NeuroScience: Friend or foe?

I don’t know what to make of neuroscience…is it going too far?

As a marketer I feel that neuroscience is the best invention ever. By using neuroscience we are able to get to the consumer to believe that they need the product one way of the other by stimulating different feelings. Appealing to their senses regardless what they might need or actually want to buy. Marketers are able to study the consumer trends and what triggers the consumer particular interest to want to buy something or the product in question.

As a consumer I am reluctant to accept the idea of neuroscience. This is because I would be targeting with products that I actually don’t need or want and quite possibly not even afford (considering the economic crisis and the majority of income in general). Neuroscience could be the cause of more debt and the creation of more inequality in the world. It is scary how the mind of others could be influence so easily. How do I know the products that I think I need are the ones that I actually buy.

I believe the neuroscience can be used at a shallow level, such things as particular colors, nice packaging and so on. But, I would not want it to go beyond that influencing feelings and action. This is because as a marketer I don’t want to trick anyone into purchasing anything and even more so if it ultimately is going to affect them in a certain way (such as budgets and actually taking home something useless or that doesn’t work). As a consumer I would like to have the choice to test products for myself and be able to go more in depth of the actual produce and not be persuade into buying something that when I look at it my mind triggers to buy it. Is that socially responsible?

Sorry Automakers

Dear Automakers,

With this letter I would like to appoligize for the mentality of Generation Y. We choose not to spend our savings and rush into debt by purchashing a gas guzzler that ultimate harms the environment and our health. We prefer massive transit transportation to get to places which is better for the economy and our planet earth. Aside from the fact that the government pays to make public transportation available from our own tax money. So excuse us for trying to be more efficient.

Theres a war caused by petroleum money hungry people and a massive oil spill on one of the top hot spots in the world and automakers keep making cars and little progress with alternative tranportation. What ever happen to the electric car? What ever happened with the hydrogen car? Whats up with the hybrids prices? Excuse us Automakers if your not changing for the better, but we sure are.

The Internet as Generation Y is all about efficieny.Without leaving your home you can go to the bank, you can pay bills, you can pay fees, renew licenses, book a flight, go shopping etc etc Because of this we save time and money and can spend more timne with our families and friends like we used to. We choose not to be in a car jam for three hours, we choose to be safe in the comfort of our own home. We choose to do everything we could do in a week in just one day with
various clicks.

Excuse us automakers that if for some reason we leave our house to the gym, meeting or restaurant we most likely own a smart phone that permit us to carry the internet where ever we go. We continue to solve, text, bb, skype anything we want on the run just to use our cars for less time. Please forgive us automakers, but quit
your complaining and get with the generation.

Yours truly,

Adrian Gonzalez

The Virtual Government

The Virtual Government

 

As Mr.Anthony Miyazaki states in his blog The Virtual Government - Will Online Governing Change Our World? the government is becoming everyday more of a web based institution. In many ways, as mentioned in the mentioned blog, government interaction through the internet is a good thing. This postiveness thrives upon the fact that government can be more efficient when it comes to processing and can reach out to even more people then television. As heard, during Obamas campagin, when targeting the younger public to vote Facebook played a key role in reaching millions of young voters.

 

Yet, theres is something about the government going virtual that bothers me which is the deminishing of face to face interaction. On usual ocations government has some face to face interaction even though many times this interaction is not genuine (its a political thing), but for its survival it does reach out to the mases. Politians head out to see and in some cases live the way their people live and from that experiance can base imuch needed desicions or policies. Even with this kind of political interaction many feel that more often than usual government base decisions on political and convinience reasons and ignore the majority of the root to the governed problems.

 

I believe if Government were to go completely virtual this phenemenon would worsen. Theres no doubt the government could reach more people and ultimately be more efficient in processing given information, but the face to face interaction will completely vanish. If this were to happen would the people be forgotten? I bring this up more strongly now because last night I was watching a movieMaid in Manhattan, during the movie this politition was heading out to the bronx in New York City to talk about the projects and the complications of conditions that exists in them. He was told by the main lady in the movie that instead of talking about them (sure he had researched them and had a pretty good idea about what goes on in them), but that he experience them and then talk from his heart ultimatly being more effective and more efficient than otherwise.

E business Plan for E business?

An article on the E-Value framework, professors Amit and Zott from the University of Wharton discuss four key value drivers for a successful business plan for an e business. There break down included:

·         Efficiency – help internet Brower do something faster or better facilitating web browsing

·         Complementarities – Join efforts with other internet sites-partner sites- ( I  would even suggest to link up with competitors) that are similar or share somewhat the same information as you. This way you can compliment the other sites and fill in the gabs of your partner and competitor offerings.

·         Lock-In: Find a way to keep consumers wanting more from your website and keep visiting it, as well as, a way to attract more internet viewers.

·         Novelty: Keep information current and fresh in order to maintain a presence in the web world.

This might seem a lot to take in for anyone who wants to open some kind of blog or successful website to earn some money without complicating things. Yet while researching the topic of e business planning for class I came across several internet sites such as How To Start A Successful E-Business - A Site Build It Review- by Reed Slidell and Ten steps to successful e-business that help ordinary individuals develop a successful business plan with ease.

According to these websites knowing well your consumers (target audience) will help you tremendously when building on your e –value framework. This is because once you know exactly the kind of internet users your going to have visiting your website you will know what they are looking for and what there main interest in terms of information and products are. Feedback is also critical in order to see if your business model is working. By tracking the amount of viewers daily you can tell if your site is going to be successful or not. If viewers are diminishing than you know this is a problem and a call for another business model is required or at least improvement on the current one.

Finally, I strongly believe any site on the web should have current and fresh information inorder to be successful. Constant logging in on behalf of the website should be a must in order to project enthusiasm and expertise to web browsers. Any lagging time between information, blogs or updates is easily perceived by web users and could classify your website as unsuccessful or just not hip enough, current or relative.

The End of Printed Press???

I read the newspaper (not only one) but many on my computer. I download music all the time.....aswell as
read selected articles and books on line. Most of the times I do all these activities for free. On the other hand, my father is subscribed to the Miami Harold he chooses to pay for such information and enjoys reading the paper on actual paper whilehe sips his morning coffee. He also perfers to buy CDS for his grand collection rather than downloding and he also muchrather buy a whole magazine for 5 US dollars just because of 1 interesting article.

I believe that the demise of non internet media is happening, responding to Mr. Miyazakis blog of september 27 2010.It is a generational process that is hapopening this very min. It will not take days for this to happen, months or yearsbut it could take a generation or two for this to happen on a significant amount. My generation is not only "lazy" when it comes to getting information (and thats because information for us is only a clic away) and its free, but also are becoming aware of our environment and its preservation.

Yet, Our grandparents and some of our parent still prefer printed media. Its rather an old habit that is hard to let go off like reading the paper in the mornings. Since these generation werent introdsuced to the internet sol early in life like my genration, it is hard for them to learn the where abouts of the internet. Of course there are exceptiopns. Printed media knows whats coming for them in the future and feel very threaten my the internet. Many coming together and sponsering campains and addsalledging that there sales are still increasing, like stated in the article "Magazines Team up to tout"power of Print"and print.ed press still has more power to sell than the internet.Yet, if this is true....why try to prove it?

I Would Click This Icon to Protect Your Privacy....

Answering Mr. Miyazaki, I would definitely click on an Icon to protect my privacy against behavioral advertising http://e-marketingforsensiblefolk.blogspot.com/2010/10/would-you-click-this-icon-to-protect.html#comments. With the on going privacy uproars by internet users concerning Facebook, twitter, google, among others users are becoming more aware of the importance privacy protection in the cyber world means. Reading "privacy statement" and "terms of use" sections may not be appealing, but I believe more than a handful of web browsers are doing their homework and reading.

Would Consumers have a clue on what this icon means? If an adequate marketing campaign accompanies this new icon, I’m sure people would become familiar with it. Especially, if they market this icon through new modern sites (again twitter, Facebook), and maybe a couple of articles in Time magazines (like Facebook privacy issues) Facebook ...and How It's Redefining Privacy.

One might think that behavioral advertising and using behavioral data could not possibly pose any harm on your persona, but this information could defiantly be used against your persona i.e. fraud accounts made related to your specific consumer trends, proof of purchasing any kind of product or item that you prefer it to be private, etc. This kind of advertising can go from either  ruining a “gift” surprise to being accused of purchasing a great amount of a certain product that you didn’t , but because of your consumer trend cannot prove other wise…….and the problem can thicken.

Whos really watching?

In response to Mr. Anthony Miyazaki blog entry from October 7th 2010 "Internet Eyes Are Watching you" http://e-marketingforsensiblefolk.blogspot.com/he talks about the posibility of a "new age" security system that will allow anyone to look at security camaras that are set up in different locations such as shop, malls, institution etc, This system will allow random internet users to call in if they catch anything suspicious going on and ultimately get paid if they have actually stopped a crime. Now while this idea may sound cutting edge and practically an evolution waiting to happen caused by the internet era to stop crime, among many others my number one concern is that this could be the creation of a new way to make it.

Even if the individuals or the companies involved( internet users) are certified or registured one can imagine that these themselves are not supervised. In fact, they will obviously work from home and could even work from anywhere in the world. This could be far more dangeours that it seems. Given the fact that these homebodies or constant travelers could be pin pointed as opposed to belonging to one identity. The problem with being pin pointed is that it makes way for more corruption, blackmailing, threating, misinformation, backstabbing and even Terrorism at any level. Even if the watcher themselves are not involved in any crminal intent or situations this person could be used and blackmail for further action.

Moreso, when really thinking into it, last week there was a movie on about servilience camaras directed by Adam Rifkin's LOOK, a movie shot entirely from the perspective of security cameras. After watching severeal situations and although I was intrigued by what the servilience camaras could reveal to us I decided to turn it off given that I realized that the invasion of privacy of servilience camaras in which its viewrs are not controlled could be is extraordinay. Obviously, the shots werent real and the individuals in this movie were annymous characters, but on averge each of us is caught on camara more than 100 times a day. C an u imagine that some random person could watch you over servilience camars and be able to trace EVERYTHING you do EVERYDAY........this is what over the internet security camaras is talking about? Personally, im not siked

It would be really nice if one could work from home over the internet. Companies cut on operating cost and the employee saves in gas, time and even lunch. While some jobs can be easily accomodated to be performed over the internet others should strictly be kept the way they are. The internet has and will continue to offer us solutions, but many of these solutions can be the gates to greater caos.