Pricing strategies

This week I  was exposed to a pricing strategy. I wanted to subscribe to X-men comic books on the Marvel website. The way it works is that you can usually buy every issue individually every week at the local comic book store, OR you can go online and pay for a year's worth of issues for 70 % of the price. This is beneficial to Marvel because they would obviously rather have you pay for a large number of issues than one every month or so. It's like guaranteeing that they will have business for a year, whereas when they print millions of comics they have no way of knowing how many people will buy them at the stores/stands.

The site offers bundles: if you subscribe to multiple titles at once you pay a discount price. This is beneficial to me, and to them. A good use of bundle pricing.

However, there may be cannibalization in sight. I considered the fact that if they offer discounts for their mail subscriptions, they are taking business away from local comic shops. I still want to support the local comic shop because they offer some sort of utility to me when I am looking for the product [comics] individually. This gives the consumer power. Local comic shops are beneficial to me [they are conveniently located and I can head down there whenever I feel like reading] and they are beneficial to Marvel, because they attract new costumers and have loyal costumers.

It reminds me of how I signed up for Netflix and cancelled my Blockbuster, unaware that I was an accomplice in Blockbuster's bankruptcy. Now I regret it because Blockbuster offered a time and place utility Netflix does not give me, I miss having a place where I could go to and get a movie immediately from a wide selection. I hope the same fate does not come to comic book shops. 

Shaving Cream

      So I have a tough time shaving and I have recently realized that soap [like showering soap, such as Dove or whatnot] is great for shaving my bear with. I think I'm gonna stop using shaving cream, I realized it's not that great and it's just another product we don't really need, it's like  an unsought product no one really had a demand for. Also like shampoo. And bottled water. I don't buy bottled water either. I think these are all marketing tricks at our expense.
     No more shaving cream for me, Gilette!

ps. no "pre shaving gel" either, the shaving cream came with a sample for that too, it's another unsought invention!

Something I found online

very clever, competition.

Something I found on tumblr

It's pretty funny, but it's also really clever

http://iraffiruse.net/post/42678357455#.URaQgKWCm8A

An Ad I saw

Popchips is using a celebrity endorsement [person marketing] as a marketing strategy by using Katy Perry. Katy Perry has a wide and dedicated following so it was probably a good investment because all those people might be persuaded to buy the chips. They also coupled that with a vampire theme, which probably shows some environmental scanning on their part because they are trying to ride the vampiric trend that is sweeping the world at the moment [hopefully for not so much longer]. This shows me their target audience is probably teenagers, considering the pop star and the vampire teeth. Overall probably a good appeal to the audience, probably pretty effective [I have no idea what the chips taste like but I suppose if I liked Katy Perry I would be inclined to try it]. I think a celebrity endorsement can’t hurt, I STILL think of Catherine Zeta-Jones every time I think of T-Mobile [and vice-versa], and that campaign was over a decade ago! Popchips is not a brand I recognize so I think this is about getting the name out there.

 I also like how the kept the ad clean and modern and uncluttered, I don’t like when ads are bursting with paragraphs of information and I imagine some people agree. A short effective slogan goes a long way, and can deliver quite a bit of information.