tablets and advertising

The article that I found was one that tied into many of the topics that we have been discussing in class for the past few weeks. The article talks largely in part with how many retailers are starting to realize that after doing environmental scans of consumers in their area and consumers everywhere for that matter are technologically ahead of the retailers for a change. This is because a recent study showed that nearly one third of the top online retailers have optimized their sites for tablets, while just 59% have smartphone specific sites. This is a perfect example of how these companies are doing environmental scans to see what the consumers need, although this is only half of the battle. The next part of this is implementing a plan to target this growing number of consumers that have tablets, this is what I would consider to be the environmental analysis.  I believe that many online retailers are gonna catch on to this and realize that they are not utilizing their marketing powers and advertising opportunities to their potential and to their advantage because today more and more people are starting to buy tablets.  The article also went on to state that this report that was done out of a 100 online companies Nike was the only one that took full advantage of the tablet, the study showed that the company had created a iPad specific site.  I found this article to stick out from others because it really proves how rapidly things are changing in the marketing world for example technology is always progressing therefore marketers need to be evolving in order to keep an edge on the consumers.  This is so important because if they are not in tune with what technology and with what the consumer has at their disposal then they are automatically a step behind the consumer and the job of marketers is to be ahead of the consumers in order to give the retailers the advantage that they need in order to be as successful as they can be. This article really made me think of what will be in the near future in terms of how marketing will change and evolve as technology does. Will marketers ever be able to be one step ahead of the consumer if technology is always changing or will technology set a standard for  marketing tactics to always progress and change as rapidly as technology does?

http://www.dmnews.com/study-retailers-overlooking-tablet-and-smartphone-opportunities/article/228004/

PepsiCo to boost marketing spending

This is a Type A response.

After searching the web for something interesting that is currently occurring in the marketing world I came across an article on the Direct Marketing News website, there were many current articles but I found one to stand out more than others. The article that I chose was one about Pepsi and how they plan to expand their marketing and advertising by up to 500 to 600 million dollars this year alone which is a significant amount of money even for a company of this size. Their CEO and Chairman Indya Nooyi stated that 2012 "will be a transition year, in which we will be taking the appropriate steps to build a stronger, more successful company going forward." This is an interesting approach that the company is deciding to take because they stated that last year they had reported an 11% increase in revenues from the fourth quarter in 2011, this is an extremely large increase in revenue for a company that is so big and that has been around for as long as it has. They said that this increase in marketing and advertising will go to some of their more powerful and key brands such as Pepsi cola, Gatorade, Tropicana and Mountain Dew. They are taking an interesting approach to this year because they are calling it a Transition year and as they are starting to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on these marketing campaigns they are also planning on cutting up to 3% of its global workforce which accounts for nearly 8700 jobs over the next 3 years.  The reason that I find this marketing plan to be confusing is because they plan to save 1.5 billion dollars over the next three years.  This raises the question to many consumers, why is it that they are boosting their marketing while they plan to cut down their work force. This doesn't seem to match up to me because if they were looking to save money they would not plan on boosting their marketing while cutting their workforce in order to save money for the projected fiscal year of 2014. In conclusion i feel as though Pepsi could make some changes and still see a profit saving for 2014 while saving thousands of jobs.  In my opinion I think a company that is that big will lose money though its consumers realizing that they are cutting jobs in order to save money while boosting their marketing campaign, so i leave you with this question. What is more important to a corporation such as Pepsi saving some money by cutting jobs and boosting marketing or looking bad in the public's eyes for cutting jobs for monetary gain?

URL for class

/http://www.keene.edu/