Blog

Blog

What price convenience?

Price is always an interesting and complex area for marketers to deal with and get right but today I saw an example which shows how price isn’t always proportional to the amount of product received. At a mainline rail station and wanting some water to drink I looked at one of the station vendors and […]

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Improved proposition gives differentiation

Amazon have just announced what appears to be a great differentiator in a crowded market which should give a more compelling proposition to customers. Only available in the US at the moment but they are offering a free cloud based mp3 version of music customers have bought on CD from Amazon since they started business […]

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More 3D printing

It seems that 3D printing has moved on since our last blog post on the subject link here 3D Printer manufacturer MakerBot Industries has opened a shop to allow people to see the printers and technology available, read more here or watch a short video here These printers  have great possibilities for marketers of physical products […]

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Battle of the Bosses

This is a fascinating infographic about what makes good bosses in the UK, and who people think would be good bosses: Infographic by Reed Global

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Leadership

There is a great discussion about leadership and management in a recent edition of the Radio Four programme, The Bottom Line – the podcast can be downloaded hereThis could be really useful for CIM students on the Professional Diploma Managing Marketing unit and Chartered Postgraduate Diploma Marketing Leadership and Planning unit. Get listening!

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Getting Personal

I have just had an email from Starbucks telling me how they would like to get to know me, and want to get personal with customers by referring to them by name rather than the type of drink purchased. It seems like a nice idea to me, and will potentially add to one of the reasons they […]

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Motivation

I have just seen this video on You Tube and have to share it – this is great thinking for anyone involved in management and leading of teams of people, demonstrating that the logical thinking of many theories relating to motivation just doesn’t work in practice. If you are studying for the CIM Professional Diploma […]

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Marketing and ethics

I seem to have seen quite a few things about marketing ethics recently – there are those who would probably say it is an oxymoron, although as a marketer I would of course disagree! I actually think it is a really important subject for marketers to understand, and take on board to ensure credibility. The […]

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Another award winning student!

Really delighted that one of our CIM Chartered Postgraduate in Marketing students has been awarded the Top International Student award for the Analysis and Decision exam paper at the CIM Graduation Ceremony in Birmingham. Congratulations to Catherine May, this is a fantastic achievement!

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Google+ Pages

Google have released Google+ Pages for business today –Google Blog – so we have created a page for SPA Professional Academy to have a look at how it works. I think there is probably still quite a lot to do on the page but hopefully there will be time to investigate all of this soon. […]

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From PEST to STEEPLE

Just posted a new resource on our website – from PEST to STEEPLE and beyond – looking at the different categories of macro environment analysis acronyms. The resources covers PEST, SLEPT, PESTEL, PESLEG, LEPEST and STEEPLE along with a couple of others. Useful for students at all levels of CIM qualification, Professional Certificate, Professional Diploma […]

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Which plan will work best?

I make no apologies for another blog related to the motor industry, but this week in Autocar magazine there are two interesting, but very different, interviews with car company CEOs which demonstrate contrasting approaches to strategic planning. One interview is with Dany Bahar of Lotus and the other with Ratan Tata of Tata, owners of […]

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