Question

1. Provide examples of a company that changes its product offerings and advertising campaigns according to different market segments. Have these strategies been successful or not for the company?

2. Explain in your own words what "cognitive dissonance" is. Provide an example of the same. What are steps taken by companies to alleviate cognitive dissonance?

Answer 1

ANSWER- 1

A Strategy for product Launch Success

In the ever-changing consumer market, technology is the key to success. Consumers have new touch points every day to evaluate your products, including advertisements, websites, email, phone apps, recommended reviews, customer service, and trade publications.

A successful product launch strategy focuses on the customer experience: price, quality, function, and availability are priorities.

1. Development

Is your product the right fit for the market? Is there a demand or need for your product? If you aren’t sure, poll your consumer base, beta test your product on a focus group of customers and get a feel for whether or not your product is exciting, useful, or boring.

2. Market a Landing Page

You’ve tested it out on focus groups and it’s ready for the next step. Build up hype about your product. Design a landing page for your product with an email registration. You’re building a database and generating interest at the same time. Keep your consumers updated, excited, and informed as new developments occur.

3. More Testing

Run your product through the gamut. You want an airtight product before launch, so test a secondary group. A marketing consulting firm can help you identify issues that consumers may run into with your product through team-building and testing, and find solutions to opportunities that arise.

4. Organize Your Priorities

Is everyone in your company onboard? From the mail-room to the boardroom, a holistic approach to your product launch can help you determine internal momentum. Every employee has an idea, so listen closely.

5. Set Goals

Create engaging literature and materials to support your product. When customers aren’t sure what a product does, it can be mysterious and exciting, but also questionable and frustrating. A well-known brand can create a lot of hype with discretion whereas startups should provide as much information as possible.

6. Set the Event

Launch your product with a well-paced campaign. Consult with your marketing specialists to develop the correct budget, target audience and promotional channels with which to launch your product.

7. Expect the Unexpected

Don’t get discouraged if your product fails to launch. Learn from failures as opportunities for growth when your next great product design comes around.

Examples :

1. Nike: Just Do It.

Source: brandchannel

JUST DO IT

Did you know that, once upon a time, Nike's product catered almost exclusively to marathon runners? Then, a fitness craze emerged -- and the folks in Nike's marketing department knew they needed to take advantage of it to surpass their main competitor, Reebok. (At the time, Reebok was selling more shoes than Nike). And so, in the late 1980s, Nike created the "Just Do It." campaign.

It was a hit.

In 1988, Nike sales were at $800 million; by 1998, sales exceeded $9.2 billion. "Just Do It." was short and sweet, yet encapsulated everything people felt when they were exercising -- and people still feel that feeling today. Don’t want to run five miles? Just Do It. Don’t want walk up four flights of stairs? Just Do It. It's a slogan we can all relate to: the drive to push ourselves beyond our limits.

The Lesson

When you're trying to decide the best way to present your brand, ask yourself: What problem are you solving for your customers? What solution does your product or service provide? By hitting on that core issue in all of your messaging, you'll connect with consumers on an emotional level that is hard to ignore.

2. Coke: Share a Coke

Laura Shaun Mark Som

Big brands are often hard-pressed to do something ground-breaking when they're already so big. So, what did Coca-Cola do to appeal to the masses? They appealed to individuals -- by putting their names on each bottle.

The Share a Coke campaign began in Australia in 2011, when Coca-Cola personalized each bottle with the 150 most popular names in the country. Since then, the U.S. has followed suit, printing first names across the front of its bottles and cans in Coke's branded font. You can even order custom bottles on Coke's website to request things like nicknames and college logos.

It was a breaking story across the marketing and advertising industry. Many consumers were enchanted by it, while others were confused by it -- why make a temporary item so personal? Pepsi even released counter-ads shortly after the campaign launched.

Nonetheless, Coke received immediate attention for it.

The Lesson

Coke fans are regular buyers, and the company leaned into that sense of individual ownership with full force. Wondering what name you'll get out of the vending machine was a fun thrill in and of itself -- even if it isn't yours, it encourages you to "share a Coke" with whomever's name is on the front.

3. Absolut Vodka: The Absolut Bottle

WWWABSOLUTADCOM METRO ABSOLUT PARIS.

ABSOL TAD ABSOLUT NEW YORK.

Source: Burning Through Journey Blog

Despite having no distinct shape, Absolut made its bottle the most recognizable bottle in the world. Its campaign, which featured print ads showing bottles "in the wild," was so successful that they didn’t stop running it for 25 years. It's the longest uninterrupted ad campaign ever and comprises over 1,500 separate ads. I guess if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

When the campaign started, Absolut had a measly 2.5% of the vodka market. When it ended in the late 2000s, Absolut was importing 4.5 million cases per year, or half of all imported vodka in the U.S.

The Lesson

No matter how boring your product looks, it doesn’t mean you can’t tell your story in an interesting way. Let me repeat: Absolut created 1500 ads of one bottle. Be determined and differentiate your product in the same way.

4. Anheuser-Busch: Whassup

When's the last time an advertisement literally changed the way we talk to one another? Allow me to answer that question with another question: "Whassup?!"

This series of commercials, which first appeared in late 1999, features a group of friends connecting on a group phone call (we don't do those much anymore, do we?) while drinking beer and "watching the game" on TV.

It starts gently: "What are you doin'?" Someone asks. "Watching the game, havin' a Bud" (a Budweiser), someone replies. As more friends pick up the phone, the hilarity ensues: "WHASSUP!?" is yelled back and forth, becoming a classic catchphrase and an icon of beer-drinking culture that ran constantly on sports networks over the next few years.

The Lesson

The ad took pop culture by storm during the Super Bowl in 2000, and you can still hear its echoes today. Why? Anheuser-Busch showed us just how silly and informal an ad can be without ruffling feathers or going off-brand. Dare to celebrate your audience's absurdities. The more genuine your ad is, the more valuable your product is.

5. Miller Lite: Great Taste, Less Filling

LITE TASTES GREAT AND ITS LESS FILLING,IALSO LIKE THE EASY-OPENING CAN" Bubbe Smith Farmer Alene เ¡neman LITE BEER FROM MILLER. EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED INA BEER.AND LESS.

Source: BuildingPharmaBrands blog

Think it's easy to create a whole new market for your product? The Miller Brewing Company (now MillerCoors) did just that with the light beer market -- and dominated it. The goal of the "Great Taste, Less Filling" campaign was getting "real men" to drink light beer, but they were battling the common misconception that light beer can never actually taste good.

Taking the debate head-on, Miller featured masculine models drinking their light beer and declaring it great tasting.

The Lesson

For decades after this campaign aired, Miller Lite dominated the light beer market it had essentially created. What’s the lesson marketers can learn? Strive to be different. If people tell you there isn’t room for a product, create your own category so you can quickly become the leader.

ANSWER - 2

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE:

It is the mental discomfort (psychological stress) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values. This discomfort is triggered by a situation in which a person’s belief clashes with new evidence perceived by that person. When confronted with facts that contradict personal beliefs, ideals, and values, people will find a way to resolve the contradiction in order to reduce their discomfort.

One of the theory Stated that proposed that human beings strive for internal psychological consistency in order to mentally function in the real world. A person who experiences internal inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable, and so is motivated to reduce the cognitive dissonance, by making changes to justify the stressful behavior, either by adding new parts to the cognition causing the psychological dissonance, or by actively avoiding social situations and contradictory information likely to increase the magnitude of the cognitive dissonance.

In the Business one of the situation is Ethical Dilemma

An ethical dilemma  is a decision-making problem between two possible moral imperatives, neither of which is unambiguously acceptable or preferable. The complexity arises out of the situational conflict in which obeying one would result in transgressing another. Sometimes called ethical paradoxes in moral philosophy, ethical dilemmas may be invoked to refute an ethical system or moral code, or to improve it so as to resolve the paradox.