List of Topics for Case Study Assignments (“Student’s Choice”) The reasons we purchase can many times be broken down into the categories of: 1. Health, 2. Safety, or 3. Status. Discounters like Costco, Target, and Sam’s Club have become very trendy places for the middle and upper income demographic to shop. 4. Frugality has become an acceptable social norm. Many of us are frugal with our own discretionary income. We often spend money less cautiously when it falls into the category of 5. Rituals (gifts, visiting friends, holidays, events etc.) Michigan is an extremely diverse state! 6. Segmenting the market by Ethnicity/Religion/Race/Sexual Orientation are all marketing strategies. America has always been a land of immigrants and we are seeing the growth of the Hispanic market (more specifically Mexican immigrants). Most research I have read on the topic of purchasing power shows females control/influence approximately 90% of the U.S. businessto-consumer dollar. The topic of 7. Female Purchasing Power is very relevant to the U.S. retailers. Purchasing items for 8. Babies, Children, and Pets are very lucrative markets for companies to sell products and services. In an aging nation, America is dominated economically by the Baby Boomer population. This leads to huge 9. Nostalgia Consumption (Walt Disney, reunion concert tours, retro/throwback food, beverage, cars, hairstyles, movies, senior sports celebrities, clothing and toy items etc.) There is an interesting book titled “The Experience Economy” (Pine II, B. Joseph, and Gilmore, James H. 1999. Harvard Business School Press). I will share the basic premise of this book with you so you can think about how some businesses can sell the same commodity for a premium and develop brand loyalty. 10. Experiential Marketing is a very valuable tool to differentiate your product or service from the business down the street. Using a similar concept, 11. Branding is a powerful sales tool. As anyone who grocery shops for themselves can tell you, many commodities have gone up in price over the past several years. The price of oil has doubled over the past 4 years (2008- 2012). This means that transporting food to Wal-Mart and Kroger has gone up in cost, and the price of all plastic items have gone up. Many companies have gone to new 12. Packaging for smaller portions (most ice cream brands are no longer a half gallon!) and to differentiate themselves from their completion (individual servings, re-closable containers, temperature indicators on beer cans, etc.) Data shows that sales of 13. Store Brand products are growing. Retailers like Costco are 14. Co-Branding—they are listing their store brand and the national brand on the packaging (e.g. Costco Kirkland and General Electric lights). Is this trend permanent or a result of the deep recession in 2009? How is the quality of store brands vs. national brands? Traditional bookstores like Borders have filed for bankruptcy. Amazon, an online store, is the number one seller of books. My music store as a kid, Harmony House, no longer exists. Apple’s onlineiTunes store has surpassed Wal-Mart as the number one music seller in America. Much of our travel reservations, financial transactions, and real estate shopping happens online. How is the 15. Distribution of goods and services changing? “Each week, nearly one-and-a-half-million people move to cities, almost all in developing markets” (McKinsey report, “The Great Rebalancing, 2010). ““Gen Y,” youth born roughly between 1980 and the early 2000s. The boomers, meanwhile, boast 76 million. Gen Y housing preferences are the subject of at least two panels at this week’s convention. A key finding: They want to walk everywhere. Surveys show that 13% carpool to work, while 7% walk, said Melina Duggal, a principal with Orlando-based real estate adviser RCLCO. A whopping 88% want to be in an urban setting” (Wall Street Journal, “No McMansions for Millennials”, January 13, 2011). What does this trend of 16. Urban Living mean to consumer behavior? 17. Gen Xers often started out in the Suburbs with a half hour commute to the city from their “McMansions” but if they had the additional income and desired a “McMansion Deluxe” with even bigger yard they moved an hour away to the Exurbs—so exploring the Suburban and Exurban lifestyle is very interesting in terms of how it affects purchasing power and purchasing habits. Wal-Mart, the largest seller of groceries in the United States, is trying to stock more locally sourced produce. Busch’s Fresh Food Market, a Southeast Michigan-based food seller, has “Made in Michigan” product stickers. Many communities have weekly “Farmer’s Markets” to sell local product and home items. What is behind this 18. Locally Sourced movement? It seems like you can’t open any business publication, watch any business cable tv network, or attend any business class on a college campus and avoid hearing about 19. Big Data/Analytics or 20. The Cloud. 21. Crowdsourcing and 22. Contextual Marketing are two “newer” concepts that we will discuss this semester and are very interesting and important topics. Last but not least, your ideas 23. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Marketing almost seems like a return to the “old days” where consumers sold or barterer to one another. 24. Consumer-toConsumer (C2C) Marketing is here and companies need to decide if they are going to respect and use their customers as part of the marketing process or ignore this trend? 25. Components of cars, planes, trains and industrial equipment as well appliances and devices have internet connectivity. This opens up the exciting world of The Internet of Things (IoT) or as it is sometimes referred to as The Internet of Everything. 26. Subway did not pass up McDonald’s as the biggest food chain in terms of number of stores (not dollars sold) by building restaurants, rather they Collaborated and used a Combo-Stores approach by opening up smaller restaurants within gas stations, schools, office buildings, on boats etc. and many other businesses like their competitor Jimmy John’s and other food sellers are using this approach (as are retailers from TJ Maxx to Wal Mart). 27. Women now make up 51% of all managerial and professional occupations (U.S. Department of Labor, 2010) so this shift of female paychecks dominating the middle class changes the marketing approach of many businesses as does the shift to having men serve the role of (28.) “Stay home Dad’s”. 29. 2013 is projected to be the first year that non-shaving related grooming products outsell shaving products (Wall Street Journal, “Yes, Real Men Drink Beer and Use Skin Moisturizer”, Matthew Boyle, October 03, 2013) Statistics show that men are buying purses (“The Murse!”) and marketers are not ignoring this shift of culture among men to what is often referred to as Metrosexuality. 30. GenerationY is almost as large as the Baby Boomer generation that marketers found so lucrative. 31. Tweens (the group younger than Generation Y) are now being targeted by marketers that want to develop brand loyalty for the future. 32. New topics and trends will be discovered during the semester, so Other can be used. If you plan on developing a topic yourself please check with the instructor prior to beginning. 33. There is a clear winner in the brick-and-mortar vs. online shopping battle and it is called Omnichannel (using multiple distribution strategies where the line between traditional and eCommerce is blurred). 34. There is research showing flavor is 70% smell, 20% taste, and 10% sensation. This food-theory is leading to retail and entertainment to use more fragrance/smells in their atmospheric strategy. 35. Tactile Marketing (function, shape, weight, texture) is a key area of emphasis in consumer packaged goods and in the sales of products like electronics, tools, and appliances. 36. Generation Z (18 and under) is estimated at 82 million young people! 37. Design is key to standing out in an increasingly virtual world. 38. Africa is exploding in economic terms (is home to six out of the 10 fastest-growing economies, according to The Economist). This is the next big market. 39. Next 20 years = 3 Billion New Middle Class consumers (Ernst and Young). 40. Digital Wallets (using NFC technology) are increasingly replacing cash for payments 41. Use of Cribbing or Plagiarism – to Borrow from another category (e.g. shampoo with food ingredients and hair recipes) 42. The Use of Short Stories to build Brands (e.g. Captain Morgan with videos and suburban raids). 43. Craft Alcohol is seeing huge growth in craft beer (passed 3,000 breweries in 2014) and 2013 saw 294 new whiskey brands launched globally 44. Internet (HTML) on the laptop is seeing Applications (various languages for multiple operating systems) growth in an increasingly mobile world using more smartphones and tablets – this means the next MySpace or Facebook may not be one website but many different apps (e.g. Snapchat, Instagram, and other apps) 45. Many of us are getting our news from data-oriented gathering services like Mashable, Fipboard, Buzzfeed, Reddit, Quartz, and Digg. 46. Virtual is going physical (e.g. Amazon.com opening stores, Minecraft video game selling toys at Target and Wal Mart) and Physical is going virtual (e.g. Nike using technology in their shoes with a Nike + chip, and Chili’s tablet Ziosk technology to order and pay at your seat). 47. Monthly subscription services like Birchbox for women, also Dollar Shave Club, and Trunk Club for men, while Barkbox is for our pets. These are an interesting distribution and shopping business model to experience new brands delivered right to your door for the year with only one click of the mouse.48. grubHub is a 3rd party food delivery business, based out of Chicago, this “Uber-like” business partners with restaurants and handles the food delivery for the eating establishment. While grubHub is designed to bring us meals, this type of service is not limited to food delivery in urban locations. 49. Uber and Lyft are both disrupting the taxi-cab monopoly. While they were started to deliver people, is retail distribution their main objective for 2020? 50. airbnb is a peer-to-peer (P2P) room rental website that is valued more than the major hotel chains that own billions in real estate. In the Summer of 2015 Uber was worth approximately $50 of the market cap of Fed-Ex and more than Avis and Hertz car rental companies, while airbnb is worth approximately $24 billion or $3 billion more than the Marriott Corporation that owns 4,000 or so hotel properties! (source: WSJ 2014, 2015) 51. Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are dominating business and tech topics in the news. They all have marketing implications. 52. A business likes you photo spread on Instagram, their marketing department might reach out to you and make you a Brand Ambassador to representtheir products in exchange for free merchandise or compensation for people using your “code” to order online. 53. Who will be first to launch driverless cars, Google or Uber (or someone else?) 54. Other – feel free to find a topic outside of these 50 above. Check with your instructor if you aren’t sure if you are on track to research a consumer behavior topic.