CDs Killed HMV!

The music industry is in trouble today because people are not listening to music in the same way as they used to. Before when people wanted to listen to music they had to buy CDs or listen to the radio but now we are living in a digital world and when someone wants to listen to a song they would go search it on YouTube or buy it from iTunes. They can also stream the music from Pandora or similar services.

HMV was a retail store that was selling music and movie CDs and DVDs. It went bankrupt recently. Why did they fail?

Not entering the new world of technology!

“HMV made no significant effort to enter the downloadable market and were slow to the online store market too.”

(Patrick Murphy "3 Things HMV's Untimely End Taught Us About Digital Marketing Strategy")

HMV wanted to stay traditional and focus on brick-and-mortar retail stores. Apple’s iTunes and Netflix are two companies that only have online stores. These two companies are leaders in music and movies online. I agree that HMV should have tried to go online earlier. The reason that iTunes and Netflix are successful is that they saw their customers’ needs and the reality is that no one is buying CDs anymore and everyone is living digitally.

HMV was not alone!

“The main reason their business is failing is the emergence of a high volume of more efficient, cheaper rivals.”

(Patrick Murphy "3 Things HMV's Untimely End Taught Us About Digital Marketing Strategy")

HMV’s competitors had a totally different strategy. Their strategy was matched more closely with the current, online world. While HMV was focusing on it’s traditional strategy of selling in retail stores, its rivals became bigger and bigger by having stores that are only online. Of course everyone would rather download their music than put their clothes on, go outside, drive their car, get to the store, buy the CD, come back home, and finally listen to their favorite music. It is also cheaper to download because a single song can be downloaded instead of buying the whole album and it doesn’t have other costs like gas for the car or the time it takes to get to the store.

Change is a must even if it’s scary!

“One of the reasons HMV remained focused on CDs is because that was their core business.”

(Patrick Murphy "3 Things HMV's Untimely End Taught Us About Digital Marketing Strategy")

HMV’s core strategy was being a retail store and selling CDs. I think its true that HMV was afraid to change its core business. But I think there might be other reasons. Maybe HMV wanted to keep its strategy and stay unique by being one of the few companies that still sell CDs and it wanted to keep its loyal customers. Also, because of trade-offs, maybe they thought they couldn’t have a successful retail store and a successful online store at the same time. They didn’t want to give up their retail stores and they might fail online because of strong competitors.

Seeing the future is critical!

“Behavior changes, it’s a fact of life. You can’t base business plans or marketing strategies on current behavior.”

(Patrick Murphy "3 Things HMV's Untimely End Taught Us About Digital Marketing Strategy")

I think this is one of the most important things that all companies should keep in mind. The problem with HMV was that they just focused on the current environment and ignored the future. Companies like Apple with iTunes are still based on buying music but successful companies like Pandora and Netflix went beyond that and they are not selling individual songs or movies, they use subscriptions. So maybe iTunes will be the next HMV!

But can HMV be saved? I think the only way that HMV can be resurrected is if they become an online only company. They can imitate their competitors but they could offer music, movies, apps, etc in a one-stop shopping online store at lower prices. But this would be really hard to do.

Disney's Magical Kingdom

Who is Disney?

Disney is a fantasy world that includes cartoons, movies, games, theme parks, stores, toys, clothes, etc. Disney isn’t a single character like Ronald McDonald is for McDonalds or a simple slogan like Nike’s “Just Do It”. Disney has many different characters, lots of different places, and a huge range of merchandise.

What does Disney do?

Disney isn’t like most companies that sell a specific product or target a specific group; it’s selling an experience that anyone can enjoy. People of all ages watch Disney movies and go to Disneyland. They experience living in a world where dreams come true. A little girl can become a princess and a little boy can become a hero. And this feeling will stay with them even when they’re old.

Who is Disney’s buyer?

Everyone is Disney’s customer. We all grow up with Disney movies with happy endings and lived in its big dream world. Because we loved that feeling, we want our beloved children to have this experience too. Even if you think the toughest manliest men don't like Disney, you can see that when they want to make their kids happy, Disney is the first place they think of. But other adults want to remember this strong positive feeling and are customers for themselves. 

  

What problems does it solve for customers?

Disney gives kids and adults happiness. When you’re watching a Disney cartoon or when you’re in Disneyland you’re completely out of the mundane world and you’re in Disney’s fantasy world.

What actions does Disney want the customer to take?

Disney doesn’t just want a customer to buy some toys or go to a movie; it wants the customer to buy into the Disney experience. If they’re successful, the customer will still buy the toys and movie but they'll also bring their family a thousand miles to spend their entire vacation at a Disney resort.

How is Disney remarkable?

When you want to buy a product from Nike, for example, there are lots of other brands that you can buy and still fulfill your need. A running shoe is a running shoe whether it's from Adidas, Puma or Nike. But there's no alternative for Disney’s product that is as big as the Disney fantasy world. Harry Potter has one theme park in Florida but Disney has five giant resorts around the world. There is no competitor for this amazing world. It is unique.

Where might Disney fall short?

Mickey Mouse first appeared in 1928. There are so many innovative shows for kids today that it will be hard for Disney to keep up without losing the familiar image that everyone loves. Disney has been expanding oversees but international growth hasn’t been easy. Euro Disney in Paris is the most visited tourist site in Europe but it’s still billions of dollars in debt.

My Favorite App .... Viber!

As this is my first blog let me introduce myself a little bit. I’m a city girl from Iran, a country with a long and rich history and known for its poems of love. Now I’m living in New York City, a city as beautiful and busy as my city Tehran. As part of my Digital Marketing class, the professor asked us to write about our most favorite app. In this blog post, I’m going to write about my favorite app and the reason that I love it.

Like most people I love my country and I miss it every day. And the fact that my parents and all my lovely friends are living there makes me miss Iran even more. In every single moment in my daily life I’m looking for the best and easiest way to contact my mom, my dad and all my friends back in Iran. I found this great and easy way about two years ago when I moved to the United States and that magic is VIBER. Viber is an app that I have on my iPhone. It works like the Phone and the Messages functions on the iPhone but it goes through the Internet. This means that there is a contact list, keypad, list for recent calls and messages. But there is something amazing about this app and that is everything is totally free because it uses the Internet. Can you believe it? I can talk and text with my friends while they’re half a world away from me and there’s a 15 hour time difference between us. Isn’t it great that I can talk to people oversees whenever I want for free? And I don’t need to buy telephone cards which are 15 cents per minute and they mostly don’t even work well. The only thing is that they also need to use Viber. Viber can’t call phones that don't have the app installed.

Let me show you the different parts of Viber in case you don't know about it.

This is the contact list. An interesting thing that Viber has and a regular contact list on an iPhone doesn’t have is that people can put their own photos and you can see their photos in your contact list or in messages.

The list of recent calls and the keypad are exactly like the iPhone.

The best thing that I like about the Viber app is texting. It’s so much fun. As you can see there are lots of different and cute stickers and characters that you can use to express your words and feelings. These characters and stickers are on Viber, you don't need to get another app to have them like how you need the Emoji app to get emoticons on regular iPhone messaging.

 And here you can take a photo or choose a photo from your photo gallery. You can also send your location with your message, which you can’t do with regular iPhone messages.

I think whoever came up with the Viber idea was really smart or maybe they were suffering from paying to call and text or had some friends oversees like me :D.

This app is helping me a lot and I should say that I’m using it almost every hour everyday. Maybe you can’t believe it but I can’t live without this app. I can’t imagine if I couldn’t text my mom everyday or if I had to spend half of my student loan just to buy telephone cards, which still don't help with texting or sending photos!