Internet auction - final report

Product:
We sell our old toys which is msot Hongkonger's collective memory in this project. Originally these old toys include plastic model cars, cartoon cards, toy figures, digital pets and spinning tops. We think that there should be a focus and we choose Digimon figure finally. If we get a focus, it is benneficial to our promotion. The main reason is that Digimon is really popular in childhood of teenagers in nowadays. We get many digimon figures and they are organized into different collections. We arranged them according to their evolution path and role in the cartoon and there are about 3 collections finally. For the price, we did not mention it in our event or post because we do not want people feel it as a cliche or ordinary selling notice and we want to sell it in a more emotinoal way. We have bottom lines which are $30 for each collection and $100 for all.

 

Promotion:
We have created a event on facebook and posted on some forums:
Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/event.php?eid=178085748868611

Forums:

Uwants:
http://www.uwants.com/viewthread.php?tid=11105157&extra=page%3D1
HKdiscuss:
http://www.discuss.com.hk/viewthread.php?tid=13466253&extra=page%3D1
Fail Forum:
http://www.failforum.net/forum/viewthread.php?tid=1306469&extra=page%3D1

  
Result:
As the toys is ours and actually there is no standard price, we set a bottom line of $30 for each set. Finally, one of our friend contact us through facebook. He is interested in it and asked for a price of $100 for two sets of the figures. It is higher than our bottom line and we find it qutie satisfactory so we sell it to our friend.

Conclusion:
Although parts of our products are sold. there are still a lot of improvement.
In this project, we only choose one type of old toys to be sold this time. If we really want to sell all our old toys, we should have a more systematic and complete plan for the selling event. Additionally, if we set the theme as Hongkonger's collective memory, all promotion event or product should be all consistent.

Besides, we should spend more time on the decoration. If possible, we should build our own website for selling and the website is decorated under the theme of Digimon. That will definitely be more attractive and trustworthy.

Last but not least, we should try to sell in on action site next time. This time, as Yahoo acution charges for every auction we post so we gave up posting on yahoo auction. Posting on auction site can increase the exposure so that more people know about our selling

Channels and marketing strategies

Channels:


1. Cyber forum
-toys forum
http://www.toysdaily.com/discuz/index.php 
-popular HK forum
http://www.discuss.com.hk/
http://www.uwants.com/
http://www.failforum.net/forum/index.php
http://www.catcatforum.com/index.php


Nowadays, visiting forums is now a habit for many citizens. Hence, posting our promotion or detail of selling on cyber forums is a good approach which can let a huge amount of Internet users know our products. Once they have questions, they can also reply those posts. We will post on mainly two types forums, toys forum and popular HK forum. Many toy collectors and enthusiasts visit toys forums regularly and we can get an easy access through these forums. Beside toys forum, we can also increase the penetration through some popular forums as others may be interested at our products


 2. Website
We will build up our own website which contains the introduction of our toys as it will be easier and more convenient for us to promote our products if we have a website for them. The link will be included in our promotion in different channel.


3. Social networking tools
Some promotions will be also done by using online social networking tools such as facebok and MSN. Inevitably that is an effective way to let our friends know about our promotion. More importantly, our message may diffuse through their social network. Furthermore, we may also promote by sending email to our friends.


4. Online auction website
http://hk.auctions.yahoo.com/
http://www.ebay.com.hk/


Online shopping is prevalent in HK and many customers will search what they want on some auction website. In HK, Yahoo auction is quite dominant and unavoidably we have to post our promotion on it. Besides, we will also consider posting on overseas auction pages such as ebay or Yahoo auction in other regions. However, they may not be practical due to the communication problem and shipping fee.


5. Youtube
As some toys we sell are from cartoons, we will upload some old and classic cartoons on Youtube to recall others memories. Promotion and selling detail will be attached to the videos.




Marketing strategies: 


1. An attractive theme     
   "They back again!-- Our long-lost friend" is a proposed theme of our campaign. A memorable theme is helpful for people to remember and discuss, so our campaign can be promoted through the discussion of people. As toys are collective memories for people, it is quite impressive when people recognize that their "old friends" come back!

2.  Recall people's memory   
We may take some actions to recall people's memory on the internet (e.g. upload some cartoon video to youtube, open a toys-releated topic on forum,etc ), our purpose is to open a hot topic to increase the awareness of toys.

3.  Selling point: Memorable collections
People always like to collect a set of things, so we are planing to pack some toys (e.g. cards, figures) to be a set of collection. People will be interested when they can collect a set of toys in once.

4.  Low price
There are many toys store in Hong Kong (although not all of them are selling old toys), they are our competitors. In order to attract buyers, we will provide a lower price if they buy a particular amount of our products.

Online auction

What?
Some old fashion toys that used to be popular in Hong Kong such as Mini4WD(plastic model cars), cartoon cards, traditional spining tops, some toy figures and digital pet.

Why?
- its hard to find nowadays
- they are every hongerkongers' collective memory
- collectors may be interested
- they are relatively low cost since some of them are our own collections

How?
- sell through online auction websites
- sell through online toy forum
- promote through popular forums, social networking website, our own website and Youtube