Shoe Day

The shoe that takes care of your belongings.

Last Friday was the shoe Friday. We looked at shoes, many shoes and I wondered myself: how often do you look after someone’s shoes? Not to often, as matter of fact. I might cast a glance if a special event is occurring, just to get some feedback of the people around me, but usually I am not paying attention at what kind of shoes people wear (nobody pays attention, I guess).

In The Shawshank Redemption, the protagonist of the film – Andy Dufresne – had to clean and shine every day the warden’ shoes (one of his duties). In the night when he escaped, was wearing the warden’ shoes that he’d cleaned and shined so many times. No guardian or prisoner had noticed that, because people usually do not look after someone’s shoes.

On Friday, in contrast, we really had to look after many shoes in order to stimulate our creativity and come up with something innovative. People were wearing normal shoes almost a stereotype: men – normal trainers and women – sandals.

But one of my colleagues had a great idea: to transform a usual shoe into a very useful and functional shoe, with a little pocket, where you can put your keys, coins etc.

Indeed, was a great idea, as it spares you from loosing or wasting time looking for your keys.

Isn’t that great?

Looking forward to forthcoming challenges!

 

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Apple store review

Identifying 3 types of Apple’s customer needs and how they were met

Overview:

The Apple outlet from Kingston upon Thames located in Bentall Centre is, as any other Apple store, simply perfect. Every detail related to marketing , merchandising, customer service etc. is thought in a professional way, everything with a direct impact over the company’s products.

As we were expecting, the store was crowded with people of different social and professional categories and ages being there either to make a purchase, to resolve a technical issue or simply to have a look. On the other hand, there were at least 25 employees (well-trained I would say) ready to provide a great service to any potential customer stepping in.

The in-store marketing is excellent, every advertisement being brightly illuminated. The collecting point and the pay desk were deliberately placed at the rear of the store, therefore the customer is being forced to walk through the whole outlet (comes in contact with entire range of products) to collect and pay his/her purchase.

Findings:

Apple’s strategy to attract and captivate customers into its locations is seemingly perfect, many customers visiting the shop randomly (most of them were walking in only after they had seen the big apple with a bite taken out of it above the outlet entrance – company’s logo). Thereby, Apple has an emotional impact over the general public trying to transform every visitor into a potential customer. Although many of them do not buy anything from the first in-store visit, a high percentage of these persons return, probably, as clients.

As any other product, even innovative, iPhone, iPad, iMac etc. encounter sometimes technical problems. There were returning customers with technical issues asking for assistance (physical need). Surprisingly, there is an appointment required to resolve these problems.

Nowadays most of the people use smartphones, laptops and computers. The great technology Apple brought it to the customers, through its innovative products, is continuously persuading the people to make use of these gadgets which have become part of our lives and which we seem we cannot live without. Having a smart phone or a laptop in 21st century is a need, a cognitive need and Apple knows, perhaps better than anyone, how to satisfy this need. 

Hello world!

Hello everybody!

My name is Maniu Suroiu and I am currently studying a MSc in International Business Management with Entrepreneurship at Kingston University London.

I’m 25 years old and I’m originally from Romania. The purpose of this blog is to keep in touch and up to date with my peers from Entrepreneurship path as I’m particularly interested in improving and developing my entrepreneurial and creative skills. On the other hand, I’d like to share information and exchange opinions with everyone having something to say, especially related to this topic and last but not least to help people next to me in any way I can.

I’m a new comer in the blogging word as many of my colleagues so apparently we need to warm up to this concept of communication.

Hopefully, by the end of the programme, we’ll be equipped with a certain set of skills required today by the top employers and furthermore to launch our own businesses someday in our future (That’s what I’m intending to do).
Anyway we’ll start from now on, as this will be the assignment for this module.

Good luck!