Zuckerberg: Understanding Marketing Processes And Consumer Behavior

Submitted By bs3khon
Words: 744
Pages: 3

The article, Zuckerberg unveils Facebook phone software, written by CBC associated press and published on April 4th is available at www.cbc.ca under Business. The article relates to chapter 12 of Business 100 course: Understanding Marketing Processes and Consumer Behavior. The core of the article is about Facebook’s plans to grow from being an application for smart phones, to an all-encompassing app known as Facebook Home. Facebook Home will become the default “home screen layout for the smart phone…acting as a filter through which all other devices and applications can be used.” (Zuckerberg, 2013) One feature which Zuckerberg explained at his presentation was “chatheads.” These would allow a picture of any Facebook user to pop up on the screen that is trying to make contact with the smartphone, all while never having to leave the original job being done. It was made clear later on in the presentation that mobile phone manufacturing company HTC would make the first phone to have the new Facebook hub; calling the phone by the name HTC First. It will be available April 12 throughout the U.S. Samsung will shortly follow with the new layout design, and other HTC mobile phones might be switched to the new layout as well. By releasing the idea for the new phone layout to Facebook users, Facebook is planning to use relationship marketing to emphasize the credibility of the new idea. With plans that the idea will lure Facebook users right away since they are already Facebook users. However, individuals who dislike Facebook and view it as pointless will not be urged to buy these phones at all. This could push customers away. The biggest profit for Facebook would be to get non-Facebook users to start using Facebook. Some will start just because the phone they got allows them too so easily. This exemplifies product differentiation in the phones that will have Facebook Home in comparison to the ones that won’t. Updating every month shows that Facebook will continue to respect its customers by staying up-to-date with everything, even after the purchase. Facebook is the “most popular social network on the planet, with more than a billion users”, (Zuckerberg, 2013) however it does not do as well in the mobile space. It is not getting the anticipated amount of advertising revenue from users who go on Facebook through their phone. By creating Home, Facebook hopes to improve this. Home will include ads, but not for some time. The target market for Facebook Home is the people that use smartphones, so that Facebook may start implementing ads into Home to add to their advertising revenue. The company started showing ads somewhat last year in people’s mobile Facebook news feeds. The ads were sliced and made smaller to not be distracting or annoying. Ways to make these ads even less distracting and annoying is what the company felt they were struggling with. Once the company