Sunday, October 31, 2010

Week 9 Sales Promotion and Personal Selling

Research In Motion offers sales promotion to customer as a incentive to buy a BlackBerry cellphone, the company offers rebates to the retailer in their product when you buy a BlackBerry cellphones you have to mail the rebate form and the receive of your purchase in order to get your 50 dollar visa card or check but this is not immediately it takes up to 3 week to receive it from the manufactures which means the retailer or cell phones companies is not responsible for the rebate.There are some retailers that offers RIM rebate like T-Mobile, Sprint, at&t and metro PCS most of then have the same rebate depending on the type of BlackBerry cellphone you purchased. RIM also offers premiums to the retailers providing them with hands free device or case for the cellphone that customer will receive for free when they purchase a BlackBerry cellphone.


RIM use email to register customers for the loyalty programs customers can register  by going to their website which is "blackberry.com" and filling up your personal information that include your email where they can send you notifications, updates to the system or any special rebate or premium on their accessories for the BlackBerry cellphones. 


On October 26 at Adobe Max RIM President and Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis made a promotion announced that could be seem as a contests and sweepstakes for the BlackBerry users because the promotion plan is to provide one Free BlackBerry Playbook to every registered vendor with a BlackBerry App world approved, the intent is to reward developers and designers who are working on apps in advance of the product  launch. Another promotional program that RIM  provide to their users is Sampling they don’t  have product to try for free, but the company got one particular service that customers can try it for free which is the applications or apps that you can download a trial for a limited time and if you like the app you can purchase at the BlackBerry App World.


Sunday, October 24, 2010

Week 8 Advertising and Public Relations

In the last fiscal year RIM spent nearly $ 380 million on marketing and advertising its BlackBerry, the revenues that those advertises produce is a 3.60 %. RIM create advertises promoting their products and applications. Most of the ads are relatable to the customers in their everyday situations, those ads also show the exclusive BlackBerry Messenger "BBM" that only BlackBerry cellphones have which could  be the advertising appel for customers, since BBM it is a unique service that can be used for voice messages, capturing and sharing photos or just chat. RIM's recently advertise is their new product BlackBerry Playbook which is the first professional tablet, for RIM this is a new market in this type of product but the Playbook has better features that make a huge different from the compettitor, the playbook is expected to arrive in the US in the next year.

Wall Street: Money nerver sleeps
RIM belief in the idea of product placement which is a strategy that involves getting one's product, service or name to apper in a movie, TV shown, radio program, magazine, video games, or at special events. RIM product "BlackBerry cellphones" appears in those recently movies in this year: Valentine's Day, The Town, and Wall Street: Money never sleeps this movie was a good example of product placement because every bankers has a BlackBerry giving the apperance that BlackBerry phones are for businees people.

When it comes to sponsorship RIM decide to go for the most popular sponsorship like sports, music, or the arts, they choose to be the sponsors of big musical groups and their tours. In 2009 RIM had a big BlackBerry Love U2 campaign where they sponsored the U2 tour. In 2010 RIM was the sponsor of the Black Eyes Peas and their " The End 2010 World tour".


Sunday, October 17, 2010

Week 7 Retailing

BlackBerry retail store in Michigan
As most of the companies that manufacture cellphones RIM dont have many retail store in U.S. in fact the only have one retail store in U.S. that is located in Farmington Hills, Michigan which made it impossible for me to visit it.Rim sell their product through different cell phone companies like AT&T, Verizon, T-mobile, Sprint, Boost mobile and, Metro PCS those are the company that sell BlackBerry phones in New York but there are other many cell phone companies selling BlackBerry in U.S. I research in internet for those six cellphone companies in New York and i found out that  AT&T  is the store that has more different types of BlackBerry that's why i decided to visit it.
I visited a AT&T store in Times Square, the store sells cellphones from different brands like Motorola, Samsungs, Nokia, Palm, iPhone and of course BlackBerry and also accessories for their different types of cell phones. Outsude the store has a huge iluminated sign of AT&T like most of the store in Times Square,that attract customers attention. Their business hours are from 8:30-11:00 Mon.-Sat. 10:00-9:00 Sun. maiking it accesible for everyone schedule. Inside the store it has touch screen monitors where you can find more details about a cell phone in the store, they use open tablets to show their cell phones where you can in teract with the cellphone making it a "do-it-yourself" because of the low employee density in the store.It only has 2 employee 1 as a cashier and 1 helping customers. As i was looking at the new BlackBerry Torch, I notice the soft and peaceful music that the store was playing that create a pleasant environment, the store has a cool room temperature and a agreeable fragance, and it was decorate with colors
 like orange, white and light blue that produce a feeling of warmth.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Week 6 Consumer Decision Making

BlackBerry has become an aspiration brand for the newbie's to business, status symbol for the ones in it already. It has created a very high top-of-mind-awareness for itself which is going to be tough to break for any other brand. iPhone  is still looked at as a coolness device. BlackBerry users identify themselves as a layer above, they express no desire outside to look cool, they would rather be the only-business type.
RIM have built their brand around a very strong vision. Perception in the minds of the consumer is built so strong, a Blackberry owner is a true businessman/woman, elegant. sophisticated and busy. However, a study from Nielsen and other data from RIM indicate that email is still a driving factor in the decision-making process when consumers consider the purchase of a new smart phone.While BlackBerry phones are still widely used by businesspeople, other smart phone are able to provide accesss to email, and then some.
Aside from doing mobile email well, RIM also has numbers on its side. While Apple dawdles around its 3-5 year exclusive contract with AT&T, RIM device are available through most carries in the U.S. Google's Android has had a rapid roll-out of varying devices from multiple manufactures, most of which are available through several carries, but not many of them have been marketed as a business tool. Ass mobile apps become more integrated with our daily social and consumer activity, the need for app integration on our smar phones will also become standar. RIM is already making moves in this direction with an app store and the seeking out of partners to create specific (an official) apps for  its device. Until then, targeting the yet-untapped market of non-smart phone users may be a good strategy for RIM to adopt.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Week 5 Global Marketing


A customer walks into a BlackBerry store in Munbai
Research In Motion is a successfull global company because about 52 per cent of BlackBerry's revenue came from outside the US and more than 45 percent of BlackBerry subscribes are  outside North America.The US is the single largest of RIM's markets, accounting for over half of total sales, the actual numer of BlackBerry users in the US has increased significantly, but other markets have nonetheless outpaced in terms of growth.
In a statement , company co-CEO Jim Balsillie said: "RIM achieved significant earnings growth and shipped a record 11.3 million devices during the first quarter, inclunding its 100 millionth BlackBerry smarthphone. we continue to be  focused on growing our business globally and we believe that the range of exciting new Blackberry produtcs being released in the coming months will create significant opportunites to accelerate RIM's growth  in the second half of the fiscal year(2010)."
RIM have  increased the expansion of BlackBerry in the world in the last 3 years. In 2007 RIM entered into a partnership wirth China mobile to sell its popular BlackBerry smartphone in China, about 10,000 Blackberry8700 model smarphones were distribute thought Alcatel-Lucent, BlackBerry distribution in China to China mobile customers.
In the first quarter of 2008, Russian mobile firms MTS and Vimpelcom start selling BlackBerry phones and servicing corporate clients. The permission to sell BlackBerry was granted for one year by Russian state securtiy service. Combined the two firms are expected to ship about 2,000 Blackberry phones.
RIM announced in February 2009 that they were expanding their global operations by opening an office and training facility in North Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
In 2010 after resolving the issue of data security with the government in India RIM provides corporate email and instant messaging services to about one million users in India. RIM which ealier had presence in only nine cities in India, has increased it to 70 cities.
 Research In Motion commands a 20.8 % share of worldwide smarthphones sales, making it the second most popular platform after Nokia's Symbian OS. The cosumer BlackBerry Internet Service is available in 91 Countries worldwide on over 500 mobile service operators using various mobile technologies.