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Tuesday, 4 September 2012

DON’T COMPROMISE YOUR PRICING





 koficlaus@gmail.com

Charging too little wins the sale but makes little profit. Furthermore, it attracts the wrong customers—those who will switch to save a dime. It also attracts competitors who will match or exceed the price  cut. And it cheapens the customer’s view of the product.

Professor Kotler / Marketing A-Z

Marketers today fall prey to price wars. Just a glance at the Telecom companies would give you an idea of what am talking about. Price wars depletes a company’s resources. Moreover, reduction in prices for marketing is something even a child can do.
Marketers should show their  mental prowess and compete from  others aspects. Some customers are not moved by prices at all; expensive goods like jewelry would not be patronized when  priced cheap. 
Compete on the Advertising (share of voice), people (customer service), product (differentiation), Physical evidence (Proof of competency). 
I have no problem with using lowest pricing for differentiation (eg walmart), it's a powerful strategy.
Sony won't compete on price in tablet market
OKYO: Sony Corp won't be drawn into price competition in the tablet PC market amid a plethora of new cheap models from other makers, the executive in charge of the Japanese company's mobile devices division said on Tuesday.

Sony is also lithe enough and has enough research and development capability to compete against rivals Apple Inc

and Samsung Electronics in smartphones, Kunimasa Suzuki, an executive vice president at Sony, said at a press briefing in Tokyo.
Source: indiatimes

Glo deepens telecom price war

Glo Ghana has launched a new tariff plan dubbed ‘Glo Gista’ to enable subscribers to make both on-net and off-net calls for only 6Gp per minutes and also a enjoy loads of freebies and discounts.

This offer, which is not a promo but a long-term tariff plan, raises the bar of the telecom tariff war to another level, as it is the first to reduce both on-net and off-net tariffs to as low as 6Gp.

Tigo offers a default on-net tariff of 3Gp (Tigo to Tigo), but standard off-net rate is 8.4Gp; MTN Zone also offers some lower tariffs, but that is not regular; while Vodafone’s 138 also offers some irregular lower rates.

The Glo Gista tariff plan comes to add to the ‘Good Day Ghana’ launch package in which Glo Ghana customers, who still prefer that to Gista, would continue to enjoy 20Gp free credit every morning as a default package, plus all the other benefits Glo announced at its commercial launch.

But those interested in Glo Gista would have to dial *200*1*1# to register and start enjoying 6Gp per minute of calls to both Glo numbers and numbers on all the other local networks after the first minute of call upon registration.

The package also include up to 100% recharge bonus, free registration of five family and friend group, to whom the customer could make calls and send messages at 2Gp per minute, and per SMS.

Customers on Glo Gista also get free SMS to any number the whole day after paying for the first two SMSs in the day, and a bonus of one minute free after receiving three minutes of calls from another number.

The package also offers 100 minutes of free night calls to Glo numbers from midnight to 5am every night, plus free 100Megabytes of data capacity for browsing free overnight.

Free night browsing on Glo Gista is a novelty as it is the first time in Ghana for any mobile network to offer customer free night browsing.

Head of Commercial at Glo Mobile Ghana, Augustine Mamuro told journalists at a press launch that the introduction of Glo Gista in Ghana was in fulfillment of a promise at the launch of Glo in Ghana, to bring the popular and most successful Glo Gista package from its other markets to Ghana.

He said the term ‘Gista’ was a coinage from the English word ‘gist’, which happens to be the freestyle parlance among the youth for chit-chat, and free talk, adding that Gista was therefore inspired by the desire to give Ghanaians “the license and freedom to talk and talk again on the Glo network without any inhibition.

Theophelus Agbeko is the Head of Non-Voice Business at Glo Ghana, and he told journalists that the Gista offer has given relevance to Ghana’s one pesewa and five pesewas coins, adding that it also defeats the reason for owning more than one SIM or phone.

“Six pesewas per minute is lower than what some telcos even charge for their on-net calls and so when you use your Glo handset there is no need thinking twice about whether you are calling an on-net or off-net number because the rate is the same – 6Gp and it is the lowest you can get on the market,” he said.

“We want to change the wide-spread culture of owning two phones in Ghana to using just one phone,” he said.

Apart from Tigo, which has 3Gp for on-net calls, MTN standard on-net rate is 9Gp, but can get lower on MTN Zone; Vodafone standard rate is 14.4Gp, but some packages also offer 8Gp standard, and lower based on some complex conditions; Airtel on-net is 8.4Gp, and Expresso is 9.5Gp.

Journalist queried the sustainability of the Glo Gista tariff plan, given that interconnectivity rate is up to 4.5Gp per minute, which leaves Glo with only 1.5Gp per minute for all off-net calls, but the officials said the offer is to bond with Ghanaians and to show love to the teaming subscribers.

Glo has been on the Ghanaian market for four months, and has already raked in an estimated 1.3 million subscribers, and gained some 4.2% market share.

It is already chipping away some of the market share of competition, and Glo Gista threatens to do more damage to the revenue margins of competition, which is a concern expressed by some telco bosses long before Glo started commercial service in Ghana.
source: ghanaweb

ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE WITH SOCIAL INNOVATIONS


 koficlaus@gmail.com

Innovation is not limited to new products or services. It includes
thinking up new businesses and business processes.
 Professor Kotler / Marketing A-Z
True innovation is gear towards customer value, but goes beyond new  products to companies completely rewiring themselves.Leading innovators are changing their industries not just their products - 
Nigel F. Piercy / Market-Led Strategic Change                                                                     Steve Jobs
Consider these innovations
1.      Installment payments: has helped most Ghanaians to buy land build  houses worth millions.
2.      Weekend courses and evening schools: has helped worked do their MBA’s and has increased customers for schools
If no body is buying from you it’s because you are not innovating. Your products may  be the same but social innovations in your business model can turn your business around and make your rich! Innovation is not only about technology, innovate in your payment systems, time for doing business and other areas of your business.
Claus can help you.
Big companies are finding it difficult to innovate because of the fatness or ‘red tapism’ we know them for.

Read this…………..

Multinationals Stake a Claim in Venture Capital

ENLO PARK, Calif. — New York, London and Hong Kong are common addresses for blue-chip multinationals. Now Silicon Valley is, too.
From downtown San Francisco to Palo Alto, companies like American Express and Ford are opening offices and investing millions of dollars in local start-ups. This year, American Express opened a venture capital office in Facebook’s old headquarters in downtown Palo Alto. Less than three miles away, General Motors’ research lab houses full-time investment professionals, recent transplants from Detroit.
“American Express is a 162-year-old company, and this is a moment of transformation,” said Harshul Sanghi, a managing partner at American Express Ventures, the venture capital arm of the financial company. “We’re here to be a part of the fabric of innovation.”
The companies are raising their profiles in Silicon Valley at a shaky time for the broader venture capital industry. While top players like Andreessen Horowitz and Accel Partners have grown bigger, most venture capital firms are struggling with anemic returns.
The market for start-ups has also dimmed, in the wake of the sharp stock declines of Facebook, Zynga and Groupon, the once high-flying threesome that was supposed to lead the next Internet boom.
But unlike traditional venture capitalists, multinationals are less interested in profits. They are here to buy innovation — or at least get a peek at the next wave of emerging technologies.
In August, Starbucks invested $25 million in Square, the mobile payments company based in San Francisco, which will be used in the coffee chain’s stores. This year, Citi Ventures, a unit of Citigroup, invested in Plastic Jungle, an online exchange for gift cards, and Jumio, an online credit card scanner.
Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, the large Spanish banking group, opened an office in San Francisco last year. The team, which has about $100 million to fund local start-ups, is looking for consumer applications that will help the bank create new businesses and better understand its customers.
“We are in one of the most regulated and risk-averse industries in the world, so innovation doesn’t come naturally to us,” said Jay Reinemann, the head of the BBVA office. “We want to avoid the video-rental model. We want to evolve alongside our consumers.”
The companies are hoping to tap into the entrepreneurial mind-set. Multinationals, with their huge payrolls and sprawling operations, are not as nimble as the younger upstarts. While they are rich in resources, big companies tend to be more gun-shy and usually require more time to bring a product to market.
“Companies cannot innovate as fast as start-ups; increasingly they realize they have to look outside,” said Gerald Brady, a managing director at Silicon Valley Bank, who previously led the early-stage venture arm of Siemens. “We think it’s happening a lot more than people recognize or acknowledge.”
Of the 750 corporate venture units, roughly 200 were established in the last two years, according to Global Corporate Venturing, a publication that tracks the market. In the last year, corporations participated in more than $20 billion of start-up investments.
Big business has played the role of venture capitalist before, with limited success. During the waning days of the dot-com boom, financial, media and telecommunications companies sank billions of dollars into start-ups.
The collapse was devastating. Although some managed to make money, far more burned through their cash. In 2002, Accenture, the consulting firm, scrapped its venture capital unit after taking more than $200 million in write-downs. The previous year, Wells Fargo reported $1.6 billion in losses on its venture capital investments. Dell, the computer maker, closed its venture arm in 2004 and sold its portfolio to an investment firm. (It resurrected the unit last year).
Companies say they are taking a different approach this time. Rather than making big bets across the Internet sector, investments are smaller and more selective.
“We invest with the idea that we’re a potential customer for a company,” Jon Lauckner, G.M.’s chief technology officer said. “We’re not looking to make several $5 million investments and make $10 million on each. That would be nice, but it’s not important.”
As they try to find the right start-ups, some are forging tight bonds with local firms. BBVA, for example, is an investor in 500 Startups, a venture firm that specializes in early-stage start-ups and is run by Dave McClure, a former PayPal executive.
Unilever and PepsiCo are limited partners in Physic Ventures, a venture capital firm designed to help corporate investors build commercial partnerships with portfolio companies. Both Unilever and PepsiCo have installed full-time employees in Physic’s downtown San Francisco offices.
American Express has stacked its investment team with technology veterans. Mr. Sanghi, the head of the office, has spent roughly three decades in Silicon Valley and formerly led Motorola Mobility’s venture arm. Through its network of relationships, the office has met with roughly 300 start-ups in the last six months.
The connections have started to pay off. Vinod Khosla, the head of Khosla Ventures and a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, introduced the American Express team to the executives at Ness Computing, a mobile start-up. In August, American Express partnered with Singtel, the Singapore wireless company, to invest $15 million in Ness.
Mr. Sanghi says Ness is a logical investment and a potential partner. The start-up’s application connects users to local businesses through customized search results.
“It’s trying to bring consumers and merchants together in meaningful ways,” he said. “And we’re always trying to find new ways to build value for our merchant and consumer network.”
For start-ups, a big corporate benefactor can bring resources and an established platform to promote and distribute products. Envia Systems, an electric car battery maker, picked General Motors to lead its last financing round because it wanted to have a close relationship with a major automaker, its “absolute end customer,” said Atul Kapadia, Envia’s chief executive.
Although the company received higher offers from other potential corporate investors, Envia wanted G.M.’s advice on how to build the battery so that one day it could be a standard in the company’s electric cars. After the investment, G.M. offered the start-up access to its experts and facilities in Detroit, which Envia is using.
“You want to listen to your end customer because they will help you figure out what specifications you need to get into the final product,” said Mr. Kapadia.
A marriage with corporate investors can be complicated. Besides G.M., Asahi Kasei and Asahi Glass, the Japanese auto-part makers, are also investors in Envia. They both build rival battery products for Japanese car companies.
Mr. Kapadia, who prizes their insights into Japan’s market, says his company is careful about what intellectual property information it shares with its investors. At board meetings, confidential data about Envia’s customers is discussed only at the end, so that conflicted corporate investors can easily excuse themselves.
“In our marriage, there has not been a single ethics concern, because all the expectations were hashed out in the beginning,” Mr. Kapadia said. “But I can see how this could be a land mine.”
For the big corporations, start-up investing is fraught with the same risk as traditional venture investing. Their bets might be modest, but blowups can be embarrassing and can rankle shareholders, who may see venture investing as a distraction from the core business.
OnLive, an online gaming service, offers a recent reminder.
The company was once a darling of corporate investors, with financing from the likes of Time Warner, AutoDesk, HTC and AT&T. At one point, it was valued north of $1 billion.
Despite its early promise, the start-up crashed in August, taking many in Silicon Valley by surprise. The company laid off its employees, announced a reorganization and in the process slashed the value of the shares to zero.
“It can be painful when a deal goes sour,” James Mawson, the founder of Global Corporate Venturing, said.
Source: nytimes