Just a personal encounter

This blog post doesn't have much to do with social media but I guess it does have some relevance in regards to pricing aspect in marketing?

I was sitting in a coffee shop last week for a relaxing brunch. While I was sipping my tea and had fun doodling on my sketchbook, a man around late 30's came up to me and asked me if I 'm interested in doing a art commission for a short story written by his friend. We talked for an hour and he asked if I would like to help him translate the short story into Chinese and also discussed about setting a discount price for the e-book. Originally, the price is set at $2.99 for this 10 page long quick-read. He asked if people in my country would be more inclined to buy it if he change the price to $0.99 for the first 30 people to buy. I said: "Yes, I think people I know, which are mostly Chinese/Taiwanese, tend to get attracted to cheaper things."

This got me started wondering if the concept of "less is more" really is a cultural thing?  I think many people, not just Chinese around the world would say that you should definitely set the price to $0.99? I mean, would you buy an e-book that is 10 pages long at $2.99 or at $0.99?

My Airbnb experience

I was in need of finding a place to stay for one night during my 2 days trip to NYC back in June 2012. Many of the lodging options I found online were either not available or too expensive for me to consider. Later in the day, I came across Airbnb.com, and was fascinated by their services! 

Airbnb is an online platform which enables registered users around the world, referred to as “hosts”, to rent unoccupied rooms, houses, or even a castles for short or long term stays to travelers in need. Since I am taking social media marketing course now, I want to share some thought on why I find Airbnb fascinating:

Airbnb ask members to put detailed personal descriptions about themselves; it asks everyone who registered to verify their accounts with working phone numbers; and all sort of other things to ensure the rights of all the registered members. Once the transaction occurred (after the host has hosted the guests), both sides are asked to leave reviews for one another.

To be honest, I was very worried about living in some stranger’s house for one night, especially when I am all by myself and my host is a male. At the end, I choose to trust the personal descriptions of my host (he is a policemen of NYPD) and the comments that other guest gave him online. It was certainly a cool experience because it offers a completely new and more convenient choice for travelers – it’s a combination of hotels, lodges, and even couches surfing!

As learned in class, Internet is a place for “content aggregation”, I wonder how Airbnb can manage all the information collected from all the members around the world. I have found an introduction video of how Airbnb utilizes Hootsuite, an online business service that we will touch upon later in the semester. I have no experience of Hootsuite yet but this video does provide some insight of how a company can manage all the data on social media sites and transform them into useful information. (I will, perhaps, be blogging about this again once we start using Hootsuite.) 

Watch the video: http://blog.hootsuite.com/airbnb-social-media-growth/

Japanese sense of humor in marketing.

Last semester (Fall 2012), I took a global marketing class with Professor Gu and towards the end of the semester, she gave students a chance to earn extra credit by making a short presentation on topic of "marketing techniques in a certain country". One of the classmate chose Japan and showed us a video in class: I find this to compilation of commercials a very typical Japanese style sense of humor!

Almost everyone in the class was laughing when the video ran halfway through. However, I think the reason why many of them laughed was because this video is a"compilation" of all the Fanta commercials rather than just one single commercial.

I grew up in Taiwan, which is a country that has a lot of cultural exchanges with Japan; I have seen quite a few Japanese TV shows and commercials airing in Taiwanese televisions since I was a kid. I find Japanese' sense of humor to be very "creatively-nonsensical" In addition, their sense of humour is sometimes very subtle and sophisticated that will require people to think about the meaning behind it. It is sometimes hard to understand the humor if one doesn't have much understanding in Japanese culture in general. From my past experience, few people either get it and laugh, or just stare at it and be like "Huh? What was going on?"

Many people, especially people from western societies, are used to "straight in your face" kind of humor; therefore, if the video only shows 1 Fanta commercial rather than a compilation, I wonder if classmates would find it funny or even "understandable" at the very first place? Never the less, it is very interesting to see how people reacts toward other country's marketing styles and the underlying cultural differences within the commercial!