"I think one of the most interesting things about their philosophy is to start out with a price that the consumer will want to pay and figure out a way to make it," said Ken Bernhardt, a marketing professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta. "That is completely backward from the ...

Play areas, which cost about $100,000, have become such kid magnets that mall landlords don't want to take a chance parents will be tugged away to a competing mall by their offspring panning the play area as same old, same old.

• Some malls are ordering custom-built characters that can be found only in...

Close to the success of pre-paid mobile in the developing world( India, for example, is adding atleast 2-3 million customers every month) which helped expand the market, Microsoft with its partners is expected to launch pre-paid PCs!

The initiative, dubbed Microsoft FlexGo, aims to lower the barrier...

Darrel K. Rhea, CEO of design research outfit Cheskin outlines five levels of brand experience:

• Economic Experience
• Functional Experience
• Emotional Experience
• Status or Identity Experience
• Meaningful experience

Rhea describes how the highest level, meaning, actually reinforces our sense of reality an...

Brands increasingly are getting into redefining their relationships with consumers by adding value to their lives thro' their products. It's no more about selling products and forgetting them. Hershey is one brand that has taken a step in this direction. Many brands who want to be leaders tomorrow w...

Ross Mayfield has this interesting chart on the power law of participation. Read more of this in his post.

To me the dimensions of the spectrum he has identified is easily applicable to customer- focussed marketing programs. It provides answers to some new, emerging marketing opportunities leading c...

With participatory media, the boundaries between audiences and creators become blurred and often invisible. In the words of David Sifry, the founder of Technorati, a search engine for blogs, one-to-many “lectures” (ie, from media companies to their audiences) are transformed into “conversations” amo...

Maruti Suzuki  launched an all-new customer loyalty-cum-rewards programme which will benefit new as well as the existing five million Maruti customers across India.

The programme will work through a unique three-in-one Autocard to be issued by Maruti which will be a petro card, a loyalty card a...

Download leftbrain_marketing_planning.pdf

Forrester has just released a report called left brain marketing planning. They raise the issue of lack of precise marketing planning understanding for the new era. Here are some points made in the report. Also,for some of you  who might want a read this...

Seth Godin writes about things we know but don't do:

1. treat different products differently
2. treat different customers differently

1. why doesn't fresh fish cost more than the same fish a day later? bowling a few cents less when it's not so crowded? movie tickets more on the day a movie debuts? why ...