should be convertible to loyalty program card. When you use the card for the first time, customers should be asked to convert their card for abuy 10 get two free deal.
Upon converting their movie debit card to be a loyalty membership card, members will have an access to a website of the theater's online community. In this site, customers can rate movies. The rating will then be the base of the future recommendations that the theater will make to the customers.
This way, everytime someone buy a 'gift card' from this movie theater, that someone will become an evangelist for the theater and bring the theater one loyal customer.

Netflix Video on Demand
Netflix the biggest online DVD rental company. Right now, it has formed more than one million subscribers all over the US. The community of subscribers have provided Netflix with a more accurate recommendation system based on its collaborative software. This recommendation system has created a lock-in for Netflix's subscribers.
Now, if the technology for high speed internet has improved to a point where streaming a high-quallity video content is availabe cheaply, Netflix can basically have an online theater that always packed with traffic. Moreover, Netflix can use its recommendation system to distribute the demand equally to all of its titles (recommendation system will offer movies that a subscriber will like but have never heard of).
NOw, wouldnt that be interesting?

Kosher and Halal Food: Ancient Healthy Food
Atkins has revolutionized the food industry. People can sell a packaged food for a higher price just by having an Atkins-Approved stamps on the packaging.
I read somewhere that the US spends more on health-related products more than any other countries. This shows that having a health-related business in the US can be profitable.
Moslem and Jewish people have known and consumed healthy food for so long. Medical experts have confirmed that Halal and Kosher food are in fact healthier than a regular kind of food.
If marketers can re-position halal and kosher food as healthy food, they can create a new market that have a very high potential of growth.

Selling Populations Online
Any company online are trying to build its own community. Amazon, E-Bay, and Netflix has their own community of members, to which they sell their products or services. But there are others which just focus on building a community, like Friendster.
There are a fundamental difference between these communities. In the first group, people are joining the community have a common interest: the product/services that the company offer. However, with the second group, I think it is fair to say that people come with different expectations. Some are just there to fulfill an invitation, others are trying to find long-lost friends, while there are others who try to find a spouse and make new friendships.
Despite the differences, one fact holds true. These companies/websites have created a virtual city online. One advantage about this virtual city is that you can group its population by its interest, locations, and background just in a click of a button.
Friendster can use its community as a business venture. It can sell the access to its community to any company to sell a product. However, instead of using a mass approach, Friendster can help its clients to have a one-to-one approach to its community member.
I believe this can be a good business venture. Selling populations online.