Gilted into Splurging

Recently I went perusing online for birthday gift ideas and happened to stumble upon a little gem of a website called Gilt Groupe. The website hosts designer sales for a certain period of time at extremely discounted prices. The only issue is when certain items go on sale there may only be a few sizes at that price and then they sell out. This is a genius marketing ploy for the discount-savvy fashionista because they will be willing to spend money at that discounted price. This also goes back to the idea of spending more than you planned through promotions , sales, etc. When you see designer jeans for half the price you are more likely to buy two pairs. But, do you actually need two new pairs of jeans? I guess that depends on the person.

So upon finding this site I reacted like a little kid in a candy shop looking at everything sparkly and shiny on the website from Cole Haan shoes to Paige jeans to John Hardy Jewelry. Now this is where I got suckered into the ploy. On any other website I could have deferred my purchase till later or used the convenient “share with a friend” button to send the items to whomever. But, that wasn’t the case here. Because if you do “share with a friend” then the item may be sold out by the time the “friend” sees it. It’s almost like risky shopping in that are you really willing to wait and see for the item if someone else buys it?  It’s tempting and enticing to want to “win” the designer product and beat out the other shoppers which turns into impulse buying.

Now, I may be late to jump on the Gilt trend boat but when I discovered it was more than women’s fashion I was amazed. Jetsetter lifestyle, bedding, city stuff and more my impulsive side was trying to take over and justify a trip to Vero Beach for less than the “normal” price but probably about the same price as any major competitive travel booking site. As the rational and business side of me was back in control I begin to think of what an enterprise this truly is. Warehouses of designer clothes and shoes and bags and jewelry, all at discounts but only a certain amount bought for each size. Hundreds of thousands of people registered to shop for those few items and trips and most receiving reminder emails. It truly is a game of reaction time and risk of waiting or buying to get what you want (but may not need).

Needless to say, a few items later I may have splurged but at least I was conscientious enough to notice how easily I was sucked into an appealing site and that sometimes the main story is too good to be true. Even the website name, Gilt, makes you feel like you can splurge a little more and that feeling guilty is acceptable. 

Chrissy Moreyra is a senior Business & Enterprise Management major and marketing concentration who has seven days of classes remaining for her undergraduate career. 

Are You Listening to Me or Just Hearing Me?

One of my classes last year mandated that we bring our laptops to every class.  Every day we spent the whole time using a specific type software.  While we were supposed to be following along on our computers, much of the 75 minute class period was us listening as the professor explained to us what we were doing and why we were doing it, not just how to do it.  As a result, we were only supposed to be looking at the screen/typing about 10% of the time.

I noticed, however, by looking around the room, that close to no one in a 30 person class was actually focusing on the professor.  To make matters worse, the professor was actually quite funny and often cracked jokes with his dry sense of humor.  Unfortunately, the jokes were often missed because most of the students were not listening, as the material was fairly boring and monotonous.

One of the phrases most students hate to hear from professors is, “alright please close your computers.”  This is because there is an obvious tendency to do other things on your computer while sitting in class.  These range from replying to emails, checking fantasy sports teams, applying for jobs, and stumbling.  While some are more appropriate than others, the reality of the situation is that when students are on their computers, they are not paying attention to what is going on.

To test this, I recently watched a few people in one of my classes in which having a computer is okay but not necessary.  While my data is not 100% accurate, it shows a theme.

I watched 4 students for 60 seconds.  Two of these students had computers and two did not.  I chose both a male and female for each of the two categories, in an attempt to limit outside factors.  What I found correlated positively to my hypothesis.  The male student who had no computer spent all 60 seconds either looking at the board or at the professor.  The female student was looking at either the professor or the board for 57 out of the 60 seconds.  Conversely the female student who had her computer was looking up at the board/professor for only 20 seconds while the male student looked at the professor/board for only 3 seconds out of an entire minute.

While I know that my results are not 100% accurate as the students may have been taking notes on their computer, I was able to see many screens throughout the room.  All had a notes page but everyone at one point or another, while I was watching, was on the internet doing something.

I, like any student, am for bringing computers to class, especially when time is an issue to respond to emails or check an important website.  But I do find it interesting the correlation of how the computer limits attention to the topic.

Jordan Jacobson is a senior at Wake Forest University.  He is graduating this Spring with a BS in Business and Enterprise Management with minors in both Psychology and Journalism.  He is particularly interested in consumer behavior and decision making

I'll Be Your Teenage Dream Tonight

I recently went shopping with my mother and sister to stock up on winter clothes. They had come up to visit for a football game, and we had all day to spend Sunday shopping and wandering around Winston. We arrived at Hanes Mall around 1 on Sunday afternoon and began our mission of finding winter clothes. My mom likes to go shopping once - buy pants, shirts, coats, shoes, socks, and everything we may need for winter all at once, so we were all prepared for a long day of shopping. One of the first stores we came to was Abercrombie and Fitch. My sister is still in the teeny-bopper stage of her life so of course we had to go in. I'll admit that I use to love the store - the loud music, the stiff smell of cologne that hits like a train as soon as you walk in the store, the tight clothes, and the visible moose logo on every single piece of clothing in the store, I loved it all until I came to Wake and learned that people only wear J. Crew. So anyways - we went in the store, and my mom immediately commented on the huge picture of the naked guy on the wall. My sister had already begun scanning the store, so I was left to listen to my mom's complaints. That's when I began to notice that moms all around the store were murmuring to themselves about the naked pictures on the walls like this one. (And this one isn't even bad!)


But that wasn't the only thing they were complaining about. They were muttering about not being able to see the prices of the clothes because the lights were so dim. They were complaining about not being able to argue with their daughters about how tight the pairs of jeans were because the music was so loud, and they were sniffing constantly in between their complaints at the overpowering smell of cologne. But if there are so many things moms hate about this store, why did they still allow their daughters to shop here? 

Some of the reasons moms have for allowing certain things are completely beyond me, but the reason they allow their daughters to shop in stores like Abercrombie and Fitch has a lot to do with the teeny-bopper's behaviors and attitudes towards shopping. Today teenage girls (and guys) have a lot of pressure on them to look their best. They have to be as skinny as the models and always look cute, and clothes are one of the biggest determinants. In Abercrombie and Fitch that day, I saw several young girls trying on clothes. They would come out and show their friends or their moms the outfits they were trying on and many would ask, "Is it tight enough?" Teeny-boppers want everything to be skin tight - I know I did whenever I shopped there and my mom and I would argue forever about which size jeans to get.

Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" is a perfect example of the pressure put on girls today to fit into the tight jeans from Abercrombie and Fitch and look their best. Here are the lyrics just in case you haven't heard them lately.

I might get your heart racing
In my skin-tight jeans
Be your teenage dream tonight

Let you put your hands on me
In my skin-tight jeans
Be your teenage dream tonight

 My sister is a perfect example of the teeny-bopper I am talking about that lives by the lyrics of Katy Perry's song. Her body language throughout our shopping experience and the things she looked for in the clothing she chose exemplify the values of the teenage dreamers perfectly. She only went for the clothes with the biggest moose (everyone had to know that she shopped at Abercrombie), the lowest cut, and the tightest jeans. And she was not the only one choosing these clothes. Every single girl that stepped out of the dressing had on almost the same outfit and they all stepped out of the dressing room like they were on a mission to be the cutest girl there. They would check themselves out from every possible angle and then do it all over again. Then they would stand in front of the mirror with their hands on their hips and nod either in approval or disapproval.

This idea of being the "teenage dream" is every teeny-boppers fantasy, but who doesn't want to be somebody's teenage dream!? I think that is why moms indulge their daughters and allow their daughters to shop at stores like Abercrombie and Fitch - it's a way of accomplishing the American Dream, except now it's the Teenage Dream.


- Anne Davis

Value Menu Prices Are Too Damn High

Yesterday I found myself craving good food, but of course,i wanted it for a cheap price. Faced with the pit being closed, and my deacon dollar account on E, I was forced to go off campus and search for a place that could cheaply satisfy my taste buds. Hmmmmm, what type of food did i want to eat? you guessed it, unhealthy burgers and nuggets composed of 99% 'instant diabetes'  and 1% nutrients. This reminded me of the fact that everything that taste good is often bad for you, but, despite this disclaimer to myself, I chose to do the inevitable... continue on my search for fast food until....I came upon the enticing smile of...Wendy

(Figure 1: The Love of My Life)


Now what I love most about Wendy, is the amount of bang she gave me for my bucks, or lack there of now . Remember when the Wendy's value Menu looked like this..

                                              (Figure 2: The Good Days)


EVERYTHING ON THE VALUE MENU WAS  $0.99. O how I wish I could go back to those days. Now , the value menu looks like Figure 3.


(Figure 3: WTF Happened??)

Somewhere between the development of Figure 2  and Figure 3  Wendy's decided they wanted to make my life, and the majority of their customer base, a living hell, by charging more. This directly effected me  when I purchased 6 things from the value menu and received a bill for over $9!! I instantly said to myself "wtf just happened", as a bemused  frown took over my face while handing over my money. After receiving my receipt, I meticulously looked over it in hopes I might find a cashier error in which he might have rung up an item wrong. To my surprise, I found nothing. What pissed me off even more was thinking about the fact that years ago this meal would have rung up to be a little over $6!! Now $3 doesn't doesn't seem like much until you put it in perspective. $3 dollars can buy 3 double cheeseburgers, or 3 items from the dollar store , or even  3  1 Gallon Jugs of cheap 'generic drink' from Walmart. This perspective makes you think twice about spending your "hard earned" money on the aggrandizing costs of Wendy's value menu.

What makes matters worst is the value burgers, nuggets, and fries now look like they came directly from the movie "Honey I Shrunk the Kids"... after the shrink ray.

(Figure 4: They are Actually Observing Food from Wendys' Value Menu)

Charging more money while offering less  is an art form that has only been mastered by a select few companies, and of course, Wake Forest Parking (another topic); However, despite this profit hungry move by Wendy's, I wasn't able to resist their grease-filled array of snacks until ...I looked at the "Ceasar Side Salad" I ordered...

From what I remember, Wendys' Ceasar Side Salad contained bacon bits and shredded cheese. The Ceasar  Side Salad I received contained small almond sized tomatoes with slices of cheese that looked like the Wendys' workers had took a square slice of cheese,ripped it up by hand, and tossed it on my salad in the back. Once again I found myself looking at my salad thinking "wtf just happened". This experience made me realize that my relationship with Wendy will never be the same again. It also made me realize that I hate high prices.

                              (Figure 5: Wendy's Value Menu Prices are Too Damn High)

-Ajalon Elliott

Barbie Leaves Malibu

For the vast majority of her life, Barbie has gotten a lot of heat for sending the wrong message to girls.  Since the 1950s, Barbie’s blonde-hair, blue eyes, and literally unrealistic body shape have been put under scrutiny for setting an impossible standard of beauty and perpetuating a superficial, ditzy stereotype.  Many have found it concerning that young girls aspire to be “just like Barbie.”   

While I don’t think Mattel has any intention of jeopardizing anyone’s self-worth, there have certainly been some questionable marketing moves on Barbie’s part.  While over the years there has been Presidential Candidate Barbie, Veterinarian Barbie, and even UNICEF Ambassador Barbie, many cannot overlook the very blatant emphasis on beauty and the hypocrisy embedded in the Barbie brand.  An example of this is when Mattel launched a Barbie in 1992 that was programmed to say “Math Class is Tough.”  Though Barbie had ambitious careers throughout the rest of the 1990s and into the 2000s, in 2009 Mattel did it again by introducing “Totally Tattoos Barbie” where girls could apply a “Ken” tramp stamp to their doll.  

Barbie’s new campaign attempts to extinguish any hint of the shallow, Malibu Barbie persona Barbie has embodied for so many years.  The campaign puts all of the emphasis on Barbie’s career accomplishments instead of on her blonde hair or cute clothes.  It doesn’t tell any lies about the Barbie brand, but it portrays Barbie in a completely different light than in the past.  It’s a dream big, aspire to greatness, pave-your-own-path campaign.  In addition to the commercial, Barbie has short videos on her YouTube channel starring successful women mentoring girls in a variety of fields, in everything from dance to firefighting to engineering.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz_XFdPBkLY

The tone of this commercial is completely unlike any Barbie ad I’ve ever seen.  Usually Barbie commercials involve overly ecstatic pre-teen girls, the color pink, and some over-processed promotional song.  This campaign, however, flips the Barbie brand on its head and conveys a degree of authenticity that has never really been seen in past Barbie commercials.  Instead of announcing what’s new in the world of Barbie, the commercial reminds consumers of Barbie’s heritage as a career woman.  This commercial is different in that Barbie invites girls to be themselves, instead of living up to an idealized image that Barbie has represented in the past.

From these commercials, it’s apparent that Mattel knows that the Barbie brand needs to be relevant to its purchasers, who are primarily moms.  As women’s roles are changing (case in point: women’s share of the labor force has risen from 30 percent in 1945 to over 50 percent today), Barbie is too.  I think because of this cultural shift, moms today want to teach their daughters about ambition and independence now more than ever. This new campaign aligns with these values and attempts to start a relevant dialogue with Barbie purchasers. Barbie, in this campaign, repositions itself as a toy that will help emphasize good values, instead of something simply bought to quell tantrums at the toy store. 

Overall, I think the best part of this campaign is that it bakes authenticity into the Barbie brand, making the brand relevant to its target customers.  Even though Barbie is a multimillion dollar, global brand, this campaign does a great job at making the brand genuine, down-to-earth, and relatable on a personal level by portraying that the Barbie brand holds the same values as its customer.  This value alignment is a quality crucial for any big brand to survive in the competitive marketplace.

Alison Henley is a senior Business and Enterprise Management major with a Marketing concentration and a Sociology minor.

Consumer Branding

Every day I am very intentional about what I wear. This may come as I surprise to many of my Consumer Behavior classmates, because I wear gym shorts, a white t-shirt, and tennis shoes to class every day. This says something unique about me: I have gym class every Tuesday and Thursday at noon. You can tell a lot about a person from what they wear. People choose the brands and styles they wear as a reflection of who they are. One of my best friends wears a variety of Toms or Chaco’s almost every day. While I make fun of her hippie feet, she takes pride in the fact that it demonstrates to people that she is outdoorsy and appreciates nature. She likes these things, because they help with self-branding.


I have worked in retail for several years, and can provide countless examples of customers coming into a store looking for nothing but a brand. When I worked at Polo Ralph Lauren, customers would buy anything with a pony on it. I have seen people pay more than ten dollars for one pair of socks, because the socks had a pony on them. The pony says something about the person that wears it: traditional, classy, and wealthy. If something changed about the pony, then it would affect the people that wore it. The pony is a part of the people that wear it. Changing the pony would change the person that wears it.

It is no surprise that when Gap changed its logo without input or warning, its customers were outraged. Gap has been trying to change its product offering. In the past it has been a company that has provided traditional, every day clothes. It is beginning to offer more trendy clothes, and the company wanted to change its logo to reflect its new product offerings. The traditional Gap logo was a navy blue box with GAP written in white. The new logo was Gap written in black in front of a navy blue box in the top right hand corner. After the new logo was released, the company received a massive amount of complaints. The company changed its logo back to the original by the end of the week. Professionals in marketing and branding have said that Gap, Inc. should have included its consumers in its decision to change the logo. Gap has not decided to keep its old logo forever, but has decided that it will be more inclusive of its consumers in the decision making process in the future.



Technology and social media have given consumers more control of branding than ever before. Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites have provided consumers with open forums to discuss brands, quality, and performance. Advances in technology allow consumers to access information anywhere at any time. Word-of-mouth has always been a valuable source of information for consumers, but in this day and age a customer does not have to ask their next door neighbor for advice. A customer can go online in Winston-Salem, NC and get real time feedback from a customer in London, England.

Companies cannot overlook the impact that branding changes have on consumers. Changes in a brand affect the individual. With the advances in technology and social media, companies cannot afford to overlook the instant spread of information or the widespread effect of consumers’ opinions. Gap probably should change its logo to reflect its new product offerings, but it should definitely be more inclusive of it consumers in the future.

-Written by Leigh Vogedes

Everyone is Doing It

            A franchise that has 7 games and over 55 million sales, the Call of Duty series is arguably the most prominent video game series today, up there with Madden and Halo.  The franchise, published by Activision, has accumulated over $3 billion in sales worldwide.   These games have gone from simple World War II first person mission games to the some of the largest online multiplayer games.  The game has evolved to the point where many gamers are essentially just playing online and ignoring the campaigns.  The latest installment in the series, Call of Duty: Black Ops, was released this week and sold over 5.6 million copies worldwide in the first day.  This franchise’s success and reach is undeniable and appeals to hardcore and casual gamers alike.

           

            The Call of Duty franchise is not only known for its popular video games, but also for some of the most memorable commercials by any recent video game.  Because of the high name recognition, the commercials do not have to emphasize game play and graphics or even the game itself, but rather can rely on pointing out the staggering volume of gamers playing Call of Duty games.  The loyal fan base already assumes all the titles are going to maintain the level of quality they have become accustomed to, thus there is no need to brag about the quality.  Also, they no longer need to waste time explaining what Call of Duty is, since the name has become synonymous with war, shoot-em up video games.  They instead can make their point in other, perhaps more entertaining ways.  The approach they have taken recently is pointing out the success of the series and emphasizing the overwhelming volume of gamers that engage in playing Call of Duty games daily.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7NgLArJidY

            This approach saw the second most recent entry in the series, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 come out with the “Everyone is doing it” commercial.  Call of Duty is one of the few games that could pull this commercial off without appearing cocky, simply because they have the numbers to validate their claim.  This proves how powerful a brand Call of Duty is, as this approach is typically reserved for the most established brands such as Nike or Geico.  A pig riding in a van has as little to do with car insurance as a caveman does, yet Geico can employ this approach because of the name recognition.  This same name/brand recognition allows Activision (publishers of Call of Duty series) to have a commercial with little to no relevance to the game itself.  The humor approach even contradicts the game itself, as Call of Duty games are notoriously filled with violence and gore.  This commercial however is incredibly effective and is a perfect example of their new marketing approach which hopes to capitalize on a bandwagon effect where more and more gamers buy and play Call of Duty because “everyone is doing it”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hncudrWXpX0

            The latest installment, Call of Duty: Black Ops, took a similar approach with its recent commercials.  Rather than show the actual game play, they show real life people and several celebrities engaging in what is assumed to be the multiplayer part of the game.  Call of Duty’s multiplayer component has become its most popular feature, and this commercial points out that fact while emphasizing just how diverse a group is brought together by the game.  You could be in a game playing with the likes of Kobe Bryant and Jimmy Kimmel without even realizing it.  Clearly, Call of Duty advertisements are no longer about the game itself, but rather the strong community surrounding the game.  They are making Call of Duty less of a game and more of an experience.  As they say, “everyone is doing it”.

-Michael Austin is a senior BEM major at Wake Forest University concentrating in Marketing