HMV: A Company Defeated by Social Media  

  COMPANY BASIC INFO

  Type                  Public limited company

  Industry             Retail

  Founded             London, United Kingdom (20 July 1921)

  Headquarters     Maidenhead, Berkshire, United Kingdom

  locations            273 stores across 8 countries 

  Area served       United Kingdom, Singapore and Hong Kong

“Oh My Goodness “was the first sentence that popped up into my mind on the time I finished reading the articles about the case of HMV. Frankly speaking, I have Never Ever thought the words on social media can actually turn a prestigious company into a notorious firm, even destroy it.  Based on the information offered by the readings this week, we can roughly outline the ups and downs of HMV Company.

First of all, all the negative contents posted by laid off employees on twitter absolutely ruined the reputation of HMV. Even though HMV has deleted all the negative posts and apologized within hours, the company has inevitably left the audiences a really bad brand image. Finally, the causes of the company’s failure can be listed in three main points, including the entry of the downloadable market, reluctance of changing HMV’s core strategy and strong wrong belief in customer’s existing behaviors.  Among those three reasons, I personally take “reluctance of changing HMV’s core strategy” as the main cause that incurred the end of HMV.

Unable to change the core Strategies

For a long time, HMV has positioned the company as a physical store that sold CDs instead of a pure music seller. Because of this reason, the company insistently followed their old pattern of tried and tested marketing. HMV neglected the changes of customer behavior and was too slow-paced in developing their on-line shopping tunnels for their consumers. Since the market customers was getting more used to doing everything through the Internet, the company was unable to compete with iTune and other digital on-line music shoppers, which ultimately made HMV become a loser in this market.  

Salvageable?

   

No, I don’t think that HMV will be able to revive because of some reasons. The first reason that the digital music market in modern world has become far more competitive than it was. E music is everywhere on the Internet.  (Not to mention the illegal download tunnels). To reposition the company would be a time-consuming and highly cost job, which is also extremely risky for HMV based on its current condition. Second, it has never been an easy task to twist the conceptions of the customer for a bad brand name. Again, this is totally related with time and money. Without a proper brand strategy, the brand name can even become worse.

GoDaddy CEO Shoots Elephant

Here is another case about the power of social media that I would like to share here.

In 2011, GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons has been criticized for posting a picture about his killing an elephant on twitter. Afterward, he even claimed that shooting the elephant was not a crime but a way to keep the balance for the animals. After this incident, Bob Parsons was forced to leave the company he created and was replaced by new CEO Warren Adelman. 

Below is the video about the news that can bring you further information.

 

My Favorite Brand

Nescafe Dolce Gusto

Machine: 99.99-199.99

Capsules: 9.49 (Per Carton)

To be honest , I am quite a Coffee Person.  Among the various brand in the coffee market, Nescafe Dolce Gusto is absolutely my favorite brand. Capsule coffee machine from Nescafe Dolce Gusto is not only a coffee machine but also a fun provider. There are so many coffee machine options in the market, but the features of Nescafe Dolce Gusto coffee machine has always become my favorite and irreplaceable.

Yummy drinks come in small packages!

Nescafe Dolce Gusto belongs to Nestle Company, which is a company well- known for their tasty coffee for decades.  As a food, being delicious is the basic criteria without any doubt, and Nescafe Dolce Gusto does a really good job in this. To cater different tastes of their customers, Nescafe Dolce Gusto offers many options for their customers, including latte macchiato, espresso, chococino and more. (around sixteen flavors)

Super Easy to Use

The machine is so easy to utilize. All the users need to do is to place a capsule into the machine and that’s it! With this machine, the user can self- adjust the thickness of the caffeine and the milk. The company also provides a coffee machine that can help the customers memorize the customized settings. 

Below is a demo film link of  Nescafe Dolce Gusto on Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jtn8qOKLT28

Decoration

Everything from Nescafe Dolce Gusto can be a part of the decoration for home. The Coffee Machines have been shaped into elegant and creative style. Some machines look like a penguin. The others might look like a ladybug. With Capsule Carousel, the user can exhibit the bright colors of capsules in home, which would definitely be a great decoration.

Environmental Problems

Since the machine is a capsule coffee machine, some capsules have to be thrown away each time use.  As for me, that is quite a big concern for the environment. Even though Nescafe Company has devoted to make the capsules with environment-friendly materials that would not be the best solution for it. I hope with more advanced technology, Nescafe can provide a better solution for it.  

My Favorite App

Icon Pop Quiz

Fee: Free ownload app

Applicable Devices: Android, iPhone, iPad

“Icon Pop Quiz” is a famous app made by Alegrium Games and is personally my favorite app for my smart phone. With those cute cube-shaped pictures, Players have to name pictures right to complete each level and category. The more precisely and quickly the answer a player type in, the higher score the player will acquire.  Even though there are many similar games in the market, Icon Pop Quiz is one of the most delicately-designed of its game surface among those. Here are some features of the game.

Hundreds of Cute and Fabulous Pictures

There are more than four hundred icons for game players.  This game includes three main categories, each with five levels. The three main categories are Famous People, TV& Film and Characters. Players have to conquer one by one to gain game tokens and scores.

Help! Help! Help!

Feel frustrated to meet bottle neck in the game? Just ask for help when you need it. After a player name the right answers of pictures, the player will acquire tokens, which can be spent for hints or answers in the game. There are five methods for players to get back to the track. Get some knowledge about the picture by “Hint”, remove irrelevant words from the keyboard with “Eliminate Keys”, or use “Open Letters” to reveal some letter of the words. It is even more terrific that players can also ask help from friends via Twitter and Facebook in this game!

Having Fun with Friends

In my personal opinion, this game is perfectly suitable to play with friends. Take myself as an example, I usually play this game with my roommate during our commuting time to classes based on two reasons. First of all, you would really need helps from others while playing this game, especially when you feel frustrated to try spelling the names correctly. Second, this game can provide you and your friends a great sense of achievement after you revolve the toughest one.

Some Flaws Wait to Be Improved

This programming of Icon Pop Quiz is currently really unstable. The game might shot down or stop working abruptly when you are about to resolve the puzzle. That is quite annoying when players are paying full attention playing the game. I just hope this programming bug can be eliminated soon.