1. 304800Promotions can create the difference between flat sales to growing sales for retailers. Traditional advertising such as magazines, newspapers, and flyers has been proven to attract the customers into the store. However once the customer is in the store, retailers will most likely use flashy displays and signs at strategically placed points in the store such as the end of aisles to draw attention to feature products. Promotions are very important to the retail store because they drive traffic to the store, and also increase the chance for repeat purchases. The product I have decided to research is Crest Classic White Strips. The retailer that I found this product at was Shoppers Drug Mart. The first form of promoting Crest Classic White Strips was through the advertising in Shopper’s Drug Mart’s flyer. The second promotion was the price of the Crest White Strips. They were on sale for $19.99 (a mark down from $39.99). The third part of the promotion was when you shop at Shopper’s Drug Mart you receive Shopper’s Optimum Points, for purchasing this product the customer receives 20x the Shopper’s Optimum Points. The last promotion of buying Crest Classic White Strips is the coupon inside the Crest White Strips box. The coupon is a $7.00 dollar coupon, which is valid towards another purchase of Crest White Strips Premium, Pro Effects, Renewal, or any daily whitening product. I visited the website of Crest White Strips (http://www.whitestrips.com) to look for evidence of the coupon promotion. I did not find the specific $7.00 dollar coupon that I found in the Crest White Strips box, however I did find other promotions. The other promotions on the website includes a coupon to save $5.00 on Crest White Strips Advanced Seal. This coupon is more direct to one of Crest’s specific product. Another promotion on Crest’s website was a promotion for free samples of Crest White Strips. Overall the website did not note any references to my retail experience. The website www.whitestrips.com did not have the $7.00 coupon online that I found in Shopper’s Drug Mart. I believe the reason for this is because the Crest Classic White Strips is there number one selling product out of the product line of White Strips. This leads me to believe that they do not need to do extensive promotions such as on the website for their Classic White Strips. However as I mentioned above that I did find a coupon for their new product, the Crest White Strips Advanced Seal. The coupon that I found inside the Crest Classic White Strips box was also promoting other Crest’s whiting products. My conclusions to the effectiveness of this tactic is that Crest wants to keep their coupons found inside their Crest Classic White Strips exclusive to customers that buy their products. Then they promote their other products for example their higher end whiting strips, the Crest White Strips Premium. By promoting their other whiting products from their product line with a coupon that is valid for a year, this increases the chances of the customer repeating their purchase with Crest’s Whiting products. If the consumer values Crest’s products then they will keep the coupon and use it for their next teeth whiting purchase. The service that I have chosen from, “Hot Products News”, is an innovative website that is partnering with Craigslist.com. This website is Trustme.com, whose goal is to prevent crime, protect the privacy of their consumers, and is hoping to provide a safe haven for advent Craigslist buyers and sellers. Craigslist features free online classified advertisements, which are categorized into various sections such as personals, discussion forums, for sale, and jobs. The overall image of Craigslist is sought out to be a safe and a crime-free environment. However, this is not the case; Craigslist is known as, “…a criminal’s best friend”. This crime is targeting buyers and sellers at home and exposing their personal privacy. Millions of dollars that involved cases in theft and fraud occurred last year from Craigslist, and even the possibility of violent crime has lead consumers to fade away from the free marketplace of Craigslist. On August 31st 2009, Trustme.com was released. This website lets you know whom you are dealing with on craigslist by verifying the identities of buyers and sellers. Trustme.com has the power to bring back trust and privacy to individuals who have been affected by online scams. Trustme.com eliminates unserious, unlawful, and potentially dangerous sellers through a proprietary technology that collects information about your selected buyer or sellers. The process of signing up takes less than five minutes. The pricing for Trustme.com varies from $4.99 a month (the basic plan), $9.99 a month (2 verifications) and $14.99 a month (3 verifications). The primary marketing challenge for this service is product awareness. It is said that if you have the most innovative product in the world but without product and brand awareness, the product will quickly depreciate. Trustme.com needs to advertise. An ideal and perfect place for this would be directly on Craigslist.com. Craigslist serves over twenty billion page views per month. This would create extensive opportunities for the business to expand and grow through awareness. By placing the advertisement effectively right at your target markets fingertips, the outcome of Trustme.com has great potential to be extremely successful. My best guess on whether or not this service will become commercially successful is that I believe Trustme.com has the potential to obtain success. However in order to be successful, they must focus on their target market: individuals who use craigslist, Generations X and Y, individuals who obtain privacy concerns, etc. Through the social trends of the privacy concern being exploited through the Internet, Trustme.com has the power and ability to regain the privacy for many individuals who necessarily are not in favor of using the Internet and more specifically using Craigslist. This service also ties in with the time-poor society. This service saves time for individuals who let Trustme.com prove the buyer or seller they are hoping to do business in the future with are legitimate users of Craigslist, without the hassle for the consumer to waste their own time in extensive research of that particular individual. With these tactics, I believe Trustme.com has great potential to be successful.