Research Opportunity

Surrender is a premier nightclub located in Encore hotel and casino. The market research mission is to discover what it would take to get more locals to go to the nightclub. It’s common knowledge that most locals won’t go to clubs as their hangout spot. Some reasons for this have been parking, dealing with tourists, driving on the Strip, expensive drinks, the nightclub atmosphere, and the music. Despite the many excuses given for this, but the nightclub is trying to increase its appeal to the local market. The objective of this research project is to discover exactly what it would take to get the locals to make the nightclub the spot they want to go instead of all the local bars. In a city like Las Vegas where there are so many options, this club realizes that they have to implement some locals-only promotions in order to get people through the door. The outcome of this project will help the club decide which promotions will be the most effective. The target market is local men and women over the age of 21 that drink, like to party with their friends, and make new connections. The nightclub, its tables, cabanas, and drinks represent the product that is being sold to the target market. New promotions that have been discussed have been drink specials for only locals, food credits with nightclub entry, and free tables for groups of five or more with one free bottle of alcohol. Another option that has been discussed is having package deals for locals that come to the club to get a room at the hotel for a discounted price so that they wouldn’t have to drive home. There will have to be limitations put onto these promotions that will be decided at the completion of the research project. The price now for locals is determined by which night is in question. Local ladies can currently get in almost any night if they know someone with a guest list. Men still have to pay upwards of $30 for entry. One of the things the club would change is the price for local men to gain admittance into the nightclub. Many women won’t come if they are in a relationship because their significant others don’t want to pay this hefty fee. The distribution of the new promotions would have to be spread citywide. Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and Foursquare would all be updated with the new pricing and promotional information. Billboards would be updated, the sign at the casino would advertise the changes, and radio announcements would be updated. The club marketing already has these forms of advertisement in place so updating the information would be easy and cost effective. The implementation of these promotions would go into effect immediately following the market research completion. The evaluation of the success of this will be tracked as people enter the club. They are checked off on guest lists as it is and adding a check to that list if they are local is a simple addition.

Week 5 EOC: Privacy? Is there such a thing as online privacy now a days?

Online privacy is becoming a bigger issue by the day. With all of our personal information on the web and easily accessible for the world to find just by using Google, how do we really know that everything we have on our personal computers aren’t at risk for the world to view? Cloud computing is one thing that has raised many issues. “The Electronic Privacy Information has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether Google's "cloud computing" services, including the Gmail e-mail service, Google Docs and its online photo-sharing service, Picasa, is adequately protecting users' privacy. The FTC is looking at the privacy and security issues tied to cloud computing — where documents and other data are stored on Web-based servers, in the hands of third parties, as opposed to being on a user's hard drive. Cloud computing is considered the future of data storage for many. "However, the storage of data on remote computers may also raise privacy and security concerns for consumers," wrote FTC attorney David C. Vladeck in a December letter to the commission."For example, the ability of cloud computing services to collect and centrally store increasing amounts of consumer data, combined with the ease with which such centrally stored data may be shared with others, create a risk that larger amounts of data may be used by entities in ways not originally intended or understood by consumers," he said.” (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35427715/ns/technology_and_science-security/) Mobile Me is the Apple version of cloud computing and is used my many Apple customers that have multiple devices made by the popular brand. As of yet the same issues that have been raised by Google have not occurred with Mobile Me. Digitized healthcare records are also a thing of concern for many Americans. “According to the October 2009 Ponemon report, Electronic Health Information at Risk: A Study of IT Practitioners, 80 percent of healthcare organizations surveyed had experienced at least one incident of lost or stolen electronic health information in the past year - and four percent had more than five patient data breaches. More than two-thirds of these healthcare organizations had already digitized at least a quarter of their patient records and a third had digitized more than half.” (http://www.imakenews.com/accushred/e_article001584145.cfm?x=b11,0,w) Our children may also be putting themselves and us in danger of having private information stolen. “Iconix Brand Group, Inc. will pay a $250,000 civil penalty to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the FTC’s COPPA Rule by knowingly collecting, using, or disclosing personal information from children online without first obtaining their parents’ permission.” (http://privacyregulation.com/?p=377)

EOC Week 4: BIG

The film “Big” is an excellent movie that revolves around a company coming up with ways to make more money. There are so many examples of research being done in the film for the toy company that Josh, Tom Hank’s character, works for. One example is focus groups. There are several instances where there are workers observing a focus group of children talking place where they are playing with the new toys that the company is developing. By watching the children react to the new products, the company can get an idea of how many units of the product they can sell based on how well the children like playing with the toy. There is also longitudinal research being done that is discussed in the meeting that Josh is in where he comes up with the robot bugs. This is the research that is being done on the toys that takes place over long periods of time. In that meeting there is another kind of research that goes into developing a new product taking place. That is brainstorming. This occurs when Josh suggests the robot bug and the rest of the group chimes in with follow up ideas that would expand on the product line and increase the revenue of the company. Brainstorming is kind of a way market research because it allows the company to really expand on an idea and see how far they could possibly take it in the marketplace.

BOC Week 4: Beautiful Stranger TV

The significance of Beautiful Stranger.TV, the website, is that it predicts trends before they are trends. This is kind of a way of conducting market research by seeing what people on the streets in their everyday lives are wearing or want to wear. It’s good for companies that produce clothing or accessories to look at this website because it gives them an idea of what the public likes to wear. It’s only a bad representation because it’s only in major cities. It doesn’t provide a clear look at the entire population and if you are a company, you want to market to more than just that city more than likely. It’s a creative, innovative way of seeing what people are buying and what they think of trends. The video section of the website offers a unique view point from professionals, mostly in the fashion industry. This is great for normal people to go on this site and be able to see what trends the professionals are agreeing with as long term and will give them an idea of which trends to buy into and which ones to let pass by. The blog is also a good source of information and even tells viewers where they can get some of the trends on sale. It’s a forum for advertisement that clothing companies and designers can easily use to reach potential customers.

Week 2 EOC: Survey and Results

This survey examines sales within the cosmetic industry in terms of items that are sold because of their color, such as eye makeup. The purpose of this survey is to outline opportunities to increase sales within the cosmetic industry. It outlines what women are spending the most money on in terms of their favorite cosmetic products. The survey uses applied research as they are finding out critical information that will help cosmetic companies when making important product development decisions. Descriptive research is done by Mintel in this particular survey as it describes in detail what products people are using in comparison to other products within the market. The longitudinal research design is used by examining information that has been gathered since 2004 in order to explain the opportunities for growth within this industry. It reports that eye makeup sales has increased 38% since 2004 compared to just 11% increase in the color cosmetics market as a whole. It also reports that mascara is one of the fastest growing segments in the market with 65% of people surveyed confirm that they use it. Causal research was also conducted in this survey as they suggest at the end of the report that retailers should highlight innovative ingredients in their products or utilize environmentally friendly packaging options to attract new customers. The report gets very specific when discussing the use of lipsticks and lipglosses by reporting the average ages of the women that use these products. (http://www.marketresearchworld.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3282&Itemid=77)

Week 2 BOC: Quiz

1. What is a booty pop, and what is its significance? Booty Pop is a shaping panty for women designed to give them the appearance of having more butt than they actually do. It is supposed to give the “bubble butt” appearance. The significance of Booty Pop is that they are not a new product. Butt enhancing underwear have been around for years, however they have never been sold via infomercial. (http://consumerist.com/2010/01/booty-pop-like-a-push-up-bra-for-your-butt.html)

2. Who spends more $ online, men or women? Proportion? (%, $) Women spend 58% of the commerce dollars online. In February 2010 12.5 % of women made online purchases as opposed to 9.3% of men. (http://jamiedunham.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/shocking-news-women-spend-more-time-than-men-online-shopping/) A recent PayPal report states that men in the UK states on average have spent 672 Euros more online than women over the past 6 months. It also says that 12.9 million men shop online compared to 10.3 million women. Over the past 6 months men spend 2,602 Euros online compared to women spending 1,930 Euros online.

3. Who spends more time online, men or women? Women spend an average of 1.2 hours per week shopping online. -- More than half (52%) of the time devoted to shopping for non-grocery items in a typical week is online. (http://www.girlsandthecity.com/articles/article.asp?id=223)

4. What advantage do marketers have for women shopping online than men? Marketers have an advantage when appealing to women because women control more than 85% of the spending done in America. That means that more women are paying attention to marketing than men since they are the ones doing the shopping.

Week 1 EOC: What I'm expecting from this class.

Marketing, promotions, and advertising are things that I am very interested in to start with based on what I have learned from previous classes. This class I am hoping will teach me how to be better in these areas of expertise. I am expecting that I will understand how to conduct new research that hasn't previously been done for a company in order to increase their market share and make them a more profitable company. Hopefully, these principals will be put to use in my own company. I would also like to be able to successfully complete this course in order to increase my own marketability in the work force and open doors into consulting in the future that I will be able to use even after I retire. This is a subject I hope to consider myself an expert in eventually. I have always considered myself to be a “researcher.” I was very interested in taking this class from the beginning in hopes that it would make me a better writer as well. The more that is known about a subject, the better when it comes to writing and being able to back up the opinions expressed. Knowledge is power and knowing how to dig deep into a subject increases the amount of power the words can have. I expect that the skills gained from this class will give my words the power to make a difference in this global market.