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G-market is a South Korean version of E-bay online marketplace for Korean buyers and sellers that compete with eBay’s Internet Auction site. G-market went public in 2003, and it experienced a rough sales in2004, but it has become profitable company in 2006.

According to TJP, Even though he already own stocks in eBay, he thinks Gmarket could be a possible takeover target because Yahoo! already owns a 10% stake in the company.

G-market Inc. (GMKT) is a retail e-commerce marketplace in Korea offering buyers a selection of products and sellers a flexible sales solution. The Company’s commerce marketplace facilitates the sale of products in small or large quantities to a large number of potential buyers. The G-market’s commerce marketplace facilitates the sale of products in small or large quantities to a large number of potential buyers just like E-bay.

According to MSN money, G-market derives its revenues primarily from transaction fees on the sale of products on its Website, as well as from advertising fees and others. The Company’s e-commerce marketplace is located at www.gmarket.co.kr.

Products listed for sale on the Company’s Website are: apparel, beauty products, computers, electronics, furniture and jewelry and are coupled with product information, including pictures, product descriptions and customer reviews and commentary which runs by G-market’s sales manager software program(GSM).

G-market has a unique business model. G-market is not not just a typical auction site while E-bay focuses on single seller or sore seller to drive the commision fee, G-market’s niche market is small to medium business. Instead of focusing on large businesses or occasional sellers, G-market focuses on the needs of small to medium sized businesses. In Korea, this group of sellers has been the most active in adopting the Internet for their business and they have been the driving force of e-commerce market growth. As G-market’s business model focuses on small to medium sized business, the company is well positioned to expand its seller base to large businesses.

There are some fundamental keys on G-market that wants to be shown to share holders.

• Revenue grew to $51.6 million in Q4 2006, representing a 67% increase in revenue from $30.9 million in Q4 2005.
• Gross Merchandise Volume, the key metric used to evaluate total value of all items sold, increased by 53% to $737.4 million in Q4 2006 from $480.8 million in Q4 2005.
• Operating income grew to $6.6 million in Q4 2006, representing a 120% increase from $3 million for the same period in 2005.

G-market carries zero debt on their balance sheet, and Retained earnings have increased nearly 1400% from Q1 2006 to Q4 2006. G-market also tripled its short term & cash holdings during the same period as well. Therefore, G-market will make money for share holders.

Many analyzers think Gmarket will take over other competitor comapany like E-bay because  G-market’s EPS are projected to grow at 34% over the next 5 years, then, take into account that eBay has lost considerable market share to G-market. 68% of the Korean populations are internet users, the highest percentage in the world. Moreover, G-market will expand its business operations in China and Japan which will dominate all over the Asian e-business market. So, it is a good time to put money in this company.

Article source: http://www.investortrip.com/gmarket-the-korean-version-of-ebay/

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Here’s an article about how companies are using twitter to keep their brands updated and their products satisfactory. It highlights how positive and negative posts on twitter or blog sites can produce customer interest and disinterest. It also indicates that companies have benefited greatly from being “followers” of those who tweet about their products or services as these outlooks have become beneficial customer service products as well.

I am sorry about the length of the article but I hope you all find it as interesting as I did. Thanks!

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<img src=”” alt=”Fashion Embraces Social” />

As fashion week presents the latest from designers in New York this spring, the trends haven’t been exclusive to the runways. In the past six months, the amount of fashion insiders embracing social media has skyrocketed. The industry, it seems, is finally letting the public behind its closed doors. Why this sudden shift to transparency from previously slamming doors on anyone remotely deemed an outsider?

Fashion brands have finally realized that social media tools are powerful for creating organic communications online. Many brands were driven to this realization as an effect of the economic crisis in which luxury and designer brands suffered. Longstanding and reputable brands were able to weather the storm, but it is crucial for new talent and designers to market and to be social.

By letting the public in, the industry has recently capitalized on over 400 million Facebook users and more than 22 million Twitter users. The #nyfw conversations have been storming Twitter pages, yet the sheer volume of tweets isn’t as impressive as the caliber of people contributing including journalists, fashion incubators, retail gurus and people just plan interested in the industry.

Ultimately, the fashion industry’s social media usage is reaffirming what companies continue to realize about the benefits of Twitter. The tool is invaluable for monitoring consumer sentiment, provide real-time customer service, and connect with key industry influencers. Also, consumers’ media expectations are rapidly changing. Print sources such as fashion magazines are realizing that customers don’t want news printed months after its newsworthy, but want it instantly online.

The conversations are happening; fashion marketers cannot ignore the opportunities to monetize on the ability to create awareness, loyalty, and engagement. The traditional approaches of mass marketing and repetitive messaging is being replaced by the smaller, niche, and people-centric activities Twitter encourages.

Now more than ever, marketers have more power and more choice than ever, but they must embrace the social trend.

Article: http://mashable.com/2010/02/13/fashion-industry-social-media/

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According to an article in Businessweek entitled “Salesforce’s Chatter Joins a Growing Social Media Field,” Salesforce.com recently introduced a new application to its “collaborative cloud” of CRM tools. The new platform, called Chatter, allows companies to build their own secure, private social network – think a workplace intranet modeled off consumer social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter.

Nowadays big business means companies tend to be comprised of several departments and hundreds or even thousands of employees – from salespeople to customer service agents, from web developers to marketers. Salesforce recognized that the more employees a company has, the more difficult it is to make sure internally everyone’s on the same page so that externally the company can present a united image to its consumers.

What could possibly make it easier for employees to communicate with one another? In the midst of the social networking phenomenon, Salesforce recognized an opportunity to apply a tool like Facebook to internal business operations. “I know more about these strangers on Facebook than I do about my own employees and what they’re working on,” Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff said. “I know when my friends went to the movies, but not when my VP of sales visited our top customer.”

Enter Chatter, a new business tool that works with Salesforce’s orginal CRM software and helps manage employee relationships in order to better manage customer relationships. Chatter allows employees to seamlessly collaborate with one another. Think Facebook for businesses.

Chatter encompasses things like

• employee profiles detailing job descriptions and experience
• updates regarding projects and document changes
• and sharing information about sales progress and customer interactions

Internal communications that make use of an online platform are not a novel concept. For instance, Microsoft has an intranet platform called SharePoint, which lets work groups share files and work together on the Web. And Google recently introduced Wave, which allows users to share information and converse online.

But Salesforce really seems to embrace today’s “I want it now” mindset. One of the strong points of its CRM software is that it’s updated in real-time. Similarly, Chatter allows amended documents, updated sales figures, and customer interactions to be shared and discussed in real-time. Additionally, Salesforce is unique in that it is capitalizing on the user friendliness and broad appeal of popular social networking tools. The company has intentionally designed its software to look, function, and feel very similar to Facebook.

It’s unlikely Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard friends ever dreamed their creation would be used this way, but isn’t it interesting to see how social networking can be so useful on the backend of a business, as well as on the front? Marketers, in particular, can use tools like Chatter to better keep their fingers on the pulse of not only what customers are saying about their brand or business, but also what their company is saying to their customers.

For more information about Chatter, check out Salesforce’s video demo.

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DIGITAL CLARITY: Applying basic search engine optimization concepts by Brandy Woolford

SEO is essential to a websites ability to drive traffic and ultimately increase customer acquisition. SEO can be accomplished through two ways, pay-per-click advertising organic SEO strategies. According to the article, some researchers believe people are ten times more likely to click on organic search results rather than paid ads. This only makes sense because people want results most relevant to their search terms and also don’t appreciate companies pushing them to buy things. Just think of the last time you actually clicked on a banner ad. Can you even remember? SEO drives 75% of all web traffic, so clearly marketers are using SEO tools to increase their page rank.

As Google’s mantra states: content is king. Driving page rank organically starts with website design. Google’s algorithm analyzes words, phrases, and hyperlinks within the website. Of particular importance are headers and words at the beginnings of paragraphs, so choosing those strategically is imperative to having unique yet popular word usage.

One method of increasing a site’s page rank organically is through blogging and the use of social media sites. Having a blog for your company will not only create a place where members can interact, but by writing blogs that people are interested in, people will appreciate the contribution of useful information and may even follow a link to your company’s home page. Also, you can create blog posts on other relevant online communities where product users may browse, so members may come across one of your blogs and see a hyperlink to your home site and click through. When Google analyzes the blog page, it will pick up any hyperlinks to your page. However, writing posts with too many hyperlinks to your company may be seen as an employee merely attempting to drive traffic rather than genuinely contribute content.  Therefore, appropriate hyperlink frequency and labeling is important to remaining a credible source of information.  You can view one of my blogs here.

Strategic link placement is also very important. Having links within your website to other microsites will increase your ranking, as will your URL being located on other websites, especially popular ones. Link sharing is another method of increasing your page rank. Google does not love this method, but by using particular websites, you can search for relevant website and send them an invitation to share links. After they agree, you both paste each other’s link on a hidden website that only website administrators are able to view. However, Google’s recently changed algorithm may diminish the effectiveness of this guerilla SEO tactic.

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Article Overview: http://j.mp/csq8Rp

People can reach Internet wherever they are, by using mobile phones.

Now, marketers can make it even easier for potential customers to reach the company by adding a location-specific business phone number in ads that appear on mobile devices with full internet browsers.

Users can click the number to call just as easily as clicking to visit website. And, since ads can be served based on user location, a potential customer will see — and can click to call — the phone number of your store location that’s nearest to them, not one that’s across town.

Why this one?

1. Customer Preference

When people search for goods or services using their mobile phones, they often prefer to call a store rather than visit that store’s website.

2. Mobile search vs. computer search

The ability for prospective customers to easily call your business is a key distinguishing feature of searches made on mobile phones versus computers.

3. Easy to measure ads result

This new feature also makes it easier for you to fully measure the results of your ads by allowing you to track how many calls you actually receive.

4. Improved click-through rates

Advertisers who participated in the beta trial have seen improved click-through rates. Plus, many advertisers received more visits to their websites in addition to incremental phone calls.

How:

1. Understanding who visits your website

The first step to participate in this click-to-call area is to understand your website visitors. How they access to your website. Markers can easily find out with Google Analytics by looking at the Mobile Devices report in the Visitors reporting section. If most of your traffic is coming from the iPhone and Android operating system, marketers should launch this click-to-call.

2. Measurement

To find out how many calls you’ve received from your ads, go to the Campaign Summary tab in your AdWords account. The report shows how many clicks and how many calls you received. Marketers can view calls received at the campaign, ad group or keyword level.

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Apple has used many marketing techniques to gain awareness for their new product, the iPad. The company has had many innovative products in the past such as the iPod and iPhone, and they have marketed them in very similar ways.

Apple’s best tool to market a new product is the ever growing social media market. They have been using this to its full potential for years now, but within the last 5 years social networking has flourished to a whole new level.

Months before the release of the iPad, Apple gave out very little information about their new product. The idea behind this was to build a following through social networks and the internet to spread simply through word-of-mouth. Apple didn’t even release the name of the product until Steve Jobs held a press release to the world about the new iPad.

Apple’s marketing techniques have proven extremely successful in the past and it will be interesting to see how the numbers will correlate once the iPad is officially released.

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Article overview:

Who shops online?

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Puppy Tweets is a plastic tag with a sound and motion sensor that you attach to your pet’s dog collar and connect its USB receiver to your computer. Then you create a Twitter account for your dog and enjoy updates all day from Sparky or whatever its name is on your computer or smartphone

Why is this newsworthy?

• New product with multiple possibilities
• Expand to all different types of animals, more recordings
  Attract new users to Twitter -if not already on Twitter this is an excuse to get join
• A mesh between Twitter and the consumers’ love for their pets
• A toy for adults, huge amount of dog lovers to appeal to

How can marketers use Puppy Twitter?

• Connect with dog owners
• Great way for marketers to build a strong relationship with these people on a more personal level
• Advertise dog products
• Easy way to advertise dog related products
• Eventually spread to all household pets

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This is an article review of AdWeek’s article “Why Nike Embraces Brand Utility” by Brian Morrissey.

Click here for article link

What Nike believes is embracing their “just do it” slogan into a lifestyle.  Nike also sees digital tools not primarily as a way to advertise but as a way to bring people together, and provide additional services.  One of Nike’s main digital tools is Nike ID this is where a user can customize a personal shoe just for them from look, size, color patterns, and even text.  This is important because the Nike shoe is more than a product it is seen as a lifestyle and even a collectors item.  People who love Nike shoes value the ability to customize their own shoe.

Another digital tool that has been around for a while Nike uses is Nike+ the ability to link your shoes/running with Apple’s iTunes network and track your status.  You can keep stats and upload how much you run to Nike’s web services like the one going on for helping Haiti.  If you run (using Nike+ on) 1 mile Nike will donate 1$ to the relief fund, this is currently going on till the 22nd.  SO GET OUT THERE AND RUN!!!

For the soccer community there is a new part of Nike’s digital tools called Boot Camp.  This is a website area where avid soccer players can learn new drills and training techniques from the “BEST” coaches and players all around the world.  These videos are also able to be watched from a mobile device.

Lastly one digital device that I believe is very strong and powerful in changing the sporting industry is…. Nike’s Ballers Network.  This is a digital tool/webspace where users can find/create/locate basketball leagues and pick up games.  Users can even set up leagues that they can monitor with their own stats, player and team bios, and even smack talk.  This builds the basketball community up and embracing the Nike image of “just do it.”  People can use maps to find where these games are going on and store locations of good parks.  It is getting people out there to experience the basketball culture through the use of Nike’s Ballers Network.  Lastly the network can be accessed over mobile mediums providing even more added value.

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