Case #4: Principles of Free Economy

Mozilla Firefox, the popular internet browser, is a software company and subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit organization incorporated in July 2003 in California. The subsidiary is responsible for coordinating the development and marketing of Mozilla technologies and products. The Mozilla Foundation has no outside shareholders with a unique structure that allows it to “financial support and cultivate competitive, viable community innovation.” They products are available in more then 35 languages, are compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux computers. Their purpose is mainly to promote openness, innovation and opportunity on the Internet.
All Mozilla software is open sourced, meaning it is not only available for download free of charge, the source code may be accessed, modified, and redistributed between users. Generally, their software and services are free. They do have the Mozilla Store to help build revenue through the company, which offers particular products at a small cost to the consumer. Their products include t-shirts, “gear”, outerwear, software and guides, art and décor, and other merchandise. They also have trademark rights including logos and names. Aside from their merchandise, all their products are free for users to utilize. Individuals can also offer donations to the non-profit organization which also helps build revenue for the company.
The Mozilla Foundation clearly falls under Chris Anderson’s Gift Economy free pricing strategy as shown through their goals and mission. According to their website, “We are helping make the internet a place where you and your neighbors build the world you want, that generates not only economic value, but also civic and social value, that is optimized for multiple languages and locales, that is trustworthy and has minimal risk for users. They have a Mozilla Manifesto that articulates their altruistic intentions with their products. The purpose of their software, plainly, is to benefit society.

Link: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/about/

Company: General Motors

Website: http://www.gm.com/

I chose to evaluate the online marketing strategies of General Motors because of their apparent efforts to increase website visits through numerous traffic building techniques. Founded in 1908, General Motors currently employs about 284,000 people around the world, manufacturing its cars and trucks in 33 countries (www.gm.com). According to Alexa, a web information company similar to Google Analytics, GM.com has a traffic rank of 17,846, or about 70-100 million visits per day.

Their website is designed to primarily attract task oriented users because most of their customer base is interested in purchasing their products, and the website is constructed to promote and inform potential clients about the available options GM offers. The site caters to all task behavioral needs including e-commerce, corporate information retrieval, technical support, and information searching. The website is easy to navigate through, has fast responsive time (hardly 2 seconds), and high interactivity and quality content through flash animation. There are clearly labeled navigation bars, drop-down menus supplying additional information, a Google search bar to clearly identify the key words sought by the task user, and the facilitation of the purchasing of their products. One such example is their vehicles page which allows users to search GM products by brands, body style, prices, fuel economy, seating capacity, towing and horsepower. The search can be further modified, through a drop down menu, to specify within these original options. By dragging two or more vehicles into a box to compare the differences between each, user interactivity is enhanced. All navigation bars are clearly identifiable and bring ease to car information gathering. The ability to easily locate specific information regarding the company and identify the available retail stores in particular regions clearly indicates a website embodying a task oriented marketing technique.

GM has utilized a house of brands strategy because each of their product lines has a strong brand image that many customers may associate individually. Their brands include Chevrolet, Buick, Pontiac, GMC, Saturn, HUMMER, Saab, and Cadillac. Many consumers may not be aware that these products are owned by GM and effectively wouldn’t know to search for GM without this branding strategy. This branding strength helps to build traffic without the use of search engines.

Search engine optimization is clearly at its finest because not only does GM come up on Google’s first page, it represents the first site found on Google, and all the available information on the first three pages relates to the company. The title tag found on the General Motor homepage reads “General Motors Shop GM Vehicles- Find Your Perfect Car”. It also identifies that website as the corporate website, identifying important keywords that users may type in when researching this particular transportation industry. The site content reads, “The Official Site of General Motors. Your resource for everything GM, The #1 Selling Vehicle Manufacturer in the World for 76 Consecutive Years.” Here, words like “official site”, “General Motors”, and “#1 selling vehicle manufacturer” are incredibly important. They also employ simple URL descriptions to avoid confusion and clearly represent the page being viewed. Such examples are www.gm.com/corporate for the corporate information page or www.gm.com/shop to search products. Their meta tags are pretty elaborate and encompass a plethora of keywords including a list of the following:

GM, GM cars, General Motors Website, general motors cars, general motors trucks, general motors vans, general motors sport utility vehicles, general motors suvs, general motors vans, gm trucks, gm vans, gm sport utility vehicles, gm suvs, gm website, gm corporate site, general motors company site, gm customers, general motors customers, automobiles, general motors company, gm company, general motors corporation, gm mini vans, general motors minivans

I’m pretty sure they got everything covered. This provides a valuable traffic building technique by purchasing a site’s most valuable and relevant keywords. These keywords are noticeably unique to GM, thereby potentially lowering the popularity of the keyword search and thus the price/word. They provide a link to every brand they own as well as to every partnership they partake in, which include community, environment, safety, technology, and educational partnerships. According to Alexa, GM has over ten pages of companies linked into their site reaching 3,747 links in total. These links can be found to include Apple, CNN, Wikipedia, and many other well known sites. With all these marketing strategies effectively working to create ease of navigation and understanding, traffic can be immensely built to GM’s corporate site.

Other traffic building efforts include the placement of their website address on many advertisements and marketing campaigns, as well as sponsorships. All of these combined make General Motors’ online marketing and traffic building efforts extremely effective in generating more visits to their site and thus more exposure.

Kristina Tursi

Case #2: Marketing on the Internet

Company: Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company employs a house of brands marketing strategy in regards to their online branding efforts. Their brand names include Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda, Volvo, Jaguar, and the Land Rover, but these brand names are marketed individually through separate sites and it is initially unclear that these brands are owned by the Ford Motor Company. They have an official Ford Motor Company website that gives an overview of the business practices of the company including the various vehicles they offer, purchasing options, owner services, innovation, values, and about the company itself. Their original domain name was represented by www.ford.com. When navigating through the site, clicking on these tabs would build on the original homepage domain to include new pages with the corresponding information that the customer was seeking. In addition, links to their various reputable brand name websites are accessible through their main page. These pages would take the customer to an entirely different site, with a separate URL for the accompanying brand. The availability of searching for vehicles by model type as an alternative option makes customer shopping easier in regards to needs and navigation. The ability to access information through their main page as well as sending customers to the web pages of their other brands, alleviates navigation confusion, facilitates market segmentation more efficiently, and allows for the seamless integration of new product lines for the diversified content of Ford products. The integrative marketing techniques they offer helps to enhance communication with their customers and build strong relationships and brand loyalty.

Furthermore, their main page helps transform the company into an authority within their industry. Their innovation, for example, give users information on the new up and coming technology that is offered, the design tools used in the creation of their products, a breakdown of their strategic safety and protection plans, and their efforts to create more sustainable “green” products. Also, all their individual brands, as well as their main page give links to recent news in their industry. This helps to establish the company into a helpful expert in their field, building value to their customers.

A new site was created, as of 2008, that is meant specifically for the Ford brand name products themselves, that helps to distinguish the Ford brand as its own resource for the company as well. This site allows users to shop for cars, crossovers, SUVs, and trucks that are identified as Ford vehicles. One thing I noticed was that these individual sites do not offer a clear link to Ford’s official site as mentioned above. This may be due to an effort to reinforce the individual brand personality and imageries. A link is available, however, at the bottom of each page that identifies Ford as the mother company of these individual brands. By clicking on the copy write, a link to their main page is accessible.

Overall, I believe that Ford’s approach to their internet marketing is appropriate because many people associate their individual brands as individual companies. By creating individual, interactive sites, consumers will be better able to identify and locate their demand for these products.

Both NIKE and Puma employ extremely creative and individual oriented websites that engage their customers in an experience that is unusual and personal in nature. Both use innovative technologies that affectively create and develop a relationship between the consumer and the provider. I plan to evaluate each company individually, commenting on both their positive and negative qualities, followed by an overall assessment of the superiorly designed website.

The first website I visited was the Puma homepage. Aesthetically, the webpage was appealing but plain. I found that it was a little difficult to navigate around and that some of the links didn’t work. There was a little button labeled the Mongolian Shoe BBQ that gave a little information about custom shoe creation but the link to learn more about the company was inaccessible. I found this a little discouraging from a marketing point of view because I believed that this might delay or prevent traffic to this particular customization website. Initially, I thought the Puma homepage was creative in that they had multiple designers for shoe customization, a small biography on each of these partnering designers, and an elaborate array of site indexes. Some downfalls included slight confusion navigating around the page as well as difficulty launching the links that I clicked on. After searching Google for Mongolian BBQ, I was able to attain the correct link that allowed access to their customized shoe creations.

The first thing I noticed when I accessed the page was the theme that Puma had created. I enjoyed the idea of comparing the creation of a personalized shoe to that of a Mongolian restaurant. On the homepage the small biography of Mongolian BBQ illustrated the idea of creating a “taste for the art of shoemaking and designing your own custom made shoes.” I found this to be an innovative theme that would help to engage the individual. I would have liked to know a little bit more about why they chose this theme, how Mongolian food preparation relates to shoe selection, and more, but no explanation was offered. Still, one of my favorite things about this website is that they used advanced graphic design techniques to ensure that this theme was maintained throughout their site. From a consumer standpoint, I found this to be very sophisticated in its creation and generated a more interactive environment. Once started, I noticed that their initial selection of shoe styles was not large in its variety, but only had two shoes types to choose from. What if the customer doesn’t like those two types of shoes? Were their other choices I hadn’t yet noticed? I found this to be a little discouraging and found, from a marketing point of view, that it might hinder sales results. I hoped that there weren’t more options available that I just didn’t come across because that would also mean the site wasn’t organized properly for easy navigation. The next option allows you to select your gender and shoe size, and then the method of speed at which you explored the site. I thought that this plan was ingenious because many consumers work at different paces, on different schedules, and with different intensities. I believe that creating your website to be time conscious is something that consumers would appreciate, especially with the fast and jam packed schedules that Americans typically undertake. The next option was to select a starting point at which to begin designing your shoe. Your options gave you either a blank shoe or some inspirationally designed shoes at which to start from. When choosing a blank shoe, a box appears that gives advice on your creation. I thought that this was helpful but wordy and perhaps a bit too extensive.

I found the site to be elaborate, interactive, detailed, you could preview your shoe with every addition you made, and the graphic design created a feel as if you truly were ordering Mongolian food from a buffet rather then designing a shoe. This extensive website clearly illustrated the amount of work that was put in to create the best customer experience possible. Some setbacks included the overall organization of the site which tended to get tedious and confusing. Although having a broad range of design techniques after a particular shoe was picked, I felt that the lack of variety in shoe style negatively affected the site.

NIKE’s homepage, I found, was a little easier to navigate through, with clear labels of the specific divisions available and working links to all sites visited. Unlike Puma’s Mongolian BBQ, they did not have a definitive theme rather they relied on their image and reputation of being a leader in their industry when considering the design of their site. I was surprised at the extensive selection of products that were available for modification. In comparison to Puma’s selection, NIKE outshined them with a variety of shoe styles as well as bags and watches that were obtainable for mass customization. This variety set them apart from Puma and was likely to generate a lot of traffic because it marketed to a wider consumer pool. Each product had a short biography with recommendations on what that shoe was constructed and specialized for. This small detail was extremely helpful and showed the knowledge and research that NIKE places on the products they create. This kind of information sets them apart from their competitors, and it is exemplified through their website. Their options for customization resembled Puma’s in a lot of ways including colors for every section of the shoe and logo design. A key factor that really personalized their website and helped to create a truly unique customer experience was the ability of the individual to customize their own id onto the back of their shoes. A buyer has the ability to type out a message that will be displayed on the heel of the shoe, making the product truly distinctive. I found this option even more exciting because it showed NIKE’s dedication to their customers through the idea that they aren’t promoting their NIKE brand as much as they are promoting the individual purchaser. This type of marketing truly caters to the consumer needs and is an example of mass customization at it’s finest. Even more so, after the completion of a shoe, the consumer has the ability to set their design as the wallpaper of their computer as well as fill out a story about the shoe with the opportunity to be entered into the NIKE newsletter or promotions. This generated a great customer experience because the shoe becomes not only important to the individual, but to the company as well. It shows that NIKE respects the business they receive.

In summation, I thought NIKE truly set themselves apart in an effort to create a one of a kind experience for their customers. Their dedication to customization surpasses that of most companies. The website was easy to navigate around, offered a large variety of styles and techniques to choose from, and demonstrated a true knowledge and specialization for the products they were offering. Some downsides included the inability to save without completing all of the required fields when designing the shoes, a less interactive and engaging site, a more elaborate registration process that required the recording of more information then that of Puma, and a lack of a unified theme throughout the site.

In general, I believe that the company that that offered the best approach when offering customization to their customers as well as creating the best customer experience was NIKE. Their experience, reputation, knowledge, dedication, and content exceeded that of Puma’s, despite the obvious effort that was partook in creating Puma’s site. Although Puma’s website was more elaborate graphically, they failed to create a more individualistic experience and even occasionally hindered the buyer’s encounter through a lack of easy in navigation. All of these factors illustrated NIKE as being a true leader in their industry.