Gabby Gutierrez

Hi Morgan!

I loved reading your post because I think home improvements are such a big thing right now! My dad and my older sister are constantly working together to build anything and everything they can think of and add it to our house! Also, I keep seeing all over Tiktok videos of people who are flipping houses, renovating their own houses, etc and those kinds of videos always blow up and gain a lot of traction. I think home renovations are a big thing right now and will continue to be for the time being. In that case, I see spending staying on all the different tools needed to renovate a home (i.e. supplies from Home Depot, Lowes, ACE Hardware, etc.) and all the different decorations and furnishings needed to finish the spaces (i.e. stores like Target, HomeGoods, Marshalls, Mealy’s, Ashley Home Furniture, etc.)!

Also, I feel like it is inevitable that the housing market might crash, so yes I see that happening in the future.

I completely agree with this Andrea. In general misinformation about Covid-19 and the vaccine has been circulating and continues to circulate around Twitter. I do know that Facebook has ‘flagged’ and deleted misinformation that was posted and I do believe Twitter has done the same. I do believe AI technology can help sort, filter and flag the misinformation that is put on these different platforms, especially when it comes to important information that can help save lives.

To your other question, I do think we should teach children at a younger age about media literacy. Children spend a lot of time on the Internet and are easily susceptible to learning new information. As we are older in High School, we learn how to find and use credible sources for our research, I hope that they start to do this at a younger age so that the children are aware about which sources are credible and which are not.

Wow! Thanks for the insight. I honestly didn’t even think about how the mobile apps like Uber Eats and Doordash were hurting our local restaurants and businesses. Although, at the end of the day it seems that mobile technology does help customers by making it easy to shop and discover. Also now realizing why all those Doordash Ads are on Tik Tok promoting potentially making $20/hr to drivers… It all makes sense now.

But this is unacceptable the fees they are charging these businesses. I think these delivery services need to come up with a more sustainable and ethical business model that doesn’t put all the fees onto the business. But as consumer, I don’t want them on myself either. It just seems like being a partner of these delivery services doesn’t yield as much benefit as it should. Sure, access to a larger market of consumers, but for the price? Not for 46 meals with only $380 of profit. (from article).

Great post, Katherine.

There are many sayings regarding how there is opportunity in disruption. Prior to the pandemic, many of these services agreed, but struggled to gain customers both due to a lack of purpose (few barriers to going out to eat or pick up take out) as well as the fees required.

I wonder if services like Doordash would have even survived outside of the densest urban environments if not for the pandemic. Of course, that’s not what happened and the pandemic “solved” both problems for these companies: people suddenly had a major barrier to leaving their home AND were willing to do whatever it took to preserve whatever comforts they could.

As we discussed in class, when people feel isolated, unprepared or scared, they often look for the simplest solution independent of any additional context.

As we are hopefully turning the corner on the pandemic, do these services have have the same outlook? Will Uber shift away from repurposing their “workforce” (absolutely not employees) back to chauffeuring?

To your comment Philip, their services are almost certainly “sustainable” from a profit standpoint. From an ethical perspective, there is a fair amount of competition in this space as well as the ability (i.e. Dominos) to make your own solution. Why is it that so many restaurants “willingly” signed up for these platforms?

Unfortunately, tech companies “providing” a platform to help local businesses scale, specifically small restaurants, have a history of taking advantage of their network effects to extract as much as they can from the relationship.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wjwebw/yelp-is-sneakily-replacing-restaurants-phone-numbers-so-grubhub-can-take-a-cut

Going back to our lecture, these services certainly allow us to order more often. They also can accelerate and simplify the process. Both seem like benefits for their customers (i.e. you). For argument’s sake, if they “require” these margins to remain competitive, is the value to their customers more important than the cost to their “partners”? Should these platforms change or should restaurants increase their prices to better reflect the cost required to be on these platforms (if they are in fact necessary for restaurants to succeed)?

This is a great recent example of mobile disruption. On the flip side of this problem, I , like many others have found out about new restaurants through these apps and have continued to support them in person (like you also mentioned). While the apps are hiking up prices, I also saw a boom in the number of instacart (where does this fall?) employees at the grocery during the pandemic and I’m sure the number of delivery app workers increased as well. While I completely understand your frustration with these apps, I also think they gave a lot of people a chance to work during those times who may not have had the opportunity to otherwise – and through tipping I’m sure they were able to do pretty well.

Great post Kathy. I loved these food delivery apps as well until I saw how much they affected my bank account. I agree with Erin where I thought I was helpful these smaller restaurants by buying their food. Then, like you said, I saw how little they pay the restaurants and I felt guilty. But, if I live far from them, how else would I support these places?

In relation to your question, I unironically hate social media. Yes, it is helping connect people. But, it’s separating them too. I can’t stand it when people constantly look at their phones when we’re having a conversation. I feel like we can’t have real conversations because they want to know what’s happening on social media.

Great topic. The problem I see with a lot of these mom and pop shops and private owned restaurants is they simply don’t have the economics of scale to afford these middlemen to skim large percentages of the profit. The business owner will have to make an informed decision based on math and data. If you have 30% or lower margins on each food sale, then you’re not going to grow your business based on profit since most commissions on these apps are 30% or higher. The other factor you have to consider is how much awareness can your restaurant garner by using the app and will it transfer to leads to get people to visit your restaurant physically.

Wow, thanks for sharing this Kathy! I always questioned why there were such high fees, but at the end of the day still had to pay them. It’s like agreeing to terms and conditions. You question what you’re agreeing to, but sign anyway because you want to use the application. This is the important backend work that more people need to know about. Many consumers probably had the same mindset as you in trying to help their favorite local business during the pandemic, but had no idea most of the profits didn’t support the business. Many consumers also have the “digital first” mindset where they think every business needs to adapt to these digital times. They disregard the fact that if the company doesn’t have enough resources, revenue, knowledge, bandwidth to create their own app it will just hurt their business. This is the case for most small businesses.

Having to translate a title to better suit an entirely different language is interesting, it’s not something we often think about. The same way english speakers have their metaphors and slang, other languages do as well- and culture is often very influential in the way we process things like titles. I don’t think it matters what ranking of title you pick, as long as you have good reasoning. It isn’t helpful to be too specific when trying to find how people react to certain options, because then your information becomes too biased or leads people to conclusions- so often times you have to be a bit more open-minded about what options people can choose from for surveys! This often leads to people picking a general answer, when maybe your business goals have a very direct objective. This is why we don’t just take data and run with it, we also have to analyze it! I think you guys made the right choice in this case.

As a Spanish speaker myself, I think you guys picked the right choice! When I think about how I would translate “Better Money Habits” in my head I automatically think of “Mejores Hábitos Financieros.” It sounds natural and correct. Sometimes I see certain things on websites translated and it doesn’t hit the same, like it gives off another meaning. I like how you guys did surveys to gather your information. Another idea on how to market research what name would perform best can be using social media. You could have a poll asking people to choose which translation works best or have them write in why they pick a certain choice.

I think the Raven was a better presentation. One thing I can think of as it relates to sporting events and AR is pictures with the players, or doing drills with the players or something like that. Let’s say for instance they build out an AR like experience in Indy, where you can run the two minute drill with Peyton Manning? (Carson Wentz would be using that every day for practice!). Maybe at Busch stadium they build out an AR “beat McGwire in HR Derby” This would involve users wearing glasses or something of the sort, but its possible. To your point, the tech is becoming more available. The idea here is similar to the pitch radar throw often seen at games and carnivals. The AR would allow teams to build out short experiences to fans to partake in, deepening their relationship with the brand.

Disney is already doing this, recently partnering with Snapchat so guests can get pics with the characters even when they aren’t there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgLiQ4ONpQ0

Copyright me if you’re reading this Roger.

This brings to mind something we’d discussed in Digital Brand Management with Sherri — the “living wine labels” app that 19 Crimes created that animates the criminals shown on their wine bottles [livingwinelabels.com]. (If you’re unfamiliar, each of their wines features a mug shot of an infamous criminal from the past; the AR app makes that image come “to life” so the criminal can provide some background on what they’d been through.) I’m not a fan of their wines, but it’s a very cool tie-in to their branding. I’d think that would have many different ‘applications’ in the CPG industry.

Though I have not used it, https://corporate.homedepot.com/newsroom/project-color-app-paint offers an AR experience through their phone to see what the paint will look like in their home. When doing any home project I find it difficult to match up the color properly especially in different light situations. In most cases, the color always ends up being either too bright when natural light hits it or vice-versa in the shade. The application also offers you to share the image to social media so someone can comment on it for advice.