Melody's MKTG Blog

MKTG 411 - Final Assignment

2005-06-24T15:02:00.000-04:00

Dell and Toyota both have a similar approach in selling products: a direct-to-consumer, order-based strategy. However, whereas Toyota uses the order-based strategy to test-market the new hybrid Prius, Dell utilizes this direct business model almost exclusively. As stated in the Toyota Prius Group Team Post, Toyota direct-markets to what it believes to be the most likely Prius consumers (budget-conscious, environment-friendly, etc.), while Dell direct-markets to the entire spectrum of consumers, concentrating on its universally-appealing principles of low cost, product customization, and fast delivery.

I can only assume that the made-to-order strategy has resulted in cost savings for the low-volume production of the Prius. However, Toyota may return to its traditional approach (mass-manufacturing vehicles coupled with dealership-based placement) due to the high demand for the Prius. As a side note, it will be interesting to see whether the return to distributing directly to dealer networks will affect the demand for the Prius; I suspect that the shortage of Prius vehicles is one reason why they are so "hot" right now.

Dell and Amazon.com are both "click-only" operations that operate without any brick-and-mortar stores (Kotler, pp.82-84). They are both "consumer-centric" companies that strive to provide customers with a wide variety of products at affordable prices. The difference, though, is that Amazon.com places a premium on catering to its customers, often at the expense of its profitability. Amazon.com recently introduced Amazon Prime, the company's "first ever membership program, which provides 'all-you-can-eat' express shipping.” Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos admits that the promotion program (Kotler, p.514) will be very expensive in the short term, but hopes that it will pay off in the long run. Dell, on the other hand, delivers great customer value through product customization and never loses sight of the bottom line.

* As an aside, after doing a cursory search on Amazon Prime, I found that some blogs applaud the efforts in “componentizing their business to a degree where shipping stops being a cost center and becomes instead a competitive differentiator,” while others have criticized Amazon.com for its logistics, or lack thereof, in implementing this program. *

Comments on Classmates' Blogs

2005-06-23T15:13:00.000-04:00

1. My comment in Curt's blog regarding Northwest and its Less for the Same strategy.

2. My comment in Brett's blog regarding McDonald's and their Healthier Lifestyle campaign.

3. My comment in Linda's blog regarding the alcohol beverage market.

4. My comment in David's blog regarding Dynamic Pricing.

5. My comment in Brett's blog regarding The Power of Marketing to Children.

6. My comment on Rambabu's blog regarding Moblogging.

MKTG/Tech Post #2 - Moblogging!

2005-06-23T10:52:00.000-04:00

I found this article, Software Lets Bloggers Post via Cellphone in the Technology section of the NY Times. Apparently, some companies have begun developing software that allows people to read and write blogs on cellular phones. A company called Intercasting Corporation has become the first mobile blog company to enter a partnership with a major cellular phone provider - Verizon Wireless. According to the article, the service is called RABBLE and has been available since June 1 for download on Verizon handsets for $2.99 a month and about 1,000 people have signed on for RABBLE in the past two weeks.

I'm not quite sure how this service works. I quickly scanned the Intercasting Corporation blog and found that one of the developers of the service has clarified that RABBLE is "the first mobile blogging community ever" and it differs from posting to a blog on the web from your phone. When I have more time, I'll read more of the blog to see what the service is all about.

RABBLE could have been great for this marketing class. How great would it be to have access to my blog all the time. It would have been so convenient to post on my blog or comment on other people's blogs when I had downtime - traveling, waiting for appointments, etc. The article brings up a good point about how traditonally, blogs force us to think and compose at our desks. People that keep personal blogs have a difficult time writing entries when they are traveling because sometimes computer/internet access isn't so readily available.

The article mentions that a subscriber uses RABBLE for his business; he uses it to post photos of the daily specials at CheeseBoard Pizza in Berkeley, CA, so that other customers can look up the blog and decide whether to visit the restaurant that day. I wonder how RABBLE has affected his business and if more businesses in the future will soon adapt RABBLE as another way to communicate with the consumer.

*edit*

I just found out that my classmate, Rambabu has blogged on the same topic. Find it here.

Team Post #3 - Final Dell Group Post

2005-06-22T20:37:00.000-04:00

Three words will describe Dell’s position in the marketplace: inexpensive, custom and quick. An succinct, yet in-depth, look at Dell's marketing strategies found here (in Maggie's blog).

IMHO, I think, as the premier low-cost provider of PC's, combined with its lean infrastructure, Dell will be hard to beat by the established competitors out there.

Extra Credit #2 - My Blog in a Search Engine

2005-06-21T16:28:00.000-04:00

Click on this and you'll see that my blog comes up as the third result on the second page when you enter my name in the Google search engine. My blog comes up as the second result on the first page if you enter "melody lai mktg."

Nice.

Topic Post #3 - The "Safer" Cigarette

2005-06-19T00:22:00.000-04:00

The World Health Organization's projection is that 500 million people now alive will eventually die from smoking-related diseases. How would you then market a new kind of cigarette with a filter that, compared with a typical cigarette, reduces the intake of a variety of cancer-causing toxins by 40 to 75 percent, not knowing whether or not it will increase cigarette consumption? In the article, Incendiary Device, it says that "according to a number of scientists and tobacco policy makers, PREP's (Potentially Reduced-Exposure Product) are the single most ethically agonizing and professionally issue they have ever encountered." The people behind FACT, a cigarette that contains a filter (called FILLIGENT) that substantially reduces the intake of cancer-causing toxins, are vehemently against tobacco and believe that there is no safe level of consumption. Yet, they believe that the benefits of an improved filter outweigh the dangers. So this is their plan right now: The brand owner of FACT will only do minimal marketing. FILLIGENT itself, will have no marketing campaign, no marketing budget; its owners will concentrate on PR by openly talking about FILLIGENT with the media. They also plan to have a web site to make raw laboratory data available. Their ultimate goal is noble enough - they want cigarette manufacturers to license FILLIGENT's technology and insert FILLIGENT filters in their cigarettes without calling attention to the reduced-risk potential.

I was quite taken by this subject matter because of the ethical implications in introducing a PREP to the market. When you, the marketer, whole-heartedly believe that cigarettes hurt the consumers in the long run (pleasing products, Kotler, p.651) how do you market a cigarette filter that has shown to significantly reduce exposure to toxic substances? I believe that FILLIGENT has adapted a good, not to mention socially responsible (Kotler, P.649) strategy. The head of the company makes FILLIGENT, Melissa Mowbray-d'Arbela, has done extensive research on the science behind cigarettes, opened up dialogue with numerous anti-smoking policymakers, and is pushing to get tobacco companies to license and use FILLIGENT without bringing it to the attention of the consumer that anything in the cigarette has changed. And if should FILLIGENT be successful and profitable, the company behind it will give a significant portion of its profits to antitobacco efforts. She understands the fact that there is no safe cigarette and no safe level of consumption, yet believes that introducing the PREP, FILLIGENT outweighs the dangers and will be beneficial to society. For FILLIGENT to be considered successful from a societal marketing standpoint, it's important that cigarette companies containing FILLIGENT not make any health claims or else it might encourage cigarette-smoking, which is a consideration that public health officials have been agonizing about. After being being subjected to years of deception (Light and Ultra Light cigarettes which are not in the least, safer) and concealment by Big Tobacco, it's refreshing that a tobacco company has taken an elightened marketing (Kotler, pp.647-652) approach.

Topic Post #2 - Exxon and Their Position on Global Warming

2005-06-17T13:57:00.000-04:00

My thoughts on the article, Digging In, by Jeffrey Ball, from The Wall Street Journal, published on June 14, 2005.

*I would have put a link to the article in this entry but you need to be subscribed member of the Wall Street Journal to access it. If you'd like to read the actual article, email me and I'll forward it to you.*

This article talks about how the CEO of Exxon-Mobil, Lee Raymond, refuses to accept research findings that say fossil fuels are the main cause of global warming and has been funding research to prove that putting a cap on emissions is not justified. While its competitors, BP and Shell, have invested a lot of money in researching alternatives to fossil fuels, Exxon-Mobil has decided that it's not in their best interest to develop alternatives and instead, has been trying to find ways to improve the energy efficiency of its refineries, to primarily cut costs. This approach, in part, has made them the most profitable oil company in the world.

With regard to environmental sustainability (Kotler, p.642), it seems as if Exxon is developing strategies to produce profits for the company without much thought in sustaining the environment. They want to find ways to adapt and improve on fossil fuels, but are not developing alternate sources of energy to replace them. As mentioned in the article, there is enough research out there about fossil fuel emissions' effect on global warming to warrant interest in alternate sources of energy, but Exxon insists on being stubborn and believe that there isn't enough solid evidence that fossil fuel emissions cause global warming. They also believe that developing alternate sources of energy is a waste of time. It seems to me that their sustainability vision is seriously flawed; they're only concerned with profits. To their credit, according to the article, they've publicly announced that they've spent $100 million for research into what they call breakthrough "mega-technologies," which includes capturing carbon dioxide after it's emitted and burying it deep underground. However, this seems to be some kind of PR ploy since $100 million represents less than two days of Exxon's earnings. When gauging Exxon's efforts using the environmental sustainability grid (Kotler, p.643) Exxon is doing very little in their progress toward environmental sustainability, which I believe will eventually lead to their downfall. They are doing some pollution prevention by improving the efficiency of fossil fuels and putting some effort in developing new environmental technology but all in all, they lack the sustainability vision of their competitors. As a consumer, I would rather buy gas from a company that understands the social responsibility to develop alternate sources of energy than one that refuses to believe the negative impact its product has on the environment.

Extra Credit #1 - More on Infomercials (Referencing Xinkai's Blog Entry)

2005-06-16T14:30:00.000-04:00

Proactiv Solution and "Branded Entertainment"

In his blog, Xinkai mentions that he believes that "infomercials probably won't recede from marketing platform soon." I agree. Brett had mentioned in class how infomercials are a great way to market products to the elderly and since the prime market in the future will be the senior citizen group, I believe that infomercials will become an even more popular means of advertising. Not only are infomercials more sophisticated now, but they've even begun to have celebrities on them. Have you ever seen the infomercials/commercials for Proactiv Solution with Jessica Simpson? I just read an NY Times Magazine article that talks about how P. Diddy has joined Jessica Simpson, along with Alicia Keys and Vanessa Williams, in a 30-minute infomercial to promote Proactiv Solution. So instead of being considered a lowly format of advertising, infomercials are becoming more hip and credible by signing on celebrities, which will surely appeal to the younger audience. As the article mentions, having celebrities promote products on infomercials is convincing to us, the audience, because as we know, celebrities don't need the publicity nor the money, which leads us to think that they must really believe in the product to take the time to promote it in an infomercial. Hey, if four big-name celebrities say they use Proactiv and it really works, why shouldn't we give it a try?!

Topic Post #1 - Big Pharma In Trouble

2005-06-16T14:06:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I posted the article, Despite Vow, Drug Makers Still Withhold Data in my blog. This article talks about some drug companies' reluctance to provide more information about their research on new medicines. As a result, doctors and patients lack critical information about important drugs, which can potentially lead to dangerous situations. I had originally wanted to use this article as my presentation piece but I've decided to go with another article (concerning a very controversial product and how to market it) instead. Anyway, a couple days ago, I came across this article - Lucrative Drug, Danger Signals and the F.D.A.. This time, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has been exposed for not disclosing the drug, Propulsid's long, largely hidden, record of trouble. Apparently, even though J&J had evidence of harmful side effects from usage of the drug, they continued to market the very lucrative drug anyway. According to the article, "Johnson & Johnson agreed last year to pay up to $90 million to settle lawsuits that eventually involved claims that 300 people died and as many as 16,000 were injured from taking Propulsid."

For a company, whose credo clearly states, "we believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses, and patients, to mothers, fathers, and all others, who use our products and services," it surprises me that J&J didn't pull Propulsid much sooner. The FDA and Johnson & Johnson negotiated for five years before the company pulled Propulsid. By then, the federal government had reports of 80 heart-related deaths and 341 injuries among patients taking Propulsid. Even now, J&J continues to defend the safety of Propulsid (they claim that the only reason why they've pulled the drug is because despite their warnings, doctors have been prescribing it inappropriately) and even said that the marketing of the pill was appropriate. Well, according to internal company documents, J&J helped finance programs that encouraged the drug's pediatric use even though Propulsid was never proved effective in children.

The FDA has been getting a lot of heat for not monitoring and regulating pharmaceuticals effectively once they are on the market. There are a bunch of drugs out there, including Vioxx and Celebrex, that are not disclosing negative clinical trial results. I assume that consumerists (Kotler, pp.640-642) will be pushing Big Pharma to appropriately and adequately label and disclose all clinical trial results for their new drugs so that consumers can be aware of the potential dangers of using their products. The FDA needs to do a better job of putting pressure on Big Pharma to be more transparent with the public regarding the research they've conducted on their new drugs. Doctors and their patients need to have as much information about pharmaceuticals as possible in order to make wise decisions in using meds, especially new ones; in some cases, it can be a matter of life and death.

Team Post #1 - Dell, Inc. On Marketing and Society

2005-06-15T10:28:00.000-04:00

On the Dell webpage entitled, Commitment , it clearly states that Dell is committed to being a socially responsible corporation in the global marketplace. I was interested to see what kind of recognition Dell has received in being a good corporate citizen. I found that Business Ethics Magazine has awarded Dell the Environmental Progress Award for "responding to stakeholder concerns with industry-leading computer-recycling initiatives. According to the article in Business Ethics Magazine, for years, there had been a lack of accountability for the safe recycling of computer equipment, which is a serious issue because personal computers contain dangerous elements that if not properly handled, can be a threat to the environment and public health. In 2001, the socially responsible investing (SRI) community engaged in a dialogue with the four largest computer manufacturers - HP, IBM, Apple, and Dell - regarding their efforts in safe computer recycling. Dell, with the advantage of being a newer company and without an established environmental infrastructure, worked with SRI in building the internal infrastructure for a long-term commitment to recycling and emerged as the market leader.

In our Principles of Marketing (POM) textbook, on page 642, Kotler talks about how more and more companies are adopting policies of environmental sustainability, which is "developing strategies that both sustain the environment and produce profits for the company." There is a grid (page 643) that companies can use to gauge their progress toward environmental sustainability. According to Dell's comprehensive Environmental Policy, it seems that Dell has addressed all four levels of the grid:

1) Pollution Prevention (page 643) - Dell aims to operate their facilities to minimize harmful impacts on the environment by placing a high priority on waste minimization, recycling and reuse programs and pollution prevention. According to Business Ethics Magazine, "reclaimed materials are sent to metal, plastics, and glass recyclers that meet federal, state, and local requirements. Ninety-eight percent of these materials are reclaimed and reused somewhere along the supply chain."

2) Product Stewardship (page 645) - Dell has adopted a design for environment (DFE) program in which Dell incorporates environmental attributes - such as reduction of environmentally sensitive materials, extension of product life span, and utilization of parts that can be reused, resold, or recycled - into their product development.

3) New Environmental Technologies (page 646) - Dell has been working on and implementing new programs with regard to emissions reduction and reduction in energy consumption.

4) Sustainability Vision (page 646) - Dell's mission is to "fully integrate environmental stewardship into the business of providing quality products, best-in-class services, and the best customer experience at the best value." Dell's full 2005 sustainability report can be found here.

From browsing through Dell's numerous webpages, I am pleased by the wealth of information that is available with regard to how Dell is continually improving its technologies and practices to operate with more care for the environment. I am also pleased by Dell's response to the criticism it had received from environmentalists. In 2004, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) gave Dell a score of just 52.5 out of a possible 100 for computer take-back and related policies. In response, Dell has announced its aggressive aim of a 50 percent increase in global product recovery, making it the first company to publicly release a computer recycling goal. This shows that Dell understands that with being the global market leader, comes a great responsibility to society. Dell is well on its way in making progress toward environmental sustainability.

MKTG/Tech Post #1 - Clothes for "Petite" Men

2005-06-09T14:04:00.000-04:00

Being short runs in my family, so I've stood witness to the guys in my family struggle to find clothes that actually fit them without going to the boys' section. In the end, they usually end up bringing their clothes to the tailor, which can get pretty expensive. And not only is it pricey, but tailoring down clothes to fit smaller men can sometimes ruin the original design. Short men need clothes that are cut proportionally to their size. The retail industry has picked up on this a while ago when they created petite sizes for women. I've always wondered why the industry has not done the same for short men. Stores will sometimes carry men's suits in "short" sizes but the selection is usually sparse. According to the article Measuring Up, "an estimated 30 percent of all men between 20 and 60 are under 5-foot-8," so it's surprising there aren't more mainstream designers and stores that offer clothes sized for shorter men.

Here is the full text article from the NY Times:

Measuring Up
By GUY TREBAY

LOS ANGELES

BACK in high school in Spring Valley, N.Y., Joe Carbone barely knew the word defeat. As captain of the football team, star of the wrestling team, a power lifter who competed on a national level and an athlete with the kind of physique that tends to be featured on magazines with cover lines like "Perfect Abs in 7 Days," Mr. Carbone was a textbook specimen of American manhood.

He even had a tryout with the New York Giants before deciding to take up a career for which he was an ideal candidate: as a strength coach for professional athletes, people like Kobe Bryant, who was Mr. Carbone's exclusive client for nearly a decade, and then as a general strength coach for the Los Angeles Lakers.

But there has always been one area of Mr. Carbone's life where failure is a given, and that is at the suit rack of a department store.

"Look, I know I'm shorter than most people," said Mr. Carbone, who stands a hair over 5 feet 3 inches in stocking feet. "I've never really had a problem with it, but you just have to accept that you can't buy clothes."

You have to accept that, in a super-sized universe, even the smallest of regular garments tends to be scaled wrong for Joe Carbone and also for the legions of other men under 5-foot-8, a stature that denotes the point below which the term off-the-rack becomes a joke.

It is a sartorial arena where shoulders tend to be scaled to linebacker dimensions on suits whose labels say 38 Small, where blazers have armholes the size of kiddie pools, where shirt pockets float just above the waistband and where belts often wrap around one's waist like a lariat.

In this world, shirttails hang so ridiculously long that short men are sometimes forced to tuck them beneath the crotch in the manner of onesies. Zippers on jeans are so long that waistbands ride above the navel, geek style. Inseams droop so that they leave a wearer with little choice but to roll and cuff like Howdy Doody or else to hack at the hems with the manic vigor of Edward Scissorhands.

These are just the broadest outlines of the dilemma, according to a number of men under 5-foot-8 and also to Web sites devoted to their sartorial challenges. "Even my shorts have to be tailored," Mr. Carbone lamented. "Try shopping in the Lakers shop for sweats when you're 5-foot-4."

Both census figures and common sense suggest that Americans are growing ever larger: the average height of an American male age 20 to 74 increased to 5-foot-9½ in 2002 from just over 5-foot-8 in 1960. Still, according to the most recent census data, an estimated 30 percent of all men between 20 and 60 are under 5-foot-8, a figure that seems to indicate the existence of a hidden-in-plain sight market to which few in the apparel business have given much serious thought.

"The reality is, it's easier not to go after that market if you can go after something that's a bigger market, which is the regular sizes," said Alan Victor, the president of Jack Victor Limited, a company based in Montreal whose suits are sold in 700 stores across North America. "Oftentimes salesmen will sell shorter men something that requires a lot of tailoring because they don't have the product. And stores just don't want to invest in special inventory for men under 5-foot-8."

In a nation that increasingly resembles Gulliver's Brobdignag, coffins are now scaled like piano cases, there are chains that cater exclusively to men as tall as grandfather clocks or as unabashedly hefty as walk-in refrigerators, but nothing for people of more modest dimensions. This news may fall hard on the ears of men under 5-foot-8, although there is no denying that it fills their tailors with glee.

"Basically it has driven me into the whole bespoke category, as expensive as that may be," said Robert Burke, the fashion director for Bergdorf Goodman, who stands 5-foot-6 and is given to wearing double-vent suits luxuriantly molded to his trim frame. In the industry Mr. Burke is known as a particularly natty dresser. He should be, considering that much of his wardrobe, shoes included, is custom made.

"Part of what happens as a retailer is that, if you're buying 8 or 12 of a given garment, you can only put so many in small, medium, large and extra large," Mr. Burke said. "Inevitably the smalls are the first to go, which probably shows we have hit a niche."

Yet it is a niche the fashion industry does very little to fill. And this seems particularly odd given that specially sized apparel is one of the fastest growing segments of the retail men's wear market.

Casual Male Retail Group, for instance, the country's foremost retailer catering to extra-large men, now has 495 locations around the country, a catalog and an e-commerce site, 13 Casual Male-at-Sears stores in Canada, and 22 Rochester Big & Tall stores in the United States, all of them built around a niche that a mere decade or two ago was almost totally overlooked.

Before Casual Male and Rochester Big & Tall appeared, it was the George Foremans and the Yao Mings of the world who felt abandoned by fashion, doomed to wear high-water trousers, blazers styled by Pee-wee Herman and shoes that resembled lace-up galleons, as styled perhaps by the Herman Munster atelier. All that has changed, of course, if one may judge by the number of pro basketball players posed stylishly wearing Prada and Gucci in GQ fashion spreads.

But what about Mike Smith, the jockey who rode Giacomo to victory last month in the Kentucky Derby? What about actors like Jason Alexander, Michael J. Fox, David Spade, Danny DeVito or Mark Wahlberg, or the figure skater Scott Hamilton? Are these men, and others like them, doomed to a lifetime of Gucci privation?

Given that millions of men are under 5-foot-8, why aren't there also specialized stores coast to coast for them? "I think there's still a lot of stigma about the issue," said Richard Novoa, a retired parole officer and community organizer in Santa Maria, Calif., who is 5-foot-3. "It's kind of funny and kind of sad at the same time, but I still encounters a lot of 'hey, little man; hey Napoleon; hey Mickey Rooney' attitude."

Who then, is to tend to the sartorial needs of short men? Is it Dean and Dan Caten, the diminutive twins who design cropped jackets and crotch-hugging jeans for Dsquared? Is it Alexander McQueen, Jil Sander or Prada, whose modish short-skirted jackets and cropped armholes make a plausible solution to the problem this season, but could easily become zoot suits with the next revolution of the wheel of taste. "In a way you have to be an insider in fashion to know who cuts for your size," explained Andy Lopez, a salesman at Dior Men on 57th Street in Manhattan who had already reached his full adult height of 5-foot-8 by age 17. "Not every guy has that advantage," Mr. Lopez said.

And given that the average price of a suit there is roughly $1,800, it seems that Dior is an unlikely default for the majority of America's short men, for most of whom the issue is likelier to be how to find a reasonably priced suit that does not look like it was borrowed from Dad or else a Tommy Bahama shirt less voluminous than a spinnaker.

"Really, no one is systematically addressing it," said Mr. Burke of Bergdorf Goodman. "So consumers often end up making alterations, shortening jackets, taking in shoulders, things that should never be done to a garment, dreadful things."

Tucked into a mall in the San Fernando Valley is Jimmy Au, a man who approaches short men's fashion with the zeal of a missionary. A former race track tailor who cut velvet Edwardian suits for Eddie Belmonte in the days when that legendary jockey had five winners in a single day at Aqueduct, Mr. Au, 63, eventually moved to the West Coast, and brought his bespoke skills to the retail market, opening an emporium catering exclusively to short guys.

Mr. Au's first store was located in a shopping center not far from the famous Santa Anita Park; there were other, later ones in Chinatown and Beverly Hills. The stores were known as Jimmy Au's Short and Small, in an echo of the Big and Tall chains, until customers still stigmatized by the small-man label balked. Now the haberdashery at the Woodlands Hill Promenade mall is listed under the blameless rubric of Jimmy Au's for Men 5'8" and Under (jimmyaus.com)

"It's a misconception to think that we cater just to small guys," said Mr. Au, a genial native of Hong Kong who moved to the United States to study at Brigham Young University in 1959 and who has shrunk a bit from his original height of 5-foot-3.

"We go from the biggest guy to the smallest guy, provided that they're short," said Mr. Au, whose store stocks suits of his own design and also from those few labels (Armani, Calvin Klein, Kenneth Cole, DKNY and Ralph Lauren) that even bother to venture into a market where sizes can range from 34 Extra Short to 48 Extra Short for men under 5-foot-5, and 35 Short to 50 Short for customers who occupy the subsequent three-inch niche.

So Jerry Garcia, a movie industry executive who stands 5-foot-4 is delighted to make regular pilgrimages to Mr. Au's store in a San Fernando Valley mall. It beats skulking around in the boy's department at Macy's.

"I work in a high style business, and this is a big problem for me," Mr. Garcia said. Shopping at mass market retailers like the Gap inevitably ends in discouragement, "because I'm always cutting three feet off the pants." Even with Levi's, Mr. Garcia ends up "hacking up the jeans" because the 26-inch inseam he requires is two inches less than shortest length available in the average pair of jeans.

"Face it," Mr. Garcia said, "the world is designed for tall guys."

Fashion would certainly seem to be. Or at least it is in coastal America. "In talking to other retailers, I've found that New York and California have more smaller men than anywhere else in the country," Mr. Burke of Bergdorf Goodman said. "This is completely unscientific, but for some reason men are just bigger everywhere else."

Dell Inc.

2005-05-31T20:46:00.000-04:00

Here is Dell's Business Profile as found on the NY Times Business Section, for future references.

My Topic

2005-05-31T19:32:00.000-04:00

As listed on the Class Blog, I am a topic "expert" for Chapter 20 - Marketing and Society in our Principles of Marketing (POM) textbook. I've decided to take a closer look at consumerism, which according to POM, is "an organized movement of citizens and government agencies to improve the rights and power of buyers in relation to sellers." Specifically, I will be focusing on pharmaceutical companies' choice to disclose information about their research on new medicines. I will use this recent article, Despite Vow, Drug Makers Still Withhold Data, from the NY Times as a starting point.

*edit*

I'm not doing my presentation on pharmaceutical companies and their reluctance to properly inform the public about research trials conducted on new drugs anymore, but I did write an entry about it. Instead, I will be doing my presentation on marketing "safer" cigarettes and its impact on society.

Intro Post #2 - Brief Bio

2005-05-24T20:51:00.000-04:00

I have been the program manager of Princeton in Beijing (PIB), a study abroad program, since the beginning of 2003. I am solely responsible for the preparation and management of this competitive institutional program, including office administration, marketing, finance, and sales.

Now for the fun stuff. Here are 10 things about me:

1) I share my birthday with Ringo Starr.
2) I was named after Melody, the drum-playing Pussycat. Coincidentally, I also play the drums.
3) I am a huge LOTR fan. Love the movies too. I've probably read the books about a dozen times each.
4) My maltese puppy, Snowie was named after Snowy, the dog in The Adventures of Tin Tin, my favorite comic.
5) I tried to learn how to ride a motorcyle twice and failed. I kept losing my balance, probably because I don't really know how to ride a regular bike.
6) The first concert I went to was Nirvana's In Utero show at Roseland, NYC in 1993. It was my first experience in a mosh pit.
7) In college, I pledged a sorority during my sophomore year. The sorority was kicked off campus a semester later for allegedly hazing its new members.
8) I enjoy learning foreign languages; I am conversational in Spanish, French, Mandarin and Cantonese.
9) Beer is my drink of choice. I especially enjoy Belgian style brews.
10) I love to travel. Next to New York City, Paris is the best city in the world.

Intro Post #1 - Writing From Berkeley, CA

2005-05-22T21:55:00.000-04:00

Testing.

I have been officially enrolled in MKTG 411 with Professor Brown.