The struggle to control prices of digital content sold online continues, with producers and distributors battling over prices for downloads of books and music.
In the latest skirmish, Amazon removed Macmillan books from its website after the company protested that online retail was using monopoly power to force publishers to accept prices no higher than $9.99. Macmillan and other publishers have now signed distribution deals with Apple that allows them to price downloads at $12.99 and $14.99.
Producers, of course, want higher prices because they produce higher revenue and better profits.
The struggle to control prices is not unique to the online environment. In the offline world, producers of books, magazines, CDs, and DVDs have long struggled to gain limited shelf space because there is a large oversupply of products and retailers’ have selection preferences for popular, rapidly selling products.
Large national and retailers have also used their bargaining power to push wholesale and manufacturer suggested retail prices downwards. Wal-Mart, now the number one music retailer in the World, uses its purchasing and sales power to sell large quantities of music at the lowest price possible—the basic price/quantity model for all the products it carries.
What is new in the offline world is that the conflict does not merely involve struggles over the price and quantity strategies of retailers, but that the retailers are using the media content as a joint product with their proprietary digital hardware.
Amazon wants content prices low not merely to sell more books, but because it helps it sell Kindle, its e-book reader. To date, it has been able to do so because it was the leading seller of both products—something it learned from Apple’s strategy with i-Tunes and i-Pod.
Competition in distributing content, even just a little competition, helps shift some of the power away from the retailer and back to the producer. Apple was forced to back away from its enforced price of 89 cents for a download when recording companies made deals with other download providers and threatened to end the rights for Apple to see their popular music. Apple is now playing spoiler to Amazon in the book downloads and Amazon has agreed to carry Macmillan books again.
Newspaper publishers are now seriously testing and considering a variety of e-readers as ways to reduce production and distribution costs. As part of their strategies, however, they would do well to learn from the experience of the music and book business. They need to remember that a basic rule of business is that if you don’t control price, you don’t control your business.
The International Business Times is the leading provider of international business news online.
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Seeing through the Haze Surrounding Websites, Blogs and Social Media
Communicating regularly is hard work. It takes skill; it takes a voice; it takes having something to say; it takes time. Making money from it is even harder.
The functions provided by websites, blogs, and social media clearly make it possible for people to express themselves in ways never before imagined, to share their opinions, to express their hopes and dreams, and to share the details of their lives. Media companies are watching these developments and many are rushing to provide content on any communication technology or application the public uses.
Although large numbers of people are trying the new technologies, they are reacting to them in different ways. Some find them highly useful and satisfying; some find them worthless and disappointing; some find them a worthy pastime; others find them a waste of time. What this means is that—like all technologies—they are more important to some people than to others. Consequently, managers need to be realistic in assessing their potential, the extent to which they are being used by the public, and the extent to which they provide opportunities that media companies should pursue.
Because those promoting the technologies are self interested, uptake figures are easy to come by. Finding out who has tried the technologies, but decided they were undesirable is harder. However, research is showing some interesting results in that regard. We now know that 60 percent of the people who try Twitter stop using it within a month, that only about 5% of blogs are regularly updated, that more than 200 million blogs have been abandoned, and that about 37 million web domain names are deleted every year.
Most people and organizations who try these new communication opportunities make limited use of them or give up on them altogether because of boredom or because the opportunities don't provide sufficient results. This is not to say they are not unimportant, however. A good number of individuals and companies are using them to create new abilities and opportunities to communicate with friends, colleagues, and customers and to establish new businesses and revenue streams. Doing so, however, takes commitment that most people and firms are unwilling to make.
From the business standpoint one has to be realistic when evaluating the opportunities presented. Media executives need to ask hard questions: Do all media companies need to provide content across every available platform regardless of the cost and effort? Are all types of news and information appropriately carried on all platforms? In what ways is branding and marketing for the company actually served by these engagements? How are these monetized? What are the returns on the investments? What are the risks of not engaging these technologies?
Success is not easy in this technological environment. It requires investment, effort, regular activity, and provision of content that people want. Media managers choosing to use these new technologies must be clear-headed in their decisions and pursue well-founded strategies or they will be lost in the maze of competing and alternative opportunities.
The functions provided by websites, blogs, and social media clearly make it possible for people to express themselves in ways never before imagined, to share their opinions, to express their hopes and dreams, and to share the details of their lives. Media companies are watching these developments and many are rushing to provide content on any communication technology or application the public uses.
Although large numbers of people are trying the new technologies, they are reacting to them in different ways. Some find them highly useful and satisfying; some find them worthless and disappointing; some find them a worthy pastime; others find them a waste of time. What this means is that—like all technologies—they are more important to some people than to others. Consequently, managers need to be realistic in assessing their potential, the extent to which they are being used by the public, and the extent to which they provide opportunities that media companies should pursue.
Because those promoting the technologies are self interested, uptake figures are easy to come by. Finding out who has tried the technologies, but decided they were undesirable is harder. However, research is showing some interesting results in that regard. We now know that 60 percent of the people who try Twitter stop using it within a month, that only about 5% of blogs are regularly updated, that more than 200 million blogs have been abandoned, and that about 37 million web domain names are deleted every year.
Most people and organizations who try these new communication opportunities make limited use of them or give up on them altogether because of boredom or because the opportunities don't provide sufficient results. This is not to say they are not unimportant, however. A good number of individuals and companies are using them to create new abilities and opportunities to communicate with friends, colleagues, and customers and to establish new businesses and revenue streams. Doing so, however, takes commitment that most people and firms are unwilling to make.
From the business standpoint one has to be realistic when evaluating the opportunities presented. Media executives need to ask hard questions: Do all media companies need to provide content across every available platform regardless of the cost and effort? Are all types of news and information appropriately carried on all platforms? In what ways is branding and marketing for the company actually served by these engagements? How are these monetized? What are the returns on the investments? What are the risks of not engaging these technologies?
Success is not easy in this technological environment. It requires investment, effort, regular activity, and provision of content that people want. Media managers choosing to use these new technologies must be clear-headed in their decisions and pursue well-founded strategies or they will be lost in the maze of competing and alternative opportunities.
THE WILD AND WOOLLY WORLD OF CABLE, SATELLITE AND BROADBAND MARKETING
Increasing competition among cable, satellite, and broadband suppliers, combined with slower growth in consumer uptake because the industries have reached maturity, is leading to aggressive marketing efforts to wrestle market share from other companies.
If the leading companies followed classic marketing strategies, they would be offering consumers better arrays of networks and services, better customer service, and/or better prices in efforts to attract more customers.
Instead, many of the largest competitors have been engaging in acts that harm customers and consumers by using illegal and deceptive marketing practices and strategies designed to unwittingly wring greater revenue from their customers. Although the companies apparently think there are benefits in behaving badly, their marketing practices are increasingly getting them into trouble.
Aggressive telemarketing—which has always offended consumers—has landed a number of leading firms in hot water. Comcast and Direct TV have just admitted charges and are paying fines to the Federal Trade Commission for violating telemarketing rules by ignoring the federal do-not-call list. The FTC has also filed a suit against Dish Networks for similar violations.
Companies tend to advertise heavily when competition is high and ads for cable, satellite, and broadband services have helped the revenues of thousands of television stations, newspapers, and magazines across the U.S. Unfortunately, the veracity of advertising claims in cable, satellite, and broadband services has been widely questioned by consumer groups, governments, and other competitors. In recent months Bright House Networks filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission about the practices of AT&T, the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureau chastised Cablevision for advertising claims after complaints from Verizon, and Verizon itself has been sued for misleading claims by NJ Division of Consumer Affairs.
The industry also sought to market different levels of broadband Internet services to customers and planned to charge different rates for users—a strategy that would allow them to advertise a low price even when many customers would have to pay a higher price based on usage. Plans by Time Warner, Comcast, Frontier Communications and other firms to offer tiered service plans have now been dropped after complaints by customers and legislators.
Cable and satellite firms have traditionally been mavericks and rogues in the media industries and many Internet service firms followed their example. Even though the industries have matured and the number of players has been significantly reduced through mergers and acquisitions, the wild and woolly world they created is still evident in their marketing practices.
We can only hope they will learn to become good corporate citizens—or at least firms concerned about their own reputations.
If the leading companies followed classic marketing strategies, they would be offering consumers better arrays of networks and services, better customer service, and/or better prices in efforts to attract more customers.
Instead, many of the largest competitors have been engaging in acts that harm customers and consumers by using illegal and deceptive marketing practices and strategies designed to unwittingly wring greater revenue from their customers. Although the companies apparently think there are benefits in behaving badly, their marketing practices are increasingly getting them into trouble.
Aggressive telemarketing—which has always offended consumers—has landed a number of leading firms in hot water. Comcast and Direct TV have just admitted charges and are paying fines to the Federal Trade Commission for violating telemarketing rules by ignoring the federal do-not-call list. The FTC has also filed a suit against Dish Networks for similar violations.
Companies tend to advertise heavily when competition is high and ads for cable, satellite, and broadband services have helped the revenues of thousands of television stations, newspapers, and magazines across the U.S. Unfortunately, the veracity of advertising claims in cable, satellite, and broadband services has been widely questioned by consumer groups, governments, and other competitors. In recent months Bright House Networks filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission about the practices of AT&T, the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureau chastised Cablevision for advertising claims after complaints from Verizon, and Verizon itself has been sued for misleading claims by NJ Division of Consumer Affairs.
The industry also sought to market different levels of broadband Internet services to customers and planned to charge different rates for users—a strategy that would allow them to advertise a low price even when many customers would have to pay a higher price based on usage. Plans by Time Warner, Comcast, Frontier Communications and other firms to offer tiered service plans have now been dropped after complaints by customers and legislators.
Cable and satellite firms have traditionally been mavericks and rogues in the media industries and many Internet service firms followed their example. Even though the industries have matured and the number of players has been significantly reduced through mergers and acquisitions, the wild and woolly world they created is still evident in their marketing practices.
We can only hope they will learn to become good corporate citizens—or at least firms concerned about their own reputations.
Are You Ready To Start An Importing Business?
Here are a few key questions to consider when thinking about
starting an importing business to help you learn if you are ready:
1. How well are the products selling that you are considering
importing?
2. Do you have a market already established for those
products?
3. If you do not have a market, i.e., buyers, how are you
going to get those buyers to first learn about your products,
then buy those products?
4. Do you have the expertise to deal with the foreign
languages of the countries you are thinking about importing
from?
5. How will you pay or finance for those products?
6. Are your trusting enough (or naive enough) to send your
funds to a company you found on the Internet simply because
they have a nice looking web site and best of all, the lowest
prices you have found yet?
7. Have you ever heard of the term "due diligence" and do
you know how to perform it on potential suppliers?
8. Have you ever sold anything? Products or services via
any method of marketing?
The above list are just a few of the questions you must
answer to yourself when considering the start of just about
any business, but especially one that requires you send
your hard earned funds to someone in another country.
Consider this post a reality check. If some of the things
in this post upset you, good. I would rather give you a
reality check before it costs you any serious money.
Most people have more dream than they have experience or
willpower. They want the fast track to guaranteed success
and do not want to face the realities of business that
do not match their dreams.
If you have ever considered starting an import business,
you better have solid answers to the above questions.
The primary one - who are you going to sell to? Second,
do you have "any" business experience??
When someone calls me on the phone asking about starting
their own importing business, the first questions I ask
are those listed above.
Most answer that they do not have any business experience
or if they do, it does not involve the actual sale of the
products they are thinking about importing.
The recommendation I give them in such instances is as
follows:
If you do not have any experience and/or you do but
you do not have an established market - then start selling
stuff on eBay.
By stuff I mean the excess things you have personally
accumulated, that same stuff owned by your relatives and
friends.
Selling "stuff" like this teaches you the "how to" of
the largest marketplace in the world - eBay.
It also gives you an opportunity to experience the "thrills"
of doing business, such as
Experiencing a sale or no sale
Researching how to price your products (based on previous
sales of the same or similar products)
Setting up a no cost merchant account with eBay's paypal
service and joyously paying fees to both paypal and eBay.
Dealing with shipping and handling.
Dealing with customers, communications - customer service
if they are not happy with the "stuff" because you did not
write a thorough description or provide a photo that did
not detail every nook and cranny of the stuff.
Dealing with non-paying customers.
Not trying to scare you away from your dreams but simply
giving you a path to learn from that does not cost you
a lot of out of pocket funds.
Now for some resources that my experience and research
over the past 7-8 years has discovered to be the BEST
I personally have found -
If after reading the above you realize that you are
"not ready for prime time" in starting your own importing
business, then this first resource is a place you should
visit and take advantage of "every FREE resource" they
offer to help you decide if their paid service would
help you launch your business.
This first link will take you to a search engine like
facility within their service where you can search for
suppliers of various items to see how many they have in
their database system:
http://www.importexporthelp.com/redir/odssd.htm
-- just enter the name of the product(s) in the search
engine space, submit and wait for the results - the
search results will bring up various listings, one
will say "Import Buys" that is the one to focus on -
see the number out to the right that is underlined,
that is the number of suppliers they have for the item
you searched for - click on that number to expand and
see further details.
If you see that their service would be beneficial to you,
then get it - if you are not finding enough suppliers to
make it worthwhile then two things - 1) do not get their
paid service or 2) realize that maybe there is a reason
for not finding the product(s) and change the name or
learn from this that maybe you cannot sell that product
because it has minimum requirements that you would not
be able to handle or there are exclusive distribution
rights that simply exclude others from selling it.
A bit of advice on products you are thinking about selling -
don't get so fixated on one or two products that you
spend all your time seeking to find a supplier for it.
Understand that MOST of the BIG BRAND NAME products
have "EXCLUSIVE" distribution agreements and you are
NOT going to the attention of a manufacturer since you
are just getting started. Once you have a market
base established, then you 'may' be able to get them
to answer your phone calls, but you better have a
huge market base.
Now once you have that market base established and you
feel financially successful enough to purchase a much
larger (maybe container load) of a product, then it is
time to beging considering Importing it yourself.
This is when you are ready for our Importing course
and should get it so you understand all the aspects
of importing before you even make your first foreign
inquiry. Here is a link to our course:
How To Start An Importing Business Course
Last, but certainly not least, getting back to selling
on eBay - I am going to give you the link to our web
page where you may download, for free, an ebook that
I purchased a few years ago and found to be extremely
helpful when I made my first foray onto eBay to sell
some of the "too much" stuff I had accumulated over
my lifetime. Go visit and download at:
Free Ebay Selling Auction Book
Now the most IMPORTANT thing that selling on eBay
provides you is learning how to take ACTION! Beyond
dreaming about starting a business, by actually selling
(or attempting to sell) your first "stuff" on eBay,
it causes you to take that ALL IMPORTANT FIRST STEP -
ACTION.
This brings me to close this post with something I
read recently that Walt Disney once said - it applies
to you feeling overwhelmed with all of the strategies
you want to try - some people (maybe you) get so
completely overwhelmed that they put off getting
started for far too long.
Walt Disney put it simply like this:
"The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing."
Walter Disney
Hope this post will help you decide to "BEGIN DOING".
Ron Coble
International Trade Marketing Services
http://www.importexporthelp.com/
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