Market Research

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=frol02p70&continuous=1

This is a link to a very interesting Frontline video. They did a series on "Hunting for Cool" that's about research on the teen market. Getting young adults to respond to advertisements in a positive way is much harder than any other market. For this reason, market researchers must dig deeper, and use different tactics. One way to get direct responses from teens is to hold focus groups and pay the participants. Even then, however, the nature of a teen is to be unresponsive and vague. "Cool Hunting" is something that is becoming popular. Market researchers go out in to the streets and photograph and interview teens that are outside and ahead of the curve. They then compile this information and sell it to large business who then use it as the basis for their advertisements. Spending more money on figuring out what teens want pays off in the end for companies, which is why they continue to do it.

Rising Star

The Apple iPhone is definitely a rising star in the mobile phone market. There are so many different brands and providers which creates an intense amount of competition. There have been popular phones in the past, but the iPhone seems to be the "it" phone. I have never seen so many people with one phone. It seems the cellular community is obsessed with the phone and anyone who can get their hands on one will do so. This phone is capturing an extremely high market share, even with many competing phones coming on the market like the Blackberry Storm, Samsung Instinct, and LG Dare. It simply comes down to the fact that no one can top, or even match, apple's technology.

New Era Orientation

For me, this is new era product orientation. Showing a celebrity like Paris Hilton wearing the denim makes people want to buy this product for the obvious benefit it has to offer: it will make you look like a celebrity. The jeans are not much different that any others, but they have the appeal of high-profile people wearing them.