How the US Automakers Are Losing their Home Market

When Nissan recalled more than 2.5 million cars in the US in Oct 2010 after some-hundred-thousand-car recall before, many analysts thought of a an opportunity for the US automakers to regain their home market after a decades of decline in market share. Despite a lot of expectations and suggestion, there is not a remarkable signal from the market which can convince people that the US automakers are regaining what they have lost for decades.

A Predictable Takeover

Ward’s Automotive data shows that combined US market share of GM, Ford and Chrysler has been shrinking for consecutive 16 years, from 72.9% in 1993 to 43.66% in 2009. This shrinkage also means that of Japanese and European automakers has kept increasing during that time. It is very likely that this trend will be continues in 2010 and some years to come and regaining the expected position will be a challenge for the US automakers.

Read more: http://www.bukisa.com/articles/407808_how-the-us-automakers-are-losing-their-home-market#ixzz16nd8Dpel

An Obsession Made in China

After checking e-mail this morning, I ran across an article in a piece of news on Yahoo! about the evasion of China’s agricultural products in Vietnam market. Not so long before, via Facebook, I read a funny article about instantly eatable dried cuttlefish made of rubber and imported from China. It will be nothing to say if a country reliant on service industry like Singapore imports almost everything abroad. However, that will be a big question if a country whose 40% GDP is contributed by agriculture, fishery and processing has to import those things from China.

Some people will explain that because China and Vietnam is too close in many terms, the popularity of China products in Vietnam is too common. However, the problem is not that simple. When the overseas Vietnamese people who live in the United States of America make a trip to visit the home country, they usually bring with them electronic stuffs as gifts for their relatives in Vietnam. Mobile phone and computer are of the best choice. Unfortunately, when their relatives open the gift bought in the US, they found it “made in China”. Doubtlessly, “Made-in-China” is not only a fact of life, it also an obsession around the world.

Read more: http://www.bukisa.com/articles/398263_an-obsession-made-in-china#ixzz15eJ0KqJB

Paid Search Advertising

The popularity of internet made it an essential tool for people to communicate and search for information. Within only four year from 2000 to 2010, the number of internet users worldwide has increase by 444.8% (Internet World Stats, 2010). In addition, searching information is always among the top reasons for people to using internet. To take advantage of this trend, many companies in information technology industries have introduce their search engine. Among these companies, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are the top three players. In order to monetize the search engines, paid search has been a good choice for these companies.

One of the benefits that paid search offers to its customers is providing a shortest way to reach their customers all over the world. Traditional advertising media such as TV or newspapers have limited coverage. Hence, if company need to advertise in many countries, it has to sign contract with many companies in many countries. On contrary, when a paid search advertisement is activated, it can display to target customers everywhere in the world.

Another benefit that paid search offers to its customers is making advertising more selective. For the internet users, because only the advertisements that match the key words are appears they can see only advertisement that more ore less related to what they are looking for. For the companies, by matching the key words this way, their advertisements will show to selected internet users.

Among the benefits that paid search can offer, enabling companies to pay for result is the strongest appeal. Paid search charges companies upon the real traffic to their websites, not the time they appear on the search result. This means companies pay only when their advertisements are seen or read. Meanwhile, other advertising media cannot offer this benefit.

For TV advertising, companies have to pay for the airtime in which their advertisements are broadcast. In this case, the charges are fixed on the length of the advertisement no matter how many people can see the advertisements. For advertising on publications such as newspapers and magazines, the charges are fixed on the size, position of their advertisements and the number of copies no matter how many people read these advertisements. Similarly, advertising by placing banners on web pages (banner placing) charge companies upon the position and the size of the banner no matter how many visitors give them a glance. As such, enabling companies pay for the results is evidently the most competitive advantage of paid search.

The introduction of paid search can be considered a great evolution in the era of internet marketing. Amongst the advantages that paid search has over other advertising media, enabling companies to pay for the results proves to be the most compelling feature that helped the growth of paid search. It is very likely that paid search will continues its expansion to dominate advertising marker in near future.

Reference:

Internet World Stats (2010). World Internet Users and Population Stats. Internet Usage Statistics. Retrieved from http://internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Learn about AdWords (n.d.). Google AdWords. Retrieved from https://www.google.com