Marketing Small Talk — Part 2: Google’s Punch against Facebook, Amazon Fresh Needs Delicate Marketing?, Viewing Tesla’s Strength with a Marketing Perspective
This series of postings is titled ‘marketing small talk.’ In this series, I share marketing insights that I have obtained. Each posting of this series only has a small number of chunks (this posting has only three chunks) so that you can easily read the whole of each posting. Enjoy this posting and hope you can get any marketing insight. Also, welcome to all your comments (e.g., agree/disagree on each chunk, similar example you have seen).
Google Punched Facebook’s Face
Google is the biggest online advertising platform company. Google has provided advertising services helping advertisers to send customized advertising to individual Google users. To provide these advertising services, Google has collected the Google users’ internet browsing history, and these services have made Google earn a lot of money.
Google’s decision reminds us of its competitor, Facebook whose brand reputation on privacy protection has been deteriorated since the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. By reminding us of Facebook, it seems that Google sneakily punches Facebook’s face.
Amazon, Maybe You Need Delicate Marketing
In the U.S., Amazon opened 11 cashier-less supermarkets which are called Amazon Fresh. Please watch this video for knowing how Amazon Fresh looks like and hope you pay attention, in particular, to the timeline from 40 seconds to 50 seconds of the video. Look at those a large number of cameras watching customers! These cameras identify who the customers are and track what the customers pick up from the shelves.
I have visited an offline Apple store in South Korea and, in the store, I could not recognize whether the store has cameras until an employee told me. This was because the cameras in the store were too small and looked like light bulbs. Maybe, Apple thought that, if visitors recognize cameras, the visitors may feel that they are treated as potential thieves of the store. Apple tried to find out such a small thing that visitors can feel uncomfortable with and tried to remove them.
Here, I want to define one term: “delicate marketing.” I made up this term and want to define it as “using firm resources (e.g., money, time, and efforts) to eliminate any small things that can make customers feel uncomfortable.”
My experience at the offline Apple store shows that Apple did a great “delicate marketing.” I admit that cameras are required to operate cashier-less stores, but it is also true that customers would not want to be watched and to be treated as potential thieves while shopping. Amazon Fresh might need to recognize the importance of “delicate marketing” and need to devise how to change the design of cameras to make customers feel less uncomfortable.
Why Do Electric Car Companies Distribute Their Own Charge Machines? — Viewing Tesla’s Strategy with a Marketing Perspective
Tesla is the leading brand in the electric car market. One Harvard Business Review article pointed out that Tesla’s strength lies not only in designing and producing well-made electric cars but also in its large number of charge machines named Tesla Superchargers. Because the owners of electric cars should frequently charge their cars, Tesla has widely distributed a large number of Tesla Superchargers over roads for helping Tesla car owners to have less worry about facing situations where the batteries are discharged while driving.
To compete with Tesla, traditional car companies (e.g., Volkswagen and GM) have decided to completely replace internal combustion cars with electric cars. Furthermore, they decided to imitate Tesla’s strategy of distributing a large number of their charge machines under their own brand names.
It seems weird that both Tesla and traditional car companies decided to distribute their own charge machines. Like many fossil fuel companies have distributed a large number of gas stations over roads for fueling internal combustion cars made by car companies, Tesla and traditional car companies also can make other companies distribute charge machines. Even though, by doing so, they can reduce the costs associated with distributing their own charge machines, why they decided not to do it?
My answer is that they want to provide a “brand support experience” to the owners of electric cars. I made up the term, “brand support experience,” and define it as the experience that customers perceive that the brand of a product he/she bought resolves the problems that the customers face while using the product. This “brand support experience” can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty to the brand because customers perceive the brand as a brand resolving their problems.
Every electric car owner frequently faces a problem that he/she should charge the batteries. When Tesla car owners face such a problem, Tesla Superchargers will resolve the problem. This makes Telsa car owners obtain a “brand support experience” provided by Tesla, which can increase their satisfaction and loyalty to the brand. However, when the owners of an electric car whose brand has not their own charge machines face the same problem, they need to find out other brands that can resolve the problem. This implies that the car owners could not obtain a “brand support experience” from the car brand and, simultaneously, this implies that the car brand loses the opportunities in increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty to the brand.
In conclusion, it seems that “brand support experience” is the strength of Tesla and the traditional car companies also want to provide such experience.
• I am not a native English speaker but want to share my story with many people. Thus, I decided to write the posting in English. Please consider it while reading this posting.
• To make the quality of this posting better, I will revise this posting frequently (e.g., eliminating awkward sentences, correcting English grammatical errors, make the flow of the story more fluently, make the story more interesting to readers). All your comments are welcomed. They will make the quality of this posting better and will help me to provide you more interesting and informative postings later.
• Thank you for your time reading this article.
The below is my LinkedIn profile and Here is my business email. Please contact me if you have any job offer, collaboration requests, and questions.
