How Niche can use future technologies

There are four different technologies that Niche could use to its advantage.

Wearable:

A T-Shirt that tracks your heart-rate and your muscle contraction could be used for pro-snowboarder to improve their capability to do specific tricks, so your trainer could make your own personalized traing plan.

Virtual Reality:

This could be used for customer service in the sense that it would make it more personal if a person has a claim that it would be handled by a person where the customer can see the face. This approach would make the company more personal and make customer loyalty more likely. Another point that VR could be used for is for a tour around the company or factory site so people can walk around and actually see where the boards are manufactured. This increased transparency would be highly beneficial for the trust relationship to the customer.

Glasses:

There are glasses that project a small screen on one of the glasses where you can also see the heart-rate, speed, etc. This could be used since a lot of snowboarders go far away from the paths for their tricks to warn them if there is a avalanche or anything else that could endanger their lives. Another thing where this could be used for is for life-tracking when someone is going down the hill, so your friends can watch you real-life which tricks you are doing. This aspect would strenghten the theme Niche already has with friendship.

Hologramme:

A hologramme could again be used for customer service. Again this would make the company reachable on a personal base and customers are likely to increase their customer loyalty. Another thing that this could be used for is maybe for trying on clothes through hologrammes. Currently, Niche's focus is on manufacturing boards but they already have a few clothing articles in their portfolio. If this extends they could make good use of that, decreasing the number of people sending clothes back because they didn't fit.

2 persuasion techniques Niche could use

For the new digital communications plan I want to start encouraging people to interact more with the company and create possibilites where this is possible not only online, but also offline through events for example. Through increasing the brand interaction I eventually want to create a strong brand loyalty which makes it more likely that people also become brand ambassadors.



The persuasion techniques I selected herefore are reciprocity and consistency. 

I want to use reciprocity in two ways. Online, through promoting games where people can win personalized Snowboards or a holiday to a cool wintersport destination or something similar like that. This would be beneficial for the company since it would produce a lot of valuable pictures from happy customers, it would create exposure that could be used for promotional purposes. Offline I would like to use the technique of reciprocity by giving customers the possibility to try the boards on events, which would secure that there are people from the target audience. Furthermore there are of course the traditional goodies like stickers or posters. I would start adding them to the orders if they don't do this already. Also, with the stickers there could again be a competition under the hashtag #findyourniche and people stick their stickers somewhere and make a picture and upload it on Instagram and the one with the coolest picture wins something.


The technique of reciprocity works because people feel the need to give something back if they receive something for free. People feel the need to show their appreciation by returning you a favour mostly through purchasing a product. One has to be careful with implying this strategy because the product you give the costumer shouldn't be of too much worth and it shouldn't make them feel obliged to give something in return since this could lead to a resistance of this technique. Looking at the ethical side of this technique I think one has to be careful, like already mentioned, that people don't feel obliged to buy something or bad if they choose not to buy your product. It should always be a nice gesture towards the customer and more like a little nudge towards making the final buying process, but it shouldn't represent the only reason why someone buys a product. 

For consistency I thought that Niche Snowboards could start finding new partners to collaborate with that are also standing in for a more sustainable production of goods and are in line with their theme about nature and environmental-friendliness. They already have a collaboration with a environmental-friendly clothing brand where the style of the clothes is also pretty alternative, so it fits into the snowboarding/extreme sports community. This kind of collaboration would be good for both companies, since they would promote each others concept that has similar themes to their own ones. The idea here is that if a person is already buying clothes that are sustainable and environmental-friendly this person is inclined to buy an environmental-friendly Snowboard or at least talk to like-minded people about it in order to be consistent with their own lifestyle choices. This increases concept should eventually lead to an increase of sales and a higher awareness of the brand itself in the target audience. Consistency could also be used to assure that people come to the events Niche organizes. By sending them an personal invitation when they clicked on attend on Facebook would probably increase the chance of them coming.   



I think the technique with consistency works mainly because people want to be perceived as consistent and in line with what they say or with the lifestyle they choose. There is the cognitive dissonance theory, which is about the discomfort someone feels when holding one or two conflicting believes. In order to not feel that discomfort people strive to be consistent in their believes and actions. So, how communication experts use this technique is, they first ask for a small favor that doesn't cost much effort and where a lot of people are likely to say yes. Then after some time they come with a bigger request that is somehow similar in the topic or the implementation of the first favor. When people said yes the first time there's a high chance they will say yes to the second, bigger request in order to be consistent. The restrictions here are that you have to be careful that your first request requires active participation from the person you approach but shouldn't be too big at the same time. Furthermore, approaching a person twice with a similar request could seem pushy and might lead to resistence. From an ethical point of view I think there could occure problems considering the being too pushy part. If people refuse to help with your second request one shouldn't harass them and respect their position.

The Golden Circle, BHAG and 4 C's of Niche Snowboards

Why:

The mission statement of Niche Snowboards is to "change the way we think about the relationships between our materials, our environment, and ourselves". What they mean by that is that they want to trigger a movement to overthink the way Snowboards are produced and designed and they believe that small steps lead to big differences. Their passion about being environmental-friendly and sustainable is the biggest force that thrives the company to achieve their goal to preserve nature and wildlife.

" We hope our success will change our industry and lead to good things for you and the planet we all share."  

How: 

Niche Snowboards uses paid, owned and earned marketing in an almost equal amount. They organize events for example where people can try out their products at the spot and show a real personal approach in doing business. The owned marketing comes a lot through their passion they have and since the key figures of the company are also passionate Snowboarders they of course have their connections to Boarders all over the world that can function as brand ambassadors. One thing you can maybe say is that their earned marketing is not that big yet, because not everybody has a Niche Snowboard and makes the decision to go for an environmental-friendly Board over a Board from Burton for example. 

What:

Niche Snowboards manufactures well designed and environmental-friendly Snowboards that are produced to provide the modern Snowboarder with the possibility to choose a product that's good for the environment without losing anything in terms of quality or design. 

 

BHAG

The BHAG of Niche Snowboards is to live in peace with nature and really have an impact on the thinking of people about how we behave in terms of recycling and things as such. 

4 C's

Context:

Niche Snowboards has accounts on several Social Media websites, not only the classical like Twitter or Instagram but also on Vimeo for example. They used to have a Blog but somehow stopped writing on it a few years ago. For the new context I think it would be good to focus on the branding and lifestyle theme and start a more conversational relationship with the customers through restarting their blog again. 

Community and Consumers: 

The community that Niche is currently focusing on is (young) environmental-conscious adults that share their passion for nature and sports. There is no specific gender focus, but what I think is characteristic for the consumers Niche tries to attract is that their target audience normally prefers not using that much social media and prefers real life interaction. Therefore I would maybe focus with the new strategy to link the people more together and create opportunities for real life experiences. 

Connection: 

The connection could be build like mentioned above through creating opportunities for get-togethers or maybe an App developed by Niche where you can find someone to go snowboarding with. It should be about that community feeling and feeling a connection to other people that share the same passion as you do.