Category Archives: Cases

Cases

Hide doors to be popular

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Nightjar

Most bar owners promote their places by placing a sign board outside or updating their menus on social network services such as facebook or instagram. Interestingly however, some bar owners “hide” their doors. I had a chance to visit the bar called Nightjar in London. Surprisingly, it has a super tiny metal sign on a wood door. Therefore, I passed over its entrance door several times and spent many minutes until I decided to knock on it just in case. When the hidden door opened, as expected, this bar was fully packed with drinkers.

I had a similar experience when I first visited the bar called Charles H Bar at the Four Seasons Seoul, Korea. Although this hotel is easy to find, it took me long time again to find the entrance door of the bar. Since this bar has literally no sign outside, I could not help but ask someone to guide me to the entrance door. Again, when the hidden door opened, this bar was crowded.

DML_Charles H bar door

Why did Nightjar and Charles H Bar decide to hide their entrance doors? At first glance, hiding doors fails to attract by-passers and thus fails to increase traffic, which is important for most spaces. However, this spaces may have different objectives. For instance, they want to make their spaces exclusive only for those who were invited previously. Although there is no research about space exclusivity, there are some studies about the effect of exclusivity promotion or AREP (Advertised as Retailer Exclusive Products). Contrary to managerial expectations, their findings suggest that AREP exclusivity promotions are ineffective at influencing consumers.

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Reference

Upshaw, D., Amyx, D., Upshaw, A., & Hardy, M. (2023). Do Products Labeled Retailer “Exclusive” Affect Consumer Behavior?. Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness, 17(3).

Many large retailers offer “advertised as retailer exclusive products” or AREPs. Retailers work with manufacturers to produce these unique, retailer exclusive versions of otherwise common products. While not all retailer exclusive products are advertised as “exclusive,” AREPs are advertised and labeled as retailer exclusives. The retailer exclusive product attributes are often “trivial,” but still may add customer value and discourage price comparison shopping. Here, two experiments assess AREPs effects on consumers. Contrary to managerial expectations, the findings suggest that AREP exclusivity promotions are ineffective at influencing consumers, but that the choice of exclusive, seemingly “trivial” attribute can sometimes be a significant negative influence on consumers. Further, the authors suggest contexts that may encourage specific responses to retailer exclusive product promotions and trivial attributes.

Cases

Seoul: Past vs. Present

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While Seoul grew rapidly from the ashes to become a metropolis, this city lost much of its uniqueness and beauty, in particular, a set of organically linked traditional buildings. Two miniatures at the Seoul Museum of History showed stark contrast.

 

DML_Seoul Past Present (1)

 

Seoul became the capital of a sovereign nation in 1945, with Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule, and three years later, it was upgraded to “Special City” status. However, the city was plagued by poverty as refugees poured in from North Korea and masses of ethnic Koreans returned to their homeland from overseas. Making matters worse, the Korean War broke out in 1950, and soon the city was in ruins. After the war, economic development returned, and Seoul began to transform into a huge, modern metropolis. The construction industry advanced steadily with the pressing need for more water mains, sewage systems, roads, subways, housing and schools to accommodate the explosive population growth. Streets were laid in the area south of the Hangang River, and the boundaries of the Seoul metropolitan area continued to expand. The ‘Miracle on the Han River’ brought industrialization, economic growth, democratization, and governmental decentralization to the nation.

(1945 – 2002, Period of Rapid Growth Seoul, Rising from the Ashes to become a Metropolis)

 

DML_Seoul Past Present (2)

 

 

 

Cases

Air Canada, UI and CX of in-flight entertainment system

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I recently traveled by Air Canada from Incheon (Seoul) to Vancouver and then to Toronto. I spent 9 hours in a new airplane (Being 788 Dreamliner) and then 4 more hours in an old one (Airbus 320). In two airplanes, I watched same movies and listened to same music to learn a commonality and several differences of the personal touch-screen TV systems.

As for the commonality, the in-flight entertainment systems embedded in two airplanes are controlled by touch. They have no wired/wireless controllers to select a program or to change the brightness or volume. Although touch is popular, a passenger behind me kept pressing his/her screen firmly and moving my headrest. Therefore, “minimizing the number of touching activities” will be critical in enhancing my own entertainment experience as well as improving the in-flight experience of the passenger sitting in front of me.

*Old*

As for the differences, I found two things that make the new system better than the old one. First, the new system has a better User Interface (UI or layout) than the old one. In the new system, I was able to store individual programs (e.g., movie, tv, and music) and then bring them up to play while enjoying other programs. For instance, while I was watching a movie, I could pause it and then call and listen to the music I stored in advance. In the old system, I completely stopped playing one program to enjoy another one and, more importantly, doing so needs many, many touches. Further, the new system has a new drop-down menu at the top which helped me navigate the programs.

Second, the new system provides a better Customer Experience (CX) than the old one. The new system has a simpler, darker background and thus the information and programs are clear. Adding to that, “a small airplane marker in the bottom” at the new system showed how much more to go to the destination. In the old system, I had no idea how many hours were left and, to quench this curiosity, I should have pressed a lot of buttons. More importantly, the new system responded to my touch faster and more accurately than the old one.

*New*

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Reference

Soman, D., & Shi, M. (2003). Virtual progress: The effect of path characteristics on perceptions of progress and choice. Management Science, 49(9), 1229-1250.

In goal-oriented services, consumers want to get transported from one well-defined state (start) to another (destination) state without much concern for intermediate states. A cost-based evaluation of such services should depend on the total cost associated with the service-i.e., the price and the amount of time taken for completion. In this paper, we demonstrate that the characteristics of the path to the final destination also influence evaluation and choice. Specifically, we show that segments of idle time and travel away from the final destination are seen as obstacles in the progress towards the destination, and hence lower the choice likelihood of the path. Further, we show that the earlier such obstacles occur during the service, the lower is the choice likelihood. We present an analytical model of consumer choice and test its predictions in a series of experiments. Our results show that in choosing between two services that cover the same displacement in the same time (i.e., identical average progress), consumer choice is driven by the perception of progress towards the goal (i.e., by virtual progress). In a final experiment, we show that the effects of virtual progress may outweigh the effects of actual average progress.

Cases

K-Beauty items in Canada

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The Face Shop is a skincare and cosmetic manufacturer, retailer, and a franchise business. It is a subsidiary of LG Household and Health Care of LG Corporation.

DML_Faceshop(1)

 

The Face Shop had its store inside one of the biggest shopping malls in Toronto, CF Toronto Eaton Centre. Similar to the stores located in Seoul, a lot of young, Chinese female customers browsed items. However, this store differs from the stores in Seoul in a few ways; it carries fewer items and its visitors show virtually no interest in mask packs, probably one of the best selling items.

 

DML_Faceshop(2)

 

My companies added their opinions. First, Face Shop sells inexpensive cosmetic items in Korea but it cannot help but charge more in Canada because of transportation cost and tax. Second, Face Shop store has no clear message. Just around the corner, Aveda sell environmentally friendly items and other luxury brands sell upscale items. Finally, this brand has no name in Canada; running its own stores is risky even for global electronics players. In sum, Face Shop needs to learn the fact that other Korean or Asian skincare and cosmetic companies enter Canadian market more easily by introducing their items to Chinese customers at more established Chinese grocery stores such as T&T super market.

 

 

Cases

Green package design: Boxed water stands out from the crowd

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Many people are now buying water in bottles rather than drink straight from the tap because bottled water has been perceived to be safer and of higher quality than tap water, and it was viewed as a healthful alternative beverage to soft drinks or alcohol. Although purity marketing successfully increases sales of bottled water, it failed to address that plastic water bottles waste our environment.

 

DML_Boxed water is better(1)

 

One company takes a bold and interesting step forward. Water is in paper boxes and its brand name is “Boxed Water Is Better.” The package says boxes are better than plastic bottles for several reasons.

  • 76% of our box is composed of a renewable resource.
  • Our boxes are made of trees from well-managed, FSC certified forests.
  • We efficiently ship our boxes flat to our filler to lower our carbon foot print.
  • Our boxes are recyclable at participating facilities.

 

DML_Boxed water is better(2)

Cases

Empathic story-telling print ad in Canada

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Canadians living in Ontario buy wines at LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario). People working at this place often check photo-ID (e.g., driver license) to verify whether the buyer is old enough to drink alcohol. These carefully-managed and highly safe liquor stores sometimes make their customers unhappy, in particular, those who forget to bring their IDs.

 

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Therefore, LCBO needs to educate their potential customers to always present their IDs to the employees at LCBO. Instead of forcing us to do something, it tell a gentle story that people can easily empathise with. Inside the toilette of one of the University of Toronto buildings, a black-and-white print advertisement is placed on the wall. It shows two photos with a sentence, “First year or fourth year?” This advertisement nicely associates what we find it difficult in our daily school life (e.g., guessing someone’s year) with what they find it difficult in their workplaces (e.g., guessing buyer’s age). Empathic story-telling works for advertisement.

Cases

Japanese pork and Canadian chicken?

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Soup is a liquid food, generally served warm, that is made by combining ingredients such as meat and vegetables with stock, juice, water, or another liquid, according to Wikipedia. Warm soups are popular as a type of comfort food in the world.

 

DML_Soul food

 

People have their own favourite ingredients for soups, and different meats are welcomed in different countries. For instance, in Japan, I have seen many flyers promoting 100-yen ($1) “pork” soup. In Canada, “chicken” soups are highly common. Is this because different meats are priced differently in different countries? Or, more importantly, do Japanese people actually like pork although they are perceived to like fish, and Canadians actually like chicken although they are viewed to like beef? We *might* have developed a wrong belief what ingredients make dishes from different cultures distinctive. 🙂

 

Cases

Louis Kahn, the architect of IIM Ahmedabad

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I came to know Louis Kahn at the Design Museum, London. This little museum held an exhibition called the power of architecture and introduced him and his work.

Louis Kahn (1901-74) was one of the most influential architects of the twentieth century. With complex spatial compositions and a choreographic mastery of light, Kahn created buildings of archaic beauty and powerful universal symbolism. His work impacted many of his contemporaries and still serves today as a model and measure among architects, expecially those of the younger generation.

Kahn’s acclaim is based on a small number of buildings that were elected over a short time period of just 25 years. While his early work focused on housing and urban planning in his home city of Philadelphia, he started to gain a worldwide reputation toward the end of the 1950s as an architect of public buildings. Kahn designed museum, laboratories, schools, churches, synagogues, and even a national parliament. For a long time he was exclusively active in the USA, yet his later work took an an increasingly global dimension. Consequently, two of his most important projects were executed in India and Bangladesh – the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad (1962-74) and the National Assembly building in Dhaka (1962-83).

 

IMG_1312

 

 

Cases

Do-It-Yourself chocolate kit for Valentine’s day

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DML_Valentine's day @ Fukuoka (2)

Valentines’ day is one of the most “commercially successful” holidays in Asian countries such as Japan and Korea. According to Wikipedia, this holiday was first introduced in Japan in 1936 when a company ran an advertisement aimed at foreigners.

Later in 1953, it began promoting the giving of heart-shaped chocolates; other Japanese confectionery companies followed suit thereafter. In 1958, the Isetan department store ran a “Valentine sale”. Further campaigns during the 1960s popularized the custom. The custom that only women give chocolates to men may have originated from the translation error of a chocolate-company executive during the initial campaigns. In particular, office ladies give chocolate to their co-workers. Unlike western countries, gifts such as greeting cards, candies, flowers, or dinner dates are uncommon, and most of the activity about the gifts is about giving the right amount of chocolate to each person. Japanese chocolate companies make half their annual sales during this time of the year.

Nowadays, many students around me complain expensive, poor-quality chocolates. However, some want to take this opportunity to express their feelings to others and make their own chocolates. Certainly, very few succeed in creating “the only” chocolate for their friends, colleagues, or significant others.

Recently, I met a clever solution at a Japanese department store: a do-it-yourself kit for chocolate. This is probably the best solution for those who do not want to waste money on buying ready-made chocolates but want to voluntarily invest an adequate amount of effort to create only one.

In one of my favorite research paper titled as “Why Consumers Enjoy Constrained Creative Experiences,” Darren Dahl and Page Moreau nicely articulated why DIY kits work.

DML_Valentine's day @ Fukuoka (1)

We used a combination of qualitative research and CET to understand why consumers participate in creative activities and the conditions under which they enjoy these experiences… Respondents consistently noted a motivation for personal accomplishment, which was achieved by satisfying the needs of both autonomy and competence… Importantly, this study also provides insight into the influence of external constraints (e.g., target outcomes, instructions) on consumers’ creative experiences. Indeed, the pros and cons of these creative products (e.g., kits, models, patterns, recipes) highlight the tension between consumers’ desire for instructional guidance and their need for individualism. Hobbyists value the feeling of competence that creative products provide, and they create their own strategies to overcome the constraints that such products impose on both the creative process and the outcome. (Dahl and Moreau 2007, pg. 367)

Who knows? We may see a lot of chocolate-only chefs in the near future who do not follow given instructions but use their own ingredients to develop new chocolates!

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Reference

Dahl, D. W., & Moreau, C. P. (2007). Thinking inside the box: Why consumers enjoy constrained creative experiences. Journal of Marketing Research, 44(3), 357–369.

From cooking kits to home improvement shows, consumers are increasingly seeking out products that are designed to help them be creative. In this research, the authors examine why consumers participate in creative activities and under what conditions these experiences are the most enjoyable. A qualitative study explores the diverse motivations for undertaking creative tasks and identifies the role of constraints in such endeavors. Then, the authors conduct two experimental studies to understand the importance of constraints (e.g., instructional guidance, target outcomes) in facilitating a balance between perceived competence and autonomy for consumers involved in a creative task. When consumers engage in creative activities with a sense of both autonomy and competence, they enjoy the experience more. The authors discuss implications for managers and provide opportunities for further research.