...Slanket Case Slanket is the market pioneer of sleeved blankets, and by the third year since its product launch, Slanket was able to generate $5 million revenues. Slanket had first pick of marketing channels, and there was no direct competitor with Slanket in the first few years of its product arrival. Thus, in this period of time, Slanket had no limit to how to expand its product line and to which customers they wanted to target. It chose innovators as primary demand and used the price skimming strategy. It didn’t even have any marketing costs (which is excellent because most new products have heavy promotion costs), but was able to make money and get rid of inventory quickly, selling each Slanket at the price of $64.95. Slanket has always had a stable market share and has been continuing to maintain sales even after Snuggie entered the market. Slanket maintained its first mover advantage by remaining strong in the quality niche of this market, and consumers rate it with higher satisfaction than they do with Snuggies. Slanket had key disadvantages. Optimally, it should have obtained a patent or copyright on the sleeved blankets so no competitor could take its innovative idea. Because its product was easily copied, Slanket will continue to face outside competition as the sleeved blanket becomes more mainstream. The company also underestimated the extent of popularity of the sleeved blanket; if it could have predicted that the mass consumers would adopt Snuggies as inexpensive...
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...Pond Slanket: Responding to Snuggie’s Market Entry Position Statement: Problem and Diagnosis With the introduction of Snuggie, Slanket has lost potential sales of their product to a similar lower priced, lower quality product. The primary cause of this being the problem is that Snuggie can offer their product at a much lower price. Using a bigger advertising dollar pool, they have succeeded in promoting the brand to the front of the minds of consumers. Consumers might see Slanket and Snuggie as very similar products, but need to be informed of the differences in quality, which may sway them to purchase Slanket for a little more money to receive a much better product that will outlast a Snuggie. Proof of Diagnosis Snuggie can offer their sleeved blankets at a much lower price point. The reason being is that the blanket is made of cheaper materials. It’s cheaper to produce, because it only offers sleeved blankets in three colors, as opposed to Slanket’s 12 color offerings. Snuggie’s weight is 200 grams per square meter, while Slanket’s is 240 grams per square meter. Snuggie is also only manufactured in one size, while Slanketofferes three different sizes. The only size dimensions of Snuggies are 54”x71”, which makes the Slanket’s adult size of 95”x60” much larger. According to Exhibit 3- Product Specifications, because of the product quality, the majority of Amazon.com users rate and review Snuggie at only one star (45.9%), while QVC.com customers rate Slanket at five stars...
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...SLANKET: RESPONDING TO SNUGGIE’S MARKET ENTRY Even though Slanket counts with a much smaller promotional budget, it is clear that the company wants to position itself as a better quality sleeved blanket following a long-term strategy that will overcome fads and imitators. As we can see in the Exhibit 3 provided by the case, Slanket was already ranked with 5 stars in 86,7% of the cases while Snuggie only got a 21,6% of 5 stars ratings. Furthermore, the product was warmer, bigger and offered a wider variety of colors. So we can conclude that Slanket product perception is already better and the main issues are to increase promotional investment and to better canalize potential customers in order to increase market share. Recommendations 1. Distributions channels SkyMall in-flight catalog has about 650M readers but in 2008 only sold 15.000 units at a price of $38 obtaining a margin of $18. I think this channel should be eliminated since it is the less profitable one. QVC should be maintained since in 2008 sold 180.000 units at a price of $32 obtaining a margin of $14. Even though QVC is a 24h television-shopping channel I would recommend Slanket to air its commercials during the mornings, while households are doing their duties, and from 9pm till 12pm, while people in general get home and spend more time watching TV. In addition I suggest that Slanket should also air commercial in normal TV channels in the short-form which should include a clear phone number and website...
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...Abstract Brands rushed into social media, viewing social networks, video sharing, online communities, and microblogging sites as the panacea to diminishing returns for traditional brand building routes. But as more branding activity moves to the Web, marketers are confronted with the stark realization that social media was made for people, not for brands. In this article, we explore the emergent cultural landscape of open source branding, and identify marketing strategies directed at the hunt for consumer engagement on the People’s Web. These strategies present a paradox, for to gain coveted resonance, the brand must relinquish control. We discuss how Webbased power struggles between marketers and consumer brand authors challenge accepted branding truths and paradigms: where short-term brands can trump longterm icons; where marketing looks more like public relations; where brand building gives way to brand protection; and brand value is driven by risk, not returns. # 2011 Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. All rights reserved. 1. The party crashers: Marketers and the Social Web Brands today claim hundreds of thousands of Facebook friends, Twitter followers, online community members, and YouTube fans; yet, it is a lonely, scary time to be a brand manager. Despite marketers’ desires to leverage Web 2.0 technologies to their advantage, a stark truth presents itself: the Web was created not to sell branded products, but to link people together in collective conversational...
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...Business Horizons (2011) 54, 193—207 www.elsevier.com/locate/bushor The uninvited brand Susan Fournier a,*, Jill Avery b a b Boston University School of Management, 595 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, U.S.A. Simmons School of Management, 300 The Fenway, M-336, Boston, MA 02115, U.S.A. KEYWORDS Branding; Brand management; Social media; Web 2.0; Co-creation Abstract Brands rushed into social media, viewing social networks, video sharing, online communities, and microblogging sites as the panacea to diminishing returns for traditional brand building routes. But as more branding activity moves to the Web, marketers are confronted with the stark realization that social media was made for people, not for brands. In this article, we explore the emergent cultural landscape of open source branding, and identify marketing strategies directed at the hunt for consumer engagement on the People’s Web. These strategies present a paradox, for to gain coveted resonance, the brand must relinquish control. We discuss how Webbased power struggles between marketers and consumer brand authors challenge accepted branding truths and paradigms: where short-term brands can trump longterm icons; where marketing looks more like public relations; where brand building gives way to brand protection; and brand value is driven by risk, not returns. # 2011 Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. All rights reserved. 1. The party crashers: Marketers and the Social Web Brands...
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