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Category Archives: Chapter 05: Analyzing the Marketing Environment

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Marketing Tidbit: Vinyl Records Are Making a Comeback 

08 Monday May 2023

Posted by grewallevymarketingnews in Chapter 05: Analyzing the Marketing Environment

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Marketing Environment, music, Vinyl Records

2022 was a record year for records. For the first time since 1987, people bought more vinyl records than compact …

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Marketing Tidbit: Black Friday Is Making a Comeback

14 Tuesday Mar 2023

Posted by grewallevymarketingnews in Chapter 05: Analyzing the Marketing Environment

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Analytics, Bath and Body Works, black friday, Retail

Retailers headed into last year’s Black Friday with gritted teeth. Profit margins were down, due to inflation, excess inventory, and …

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Here’s Why Hotels Want to Spy on You

02 Thursday Mar 2023

Posted by grewallevymarketingnews in Chapter 05: Analyzing the Marketing Environment, Uncategorized

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Hotels, Marketing Analytics, Marriott, Sojern

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Hotels want to learn all about their guests—who you are, what you’re interested in, where you shop, what you like …

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TikTok Social Listening: Chasing Virality

28 Tuesday Feb 2023

Posted by grewallevymarketingnews in Chapter 05: Analyzing the Marketing Environment, Uncategorized

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Marketing Analytics, Social Listening, TikTok

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TikTok is renowned for its data collection strategies. As it entered the mainstream in 2020, information about its data collection …

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Blame the Government for You Not Getting Your Taylor Swift Tickets

05 Thursday Jan 2023

Posted by grewallevymarketingnews in Chapter 05: Analyzing the Marketing Environment, Chapter 14: Pricing Concepts for Establishing Value

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Live Nation, merger, Ticketmaster

When companies merge, leaving a mega-corporation with no competitors, consumers suffer. The most recent example of this general capitalist truism comes in the form of fallout from the federal government allowing Live Nation and Ticketmaster to merge in 2010. What fallout, you ask? Ask anyone who recently tried to get a ticket to see Taylor Swift live. Not only were there not enough tickets to go around, but the Ticketmaster website was, to put it kindly, a freaking mess, with glitches, bugs, error messages, and hours-long wait times for ticket purchases to go through.

Columnist Binyamin Appelbaum traces the Taylor Swift debacle to the government’s tendency to be too credulous when companies promise that their merger will not be detrimental for customers. In 2010, for example, the Justice Department released a press release in which it confidently asserted that Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s merger would “protect competition for primary ticketing” and “maintain incentives for innovation and discounting”—none of which has come to pass. Instead, a nearly universal view reflects widespread agreement that Ticketmaster’s virtual monopoly in the concert ticket arena led to Swift-gate.

It is not the only example though. Various Department of Justice–approved mergers have allowed for and led to monopolies, which in turn produced negative outcomes such as stifled innovation, laziness on the part of the now-insulated companies, and consumers who are worse off. When the DOJ allowed T-Mobile to acquire Sprint in 2019, it produced less competition when it comes to the price of mobile services. When Dollar Tree acquired rival Family Dollar in 2015, the DOJ required the two companies to divest themselves of more than 300 stores and create another, competing company—Dollar Express—which then went bankrupt within two years, having allegedly been pushed out of business by market-dominant Dollar Tree’s predatory practices.

Applebaum asks why the government “didn’t just prevent Dollar Tree from buying Family Dollar” in the first place. Of course, even with an answer to that question, it would be too late to go back in time and fix the mistake. But in the last couple of years, perhaps learning from its experience, the federal government seemingly has been exercising deeper scrutiny of proposed mergers. For example, the DOJ recently successfully blocked book publisher Penguin Random House from buying its rival publisher Simon & Schuster.

In light of the Taylor Swift ticket disaster, the Department of Justice also has opened an antitrust investigation into Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation. It may be too late to see Taylor Swift live this time, but thinking ahead to the next tour, you just might be able to score some tickets.

Discussion Questions:

  1. How can consumers be harmed when companies merge?
  2. In what circumstances should the government prevent companies from merging on antitrust grounds?
  3. Do you think it would have been easier and less glitchy to buy Taylor Swift tickets, had the government not allowed Live Nation to buy Ticketmaster in 2010?

Sources: Binyamin Appelbaum, “Overconfident Regulators Caused the Ticketmaster Mess,” The New York Times, November 23, 2022; “Justice Department Requires Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc. to Make Significant Changes to Its Merger with Live Nation Inc.,” justice.gov, January 25, 2010; Alex Abad-Santos, “How Disappointed Taylor Swift Fans Explain Ticketmaster’s Monopoly,” Vox, November 21, 2022; David McCabe and Ben Sisario, “Justice Dept. Is Said to Investigate Ticketmaster’s Parent Company,” The New York Times, November 18, 2022; Winston Cho, “Fear for Your Megamergers: The Justice Dept. Is (Finally) Taking Action,” The Hollywood Reporter, November 19, 2022

Photo by Chaz McGregor on Unsplash

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Walmart Wants to See You in Your Undies, so You Can See Yourself in Its Clothes

13 Thursday Oct 2022

Posted by grewallevymarketingnews in Chapter 05: Analyzing the Marketing Environment

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Marketing Environment, Walmart

Walmart has too much apparel on its hands and in its warehouses. In the face of inflation, consumers have cut …

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Abercrombie & Fitch Wants You (Yes, You!) to Visit Its New Gateway Shopping Destinations

07 Wednesday Sep 2022

Posted by grewallevymarketingnews in Chapter 05: Analyzing the Marketing Environment, Chapter 09: Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning, Chapter 17: Retailing and Multichannel Marketing

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Abercrombie & Fitch, Marketing Environment, Retailing, segmentation

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Way back when, all the way back in the 1990s, Abercrombie & Fitch was the source for some very strange …

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Video Game Sales Are Slowing Down

04 Thursday Aug 2022

Posted by grewallevymarketingnews in Chapter 05: Analyzing the Marketing Environment

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Marketing Environment, video games

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Is it game over for the video game market? Not quite, but after a couple of years of explosive growth, …

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To Catch up with the Times, Watch Companies Embrace Gender-Neutral Marketing

22 Friday Jul 2022

Posted by grewallevymarketingnews in Chapter 05: Analyzing the Marketing Environment, Chapter 09: Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning

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Marketing Environment, targeting

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Watchmakers are finally getting the memo that some men are partial to smaller watches decorated with diamonds, just like some …

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Flippy, CookRight, and the Other Robots Cooking Your Burgers and Making Your Coffee

08 Friday Jul 2022

Posted by grewallevymarketingnews in Chapter 05: Analyzing the Marketing Environment, Chapter 07: Business-to-Business Marketing

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B2B Marketing, Marketing Environment, Robots

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When a robot makes your burger or coffee, do you leave a tip? This question is no longer hypothetical. Restaurants, …

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Archived Articles by Chapter

  • Chapter 01: Overview of Marketing (76)
  • Chapter 02: Developing Marketing Strategies (135)
  • Chapter 03: Social and Mobile Marketing (159)
  • Chapter 04: Conscious Marketing, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Ethics (156)
  • Chapter 05: Analyzing the Marketing Environment (221)
  • Chapter 06: Consumer Behavior (179)
  • Chapter 07: Business-to-Business Marketing (84)
  • Chapter 08: Global Marketing (117)
  • Chapter 09: Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning (147)
  • Chapter 10: Marketing Research (98)
  • Chapter 11: Product Branding and Packaging Decisions (203)
  • Chapter 12: Developing New Products (179)
  • Chapter 13: Services: The Intangible Product (145)
  • Chapter 14: Pricing Concepts for Establishing Value (97)
  • Chapter 15: Strategic Pricing Concepts (92)
  • Chapter 16: Supply Chain Management (111)
  • Chapter 17: Retailing and Multichannel Marketing (204)
  • Chapter 18: Integrated Marketing Communications (162)
  • Chapter 19: Advertising, Public Relations and Sales Promotions (189)
  • Chapter 20: Personal Selling and Sales Management (56)
  • Marketing Tidbits (32)
  • Uncategorized (15)

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