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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: techreports who wrote (44825)	7/23/2001 12:41:54 PM
From: Thomas Mercer-Hursh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Well, i question if people in the jungle of the amazon really know what Coke is Back about 1970 one of my fellow grad students took off to study a tribe in the highlands of New Guinea. The group had been selected in part because they were so isolated; their only contact with the outside being a government census taker that would come through occasionally. This fellow packed his way in, fording the mountain steams, etc., etc. and as he came to the last rise leading into the village the chief came forward and offered him a cold Coke. You can imagine the fellow's reaction! It turned out that somewhere along the line they had traded with a neighboring group (who had traded with a neighboring group, etc.) for a couple of cases of Coke and a propane refrigerator. Whenever there was an important visitor they would fire up the fridge and cool off a couple of bottles.

To: techreports who wrote (44825)	7/23/2001 12:46:50 PM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

anthropologists have reported that natives in extremely remote areas recognize the coca-cola can. the point of this remark is not that these people are a target audience; it is a point about brand ubiquity that is hard to buy with money. i don't think Pepsi is nearly as competitive with coke abroad as in the US. just for example, coke totally dominates pepsi in japan, the most profitable market. And what VC would gamble 5 billion dollars to unseat a major gorilla tech company? you will notice i said 5 billion to unseat coke, not a tech co. it takes a lot less to attack a tech gorilla. just ask juniper. one of the better VC investments had to be Cerent. i think the VC put up 25 million or so and got a return of like 2.3 billion in crisco stock. hopefully they sold it high. That could change. Microsoft probably wants to move to a ASP model where businesses rent Office over the internet for a monthly fee. Can you say recurring revenues? the problem here is that there is nothing more for them add to basic business productivity software. this is obviously why they are moving to a different revenue structure (i do not buy their "less lumpy" BS; as a customer i'd be suspicious of this model, and i think that's what's driving sales of office ahead of the transition, thereby giving MSFT a slight revenue boost which the market hooted about). i think their recurring revenue model will be a flop except for big cos.

To: techreports who wrote (44825)	7/23/2001 1:21:32 PM
From: Mike Buckley	Respond to of 54805

techreports, Consumers are not going to just buy Nokia b/c it says Nokia, but they'll buy the best cell phone for their needs. Yes, but they might percieve that as being one and the same. The whole point of brand-name recognition is that people think the brand name implies that it's a superior product. In the case of cell phones, style is also important among the younger set. To those folks, it is almost impossible to select a competing product that doesn't have the hip look and the brand name, because to do otherwise would fly in the face of immense peer pressure. --Mike Buckley