Ticketmaster to Tie Prices to Demand

The Wall Street Journal
April 19, 2011
By Ethan Smith

Ticketmaster is implementing a dynamic pricing strategy.  As we have learned, this means that Ticketmaster will adjust the cost of sports and concert tickets according to demand.  This is a technique airlines and hotels have used to maximize profit, but it has never been done in this industry.  The timeline on when this will start is still unknown, but it looked like sports teams will adopt the system first.  One goal of this is to revive concert ticket sales, which have been declining for years now.  One challenge that will be faced is dividing up profits among the many entities involved in a concert tour.

Cheaper Kindle in Works, But It Comes With Ads

The Wall Street Journal
April 12, 2011
By Stu Woo

Amazon plans to release a less expensive Kindle, but users will be forced to view on screen advertisements.  It will cost $114, $25 less than the current version.  This is an example of product line extension, as we have talked about in class.  Personally, I think this could be very successful as long as the ads don't annoy readers.  It appears that ads won't be present while the user is reading, but they will appear on the homepage and screen-saver.  Amazon will put their own ads on the Kindle.  It will be the same model as the current Kindle.  Experts believe people will think the new model is a good trade off.  Kindle, a product in its growth stage, has not said how many they have sold.  Experts believe the number lies around five million.  Will the future have product placement in the books?

Fox Networks Targets Hispanic Audience

The Wall Street Journal
April 4, 2011
By LAUREN A. E. SCHUKER

Television networks are trying to get a piece of the growing Latino population in the U.S.  Fox is adding a third Spanish-language network.  This will form Fox Hispanic Media.  Fox is responding to advertisers who say their budgets are increasing for Hispanic spending.  This is an example of target marketing and segmenting by demographics.  The number of Hispanic households that are new to television grew by 3.1% in the past year.  The overall number of households new to television was only 0.9%.  Ad time on Spanish-speaking networks costs almost half the amount on similar English speaking networks.