#Consumer markets

[streakeye]

7 Stages in Marketing Research Process

In today’s world, Marketing is one of the most important processes for businesses to sell their products and services and gain profit from it. Marketing Research is a process of collecting, interpreting, analyzing, and using data to obtain effective solutions. To sustain in a competitive market and create a better place in the market, market research needs to be carried out properly. It helps to understand the overall market trends and helps to reach out maximum number of customers.

What is Research Process?

Marketing Research Process is a terminology that is used to describe the development and the actual concept of a product or service, awareness of the brand, and its overall progress. The important factors that are considered in the research process are product, price, place, and promotion. To launch a product or service in the market and gain profit, all these four factors need to work accordingly. The research process helps to find the change in customer behavior patterns if any one of the four factors is changed or updated. Marketers need to know about the expectations of customers, current market trends, and interests of customers to launch their products in the market and gain the attention of customers among all the available competitors.

Stages in Research Process

The research process studies the collection of data, analysis, and interpretation of data that helps to gain current insights and trends in the market. Below are the stages in the research process.

1. Defining the Problem

Defining the market research problem is the first step in the research process. Research starts when the market faces some problems. The problem needs to be studied to know about the causes, results, effects, and solutions to solve it. Defining the problem in the research process studies “why” and “how” questions related to the problem. Therefore the problem needs to be defined in detail. The definition of the problem consists of

The causes or factors that are responsible for the problem due to which problems arise.

The problems encountered due to the occurrence of any error.

The solutions or methods that can be applied to solve the problem.

The strategies and techniques that can be used further to avoid them.

2. Planning the Research Design

Research Design is defined as a strategy that is used to conduct market research and collection of data. The research design consists of techniques, methods, and procedures that will be used to collect the relevant data. The three types of marketing research designs are:

Exploratory: For gaining the facts and opinions regarding the problem or any specific topic, exploratory research design is used. To carry out exploratory research journals, books, magazines, publications, metrics, and interviews are used.

Descriptive: A descriptive research study is used to make a specific decision on a problem and then track its performance. Descriptive research needs to be analysed and measured statistically.

Casual: Casual research design is used to study causes and their effect on the available variables. The casual research process makes use of theories and experiments to study the project.

3. Selecting a Sample

While solving or implementing any marketing research problem it is difficult to study the whole population or all the customers together at once. Therefore a smaller unit known as a sample is selected for further analysis. To select a sample, a few points need to be considered. Such as:

Which sample to select from available population units?

Type of method to be used for the selection of samples from all available units. For this, there are two types of methods; Probability Sampling and Non-probability Sampling. Probability Sampling is defined as a method in which the sample is selected randomly from all the available population units. However, Non-probability Sampling is defined as a method in which the samples or not selected randomly, either they are selected according to investigators’ judgment or by using some other methods.

Size of Selected Samples: This size of selected samples helps to determine the cost and accuracy of the decisions.

4. Collecting Data

Data can be collected through various channels. These channels help to determine the difference between Operational Data and Experience Data. Operational Data is defined as a type of data that describes the costs, sales, profits, and account-related information. Experience Data is defined as a type of data that describes the experience and thoughts of customers, employees, and users.

With the help of surveys through social media platforms such as Email, Slack, WhatsApp, and SMS it is possible to reach more customers and gain more data. Data can also be collected with the help of observing the purchase patterns that were used in the past, and are used in the present by the customers. The type of data that is collected also plays a very important role. If data is invalid it is not useful for further analysis.

Analysing Marketing Research Data

Analysing the marketing research data is an important step. It helps to decide about the solutions and the measures that need to be avoided or to be practiced in the future. The analysis is made on the gathered data to check for the below parameters:

To check whether the data that is collected is meaningful and relevant.

The relationship between the data that is collected and the prior available data.

To check whether the available data describes the solutions.

Some key points that will help to make changes accordingly.

These above-mentioned points need to be checked once data is collected. Therefore various tools and strategies can be used for the same.

6. Drawing Conclusions and Preparing a Report

Once the problem is defined in detail, the sample of data points is selected, and relevant data is collected and analysed to make conclusions. According to the conclusion and solutions, reports are prepared in such a way that they are easy to understand. A report should be concise, complete, and represented with the help of charts and graphs, presentations, visual stories, etc. The two different types of reports are being prepared. They are:

Technical Report: Technical reports consist of all the details about the problem or topic, strategies and techniques used, working flow, structure, and solutions.

Summary Report: The summary report consists of the overall process of research, the findings achieved, and the conclusions.

In this way, different types of reports are made at the end of the research process.

7. Following Up

Following Up is the last phase in the research process. In prior phases the problem is defined in detail, the data is collected and interpreted and then the conclusions are made. Once the conclusions are made the follow-up of the overall process and the strategies and solutions need to be taken. All the solutions and decisions made are implemented in this phase. After the successful implementation of the strategies, they are properly monitored and evaluated. It checks whether all the techniques applied are effective and make a positive impact on the marketing process.

[teaboot]

Hey! Bamboo toilet paper person here. Your response was very thoughtful-- I want to apologize for placing the onus of climate issues on individual action, haha. I work at a zoo that bills itself as being very heavy on conservation messaging, but as a non-partisan organization we're obviously not allowed to talk about the evils of capitalism. This means that in our programming, we MUST place the responsibility of stopping climate change on individual guests, encouraging them to make more environmentally conscientious decisions like buying reef safe sunscreen or reducing carbon emissions by driving less. The most "political" we're allowed to get is telling people to stay educated and vote in favor of laws that will have a positive impact on the environment. I think I've been drinking the Zoolaid a little TOO much recently, because you're totally right-- the vast, VAST majority of damage to the environment is caused by major corporations, not random people working around their own unique needs. It was also low key a little ableist of me to take issue with that ngl.

Obviously no obligation to respond to this publicly (though it's fine if you choose to do so), but I did want to thank you for your response and mention that it did get through the nonprofit mission-based-organization propaganda living rent free in my head haha. Cheers!

Hey, you work at a zoo? That is SO cool, aadsdggjjg@!!!

And hey, no worries, you totally had a good point about endless waste and trying to counter it where possible- Just from personal experience involved in the barest edge of the fashion industry, I really, really, REALLY hate the idea that, like... people can't access simple shit like plastic straws, even if they're the best, most practical, least-harmful option for them.... because a 12 year old made up some random number for a school project about plastic waste

Where, as a zoo person, I imagine you're already aware that the average sea turtle is WILDLY more likely to die from abandoned plastic fishing nets or ocean-dump grocery bags than accidentally get a straw inside it

So here we are, using paper straws!- which may be an improvement, or may not, I don't have that data, and construction emissions are their own thing- BUT WE STILL HAVE OCEANS FULL OF ABANDONED NETS

WHICH ARE OBJECTIVELY WORSE, but MUCH harder to get rid of, and as the average person doesn't USE fishing nets, it'd much harder to market as a "You, not me" sort of issue.

Cleaning up fishing nets isn't trendy. It isn't sexy. You can't troubleshoot a cute little trendy solution for it that you can market to upwardly-mobile tweens.

But a reusable water bottle? A cute canvas tote? A metal straw? That's a solution you can buy and feel good about.

Never mind that you need to use a single cotton reusable bag somewhere like a million times before the cost of its construction counterbalances the cost of a single grocery bag every time you shop- which, hey, some of us were reusing as trash liners for their wastebaskets, or bundle bags for donating clothes, or lining for our leaky winter boots!

If a better option is available, I'll take it. But as ZERO HARM is next to impossible at this time, I personally am gonna aim for MINIMAL HARM as long as I can.

...sorry, I didn't mean to ramble off again.

But hey, if your nonprofit is doing good things, feel free to shoot me a link! I can post it on my blog :D

(Link to original post for context lol)

[communistkenobi]

The deeply moralist tone that a lot of discussions about media representation take on here are primarily neoliberal before they are anything else. Like the shouting matches people get into about “purity culture” “pro/anti” etc nonsense (even if I think it’s true that some people have a deeply christian worldview about what art ought to say and represent about the world) are downstream of the basic neoliberal assumption that we can and must educate the public by being consumers in a market. “Bad representation” is often framed as a writer’s/developer’s/director’s/etc’s failure to properly educate their audience, or to educate them the wrong way with bad information about the world (which will compel their audience to act, behave, internalise or otherwise believe these bad representations about some social issue). Likewise, to “consume” or give money to a piece of media with Bad Representation is to legitimate and make stronger these bad representations in the world, an act which will cause more people to believe or internalise bad things about themselves or other people. And at the heart of both of those claims is, again, the assumption that mass public education should be undertaken by artists in a private market, who are responsible for creating moral fables and political allegories that they will instil in their audiences by selling it to them. These conversations often become pure nonsense if you don’t accept that the moral and political education of the world should be directed by like, studio executives or tv actors or authors on twitter. There is no horizon of possibility being imagined beyond purchasing, as an individual consumer in a market, your way into good beliefs about the world, instilled in you by Media Product 

[baldwinheights]

[lizzybeeee]

DATV is overly reliant on Supplemental Media - especially if you are a returning player

TL;DR: Supplemental material should not be required reading in order to understand what's going on in the main game -> it's additional material that enhances what we were given. If what we were given is lacking and unable to coherently tell us a story, then the writers and those in charge did not prioritize what was important.

Not a take that's unique to Dragon Age, but one that is very relevant when talking about DATV. I've made a few posts about plot/story points that either make no sense or have been dropped entirely in the lead up from DAI to DATV. Every now and then I get a few comments or messages about how certain points I made were addressed in supplemental material released in the lead up to this games release.

This isn't a call out post, by the way! But it's frustrating, to me, that this games writing is so lacking that my understanding is being inhibited because I can't remember details from a book I read two years ago - not to mention various podcasts, comics, and short stories. My understanding of a video game in a video game series should not be reliant on additional/optional content.

DATV is a weird game in that it is absolutely a 'soft/scorched earth' reboot while also marketing itself as a continuation to what was set up in Inquisition and Trespasser. Personally, I think that if you are up to number 4 in a game series, one with a continuous story-line, it should be expected that new players won't be able to catch up to everything -> it's the game developers job to make the world and story intriguing enough that the new players will go back to previous games in the series and fill in the blanks themselves.

Veilguard, as a sequel, is overly reliant on content that comes from outside the games themselves (including DLC's) if you want to make sense of the world and story. Trespasser left us with an epilogue that set up some plot points for the next game: Solas & the Veil, the Elven Rebellion, and War with the Qun - plot points that have been built up since the time of Origins. But when we get into DATV two of these points have been dropped and resolved, off-screen.

There are more questions, but these are the ones that bothered me the most while playing the game:

What happened to the Agents of Fen'harel/ Elven Rebellion? -> answered in a cursed reddit AMA.

What happened to the Qunari following Trespasser -> addressed in Tevinter Nights, and a codex entry you can pick up (optional).

Why is Skyhold infested with demons? -> mentioned in Tevinter Nights.

How did the Dalish go from worshiping their own pantheon to knowing they are false gods? (specifically those we meet in the Veil Jumpers) -> mentioned in the Missing comic series.

What's up with Nevarra's Royals? -> Tevinter Nights addresses that there is a power struggle in the Pentaghast family and the role of the Mortalitasi in making it worse - though it does not address the whole 'mage puppeting a corpse' issue and all the implications it has.

This is a video game series -> the bulk of the information required for me to understand the story and its relation to previous entries needs to be included in the final game version. I am playing a video game and not attending a uni class - I should not need to have a required reading list in order to understand what the fuck is going on. I should definitely not need to go onto a reddit AMA to understand what happened in-game, either.

What makes this stand out the most is that DAI was very successful in tying in previous games, DLC's, movies, and books! Inquisition did a great job in getting you up to speed on the events of the previous games early on, providing personalization if you played those games, and giving the player the opportunity to inquire into these events.

Hiding away the answers in additional material or a codex entry that may be missed is not good game design or good writing. DAI didn't assume that you had bought and played the Legacy DLC -> it made certain you experienced the conversation with Varric and Hawke if you wanted to proceed in the game. It didn't hide away imperative information in codex entries - it had characters talk about it in scripted scenes and encourage the player to ask more. You would actively need to avoid interacting with characters for you to not experience this information in DAI.

Leliana talks about her role during the Blight, her calling by the Maker, and her relationship with Dorothea/Justinia -> DAO and Leliana's Song DLC.

Cullen talks about his time as a templar at Kinloch & Kirkwall -> DAO and DA2.

Cassandra speaks about her history, investigation into Hawke, and the Seekers -> Dawn of the Seeker movie, DA2, & Asunder novel.

Varric talks about Hawke, Kirkwall, and Corypheous -> DA2 and Legacy DLC.

Cole talks about how he discovered he was a 'demon' - it leads to further conversations about Rhys, Evangeline, and Lord-Seeker Lambert -> Asunder novel.

Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts -> the game literally continues what the Masked Empire novel sets up, the Orlesian Civil War. The game does a decent job of telling us about the players (Celene, Gaspard, Briala etc...) and the reasoning behind the conflict through dialogue, the ability to explore the battlefields, quests, ambient dialogue, etc... The book is not required reading - though it greatly adds to the complexity of the characters, motivations, and political intrigue!

I never once, playing DA2 or DAI, felt penalized or like my experience was lacking because I had not engaged with supplemental material or DLC's. I got into Dragon Age when I was in high school, it wasn't until I graduated and began working after that I had the disposable income available for experiencing the extra material. I cannot say that for DATV - If you have played Inquisition and go into DATV straight from that you will, absolutely, be confused about how we got from A to B.

Which is especially strange to me!? Why is it that new players will be less confused than those that are returning players? It's like the game is actively punishing you for playing and caring about previous games in the series.

Supplemental media is bought because the main product has earned your investment, love, or interest. Not everyone has the income available to buy it with their own money - especially if you live outside the US and have to pay additional shipping costs. Not everyone has the ability to buy or 'obtain' the digital versions either. My understanding of the main story of a video game in a video game series should not require additional monetary investment into other mediums.

The game itself should be enough and DATV is not enough.

[sibmakesart]

bab girl there's so many things wrong with you

[animatedjen]

More practice with the pose editor 🔥

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Precaratize bosses

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me SUNDAY (Apr 21) in TORINO, then Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Combine Angelou's "When someone shows you who they are, believe them" with the truism that in politics, "every accusation is a confession" and you get: "Every time someone accuses you of a vice, they're showing you who they are and you should believe them."

Let's talk about some of those accusations. Remember the moral panic over the CARES Act covid stimulus checks? Hyperventilating mouthpieces for the ruling class were on every cable network, complaining that "no one wants to work anymore." The barely-submerged subtext was their belief that the only reason people show up for work is that they're afraid of losing everything – their homes, their kids, the groceries in their fridge.

This isn't a new development. Back when Clinton destroyed welfare, his justification was that "handouts" make workers lazy. The way to goad workers off their sofas (and the welfare rolls) and into jobs was to instill fear in them:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/welfare-childhood/555119/

This is also the firm belief of tech bosses: for them, mass tech layoffs are great news, because they terrorize the workers you don't fire, so that they'll be "extremely hardcore" and put in as many extra hours as the company demands, without even requiring any extra pay in return:

https://fortune.com/2022/10/06/elon-musk-jason-calacanis-return-to-office-gentlemens-layoffs-twitter/

Now, there's an obvious answer to the problem of no one taking a job at the wage being offered: just increase the offer. Capitalists claim to understand this. Uber will tell you that surge pricing "incentivizes drivers" to take to the streets by offering them more money to drive during busy times:

https://www.uber.com/blog/austin/providing-rides-when-they-are-most-needed/

(Note that while Uber once handed the lion's share of surge price premiums to drivers, these days, Uber just keeps the money, because they've entered the enshittification stage where drivers are so scared of being blacklisted that Uber can push them around instead of dangling carrots.)

(Also note that this logic completely fails when it comes to other businesses, like Wendy's, who briefly promised surge-priced hamburgers during busy times, but without even the pretense that the surge premium would be used to pay additional workers to rush to the restaurant and increase the capacity:)

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/feb/27/wendys-dynamic-surge-pricing

So bosses knew how to address their worker shortage: higher wages. You know: supply and demand. For bosses, the issue wasn't supply, it was price. A worker who earns $10/hour but makes the company $20 profit every hour is splitting the surplus 50:50 with their employer. The employer has overheads (rent on the shop, inventory, advertising and administration) that they have to pay out of their end of that surplus. But workers also have overheads: commuting costs, child-care, a professional wardrobe, and other expenses the worker incurs just so they can make money for their boss.

There's no iron law of economics that says the worker/boss split should be 50/50. Depending on the bargaining power of workers and their bosses, that split can move around a lot. Think of McDonald's and Walmart workers who work for wildly profitable corporate empires, but are so badly paid that they have to rely on food stamps. The split there is more like 10/90, in the boss's favor.

The pandemic changed the bargaining power. Sure, workers got a small cushion from stimulus checks, but they also benefited from changes in the fundamentals of the labor market. For example, millions of boomers just noped out of their jobs, forever, unwilling to risk catching a fatal illness and furious to realize that their bosses viewed that as an acceptable risk.

Bosses' willingness to risk their workers' lives backfired in another way: killing hundreds of thousands of workers and permanently disabling millions more. Combine the boomer exodus with the workers who sickened or died, and there's just fewer workers to go around, and so now those workers enjoy more bargaining power. They can demand a better split: say, 75/25, in their favor.

Remember the 2015 American Airlines strike, where pilots and flight attendants got a raise? The eminently guillotineable Citibank analyst Kevin Crissey declared: "This is frustrating. Labor is being paid first again. Shareholders get leftovers":

https://www.thestreet.com/investing/american-airlines-flight-attendants-bash-citi-analyst-who-put-shareholders-before-workers-14134309

Now, obviously, the corporation doesn't want to offer a greater share of its surplus to its workforce, but it certainly can do so. The more it pays its workers, the less profitable it will be, but that's capitalism, right? Corporations try to become as profitable as they can be, but they can't just decree that their workers must work for whatever pay they want to offer (that's serfdom).

Companies also don't get to dictate that we must buy their goods at whatever price they set (the would be a planned economy, not a market economy). There's no law that says that when the cost of making something goes up, its price should go up, too. A business that spends $10 to make a widget you pay $15 for has a $5 margin to play with. If the business's costs go up to $11, they can still charge $15 and take $1 less in profits. Or they can raise the price to $15.50 and split the difference.

But when businesses don't face competition, they can make you eat their increased costs. Take Verizon. They made $79b in profit last year, and also just imposed a $4/month service charge on their mobile customers due to "rising operational costs":

https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/1c53c4p/79bn_in_profits_last_year_but_you_need_an_extra/

Now, Verizon is very possibly lying about these rising costs. Excuseflation is rampant and rising, as one CEO told his investors, when the news is full of inflation-talk, "it’s an opportunity to increase the prices without getting a whole bunch of complaining from the customers":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/11/price-over-volume/#pepsi-pricing-power

But even stipulating that Verizon is telling the truth about these "rising costs," why should we eat those costs? There's $79b worth of surplus between Verizon's operating costs and its gross revenue. Why not take it out of Verizon's bottom line?

For 40 years, neoliberal economists have emphasized our role as "consumers" (as though consumers weren't also workers!). This let them play us off against one-another: "Sure, you don't want the person who rings up your groceries to get evicted because they can't pay their rent, but do you care about it enough to pay an extra nickel for these eggs?"

But again, there's no obvious reason why you should pay that extra nickel. If you have the buying power to hold prices down, and workers have the labor power to keep wages up, then the business has to absorb that nickel. We can have a world where workers can pay their rent and you can afford your groceries.

So how do we get bosses to agree to take less so we can have more? They've told us how: for bosses, the thing that motivates workers to show up for shitty jobs is fear – fear of losing their homes, fear of going hungry.

When your boss says, "If you don't want to do this job for minimum wage, there's someone else who will," they're telling you that the way to get a raise out of them is to engineer things so that you can say, "If you don't want to pay me a living wage for this job, there's someone else who will."

Their accusation – that you only give someone else a fair shake when you're afraid of losing out – is a confession: to get them to give you a fair shake, we have to make them afraid. They're showing us who they are, and we should believe them.

In her Daily Show appearance, FTC chair Lina Khan quipped that monopolies are too big to care:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDTiWaYfcM

Philosophers of capitalism are forever praising its ability to transform greed into public benefit. As Adam Smith put it, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." The desire to make as much money as possible, on its own, doesn't produce our dinner, but when the butcher, the brewer and the baker are afraid that you will take your labor or your wallet elsewhere, they pay more and charge less.

Capitalists don't want market economies, where they have to compete with one another, eroding their margins and profits – they want a planned economy, like Amazon, where Party Secretary Bezos and his commissars tell merchants what they can sell and tell us what we must pay:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/01/managerial-discretion/#junk-fees

Capitalists don't want free labor, where they have to compete with rival capitalists to bid on their workers' labor – they want noncompetes, bondage fees, and "training repayment agreement provisions" (TRAPs) that force their workers to stay in dead-end jobs rather than shopping for a better wage:

\https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose

Capitalists hate capitalism, because capitalism only works if the capitalists are in a constant state of terror inspired by the knowledge that tomorrow, someone smarter could come along and open a better business, poaching their customers and workers, and putting the capitalist on the breadline.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/18/in-extremis-veritas/#the-winnah

Being in a constant precarious state makes people lose their minds, and capitalists know it. That's why they work so hard to precaratize the rest of us, saddling us with health debt, education debt, housing debt, stagnating wages and rising prices. It's not just because that makes them more money in the short term from our interest payments and penalties. It's because it de-risks their lives: monopolies and cartels can pass on any extra costs to consumers, who'll eat shit and take it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its-the-economy-stupid/#overinflated

A workforce that goes to bed every night worrying about making the rent is a workforce that put in unpaid overtime and thank you for it.

Capitalists hate capitalism. You know who didn't hate capitalism? Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels. The first chapter of The Communist Manifesto is just these two guys totally geeking out about how much cool stuff we get when capitalists are afraid and therefore productive:

https://pluralistic.net/SpectreHaunting

But when capitalists escape their fears, the alchemical reaction that converts greed to prosperity fizzles, leaving nothing behind but greed and its handmaiden, enshittification. Google search is in the toilet, getting worse every year, but rather than taking reduced margins and spending more fighting spam, the company did a $80b stock-buyback and fired 12,000 skilled technologists, rather than using that 80 bil to pay their wages for the next twenty-seven years:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Monopoly apologists like to argue that monopolists can rake in the giant profits necessary to fund big, ambitious projects the produce better products at lower prices and make us all better off. But even if monopolists can spend their monopoly windfalls on big, ambitious projects, they don't. Why would they?

If you're Google, you can either spend tens of billions on R&D to keep up with spam and SEO scumbags, or you can spend less money buying the default search spot on every platform, so no one ever tries another search engine and switches:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Compared to its monopoly earnings, the tech sector's R&D spending is infinitesimal:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/11/nor-glom-of-nit/#capitalists-hate-competition

How do we get capitalists to work harder to make their workers and customers better off? Capitalists tell us how, every day. We need to make them afraid.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/19/make-them-afraid/#fear-is-their-mind-killer

Image: Vlad Lazarenko (modified) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wall_Street_Sign_%281-9%29.jpg CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[fernhelm]

I WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO SAW HER FOR WHAT SHE WAS

My Little Sister - May Williams Ward / HP, SS / HP, DH / Reading the Salem Witch Child - Kristina West / Diamonds and Toads - Charles Perrault / Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? - Jeanette Winterson / Goblin Market - Christina Rossetti / Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

[chronically-ghosted]

day before a 5 day holiday weekend. office empty. got me thinking thoughts.

[mayra-quijotescx]

In Ancient Greece and Rome, depictions of genitalia or sexual acts in art, jewelry, and gestures were used to ward against evil (often specifically by blinding the evil eye) and to invite protection to the wearer or gesturer, as evil was thought to be scandalized and repelled by explicit references to sexuality. Fast-forward to today, where advertisers and social media platforms have waged an extensive war against images of nudity and sexuality in order to claim online spaces as 'safe' for advertising products. In this essay I will

[streakeye]

Market Research Process

The market research process is a structured approach to gathering, analyzing, and interpreting data about a target market, competitors, and consumers. It helps businesses make informed decisions. The process typically involves the following steps:

 1. Define the Problem & Objectives

Identify the key questions you need to answer.

Set clear objectives (e.g., understanding customer needs, evaluating competitors, assessing market demand).

Determine the scope of research (qualitative, quantitative, or both).

2. Develop a Research Plan

Choose the type of research:

Primary Research (surveys, interviews, focus groups, experiments)

Secondary Research (industry reports, competitor analysis, government data)

Define the target audience (demographics, behaviors, preferences).

Select data collection methods (online, face-to-face, telephone).

Establish a budget and timeline.

 3. Collect Data

Conduct surveys, interviews, or focus groups.

Monitor competitors and industry trends.

Use analytics tools for digital data collection (social media, website traffic).

Gather insights from reports, case studies, and market databases.

 4. Analyze Data & Interpret Results

Organize and clean the collected data.

Use statistical tools and software (Excel, Google Analytics, SPSS) for analysis.

Identify trends, patterns, and customer insights.

Compare findings with research objectives.

 5. Report Findings & Take Action

Summarize key insights in a report or presentation.

Provide recommendations based on data.

Develop marketing strategies or product improvements.

Implement changes and monitor performance.

 6. Monitor & Update Research

Track market changes and update research periodically.

Adapt strategies based on new trends and consumer behavior.

Use continuous feedback loops to refine marketing efforts.

[elkkiel]

Regarding ST's merch, I think it's really obvious quality wise what merch the boys had a direct hand in and what merch is just RCA slapping ST's name and logo on something because they know it'll sell. The figurine and the constant HT/Spencer's drops scream RCA just trying to make a buck.

I think the big thing we can do as fans, or in this case consumers, is just be really picky about what merch we actually buy. Let sales numbers and the market talk for us ig (ew capitalism, but unfortunately that's how this works)

Things like the graphic novel? Hell yeah, support the shit out of that! We're out here Obtaining new, original stories made in collaboration with the band themselves, AND supporting art that aligns with the band's previously-curated brand image. Throw your money at that or hype it up online, since that's what we REALLY want to see from them. (even if it's too $$$ for many people. But, I get the sense that they wouldn't mind the pdf being shared with other fans lol. You can't tell me those nerds haven't read pirated manga/comics/books online before)

The low quality, soulless Licensed Products keep on coming because there's apparently a market for them. People will buy it just because it's ST, not because it's actually worth the money. As if it'll bring any value to their experience with the band. How many fans actually want a fuckin lava lamp, or any assortment of the hot topic merch that's just Vessel's face cheaply screenprinted on the front?

I think there's a lot of hype and market potential for their brand and likeness right now, and—for a corporate entity—it makes sense to flood the market like fucking Atlantic with whatever merch will sell. Voting with your wallet really does help. Not buying into the obvious cash-grab merch produces data that tells marketers that we're tired of it. It produces trend reports which indicate their current merch practices are becoming unprofitable to continue (oh, the horrors!)

Idk like I said last night, there seems to be a big disconnect between the band's history of being very selective with aesthetics/design, and whatever is going on right now. Personally, I'd much rather wallow in despair over sleeping through a relatively rare merch drop during European daylight hours. Because then at least the drop feels worth it, and fans who were able to buy merch will have a better, higher quality experience that actually aligns with their brand. Literally anything other than what we're seeing from them right now.

Sorry I just woke up not too long ago, so this might not read very clearly. I want to see my boys succeed and make a living off their art as much as anyone else, but surely there's a better way to support them.

[conceptofjoy]

something about jane and dave being 'trained' by bro and hic and in turn, scratch, then being the characters who have stuff about capitalism slash manipulating systems in their individual narratives.

[economicsresearch]

page 566 - it was a nice town until everyone started turning their households into business firms.

Everyone thought the same thing: my household is inefficient. It provides shelter for myself and my family but I cannot quantify that using my late-capitalism vocabulary. Also, I am not generating income from the pull-out couch in the basement.

So, instead of uniting with neighbours to build a new vocabulary that spoke of secure households for all people, they washed towels for strangers and fretted over star numbers. Hopefully, their business firm would earn enough that their household could join the wealthy hegemony actively destroying the public good. A new vocabulary was never created.

[cobra-wives]

"leaks" "ugh hoohooey bleepo suffering for the 458353957938th time :((" "LEAKS LEAKS LEAKS" "oh my gooosh here's bloobie toopso fight one billionth um here's why snurble solos and will dominate" "wow hoping that meepie teepie doesnt like die or whateverLOL" "guys wurplemurple is a better ship than meepsiclepoopsies because blablablah" "kinda dgaf about snurble's character. can i see more of wurplemurple" "guys did you see the leak where pleepo kills woomble and-" DO YOU GUYS EVEN ENJOY THIS FUCKING SHOW I SWEAR TO GOD YOU GUYS ARE SO. FUCKING. BORING!!!!!!!!!