Abrercrombie & Fitch

I just came home from America right now. I was in New York and Boston with my family. One of the things that impressed me the most, is the the effect that Abercrombie & Fitch has on so many tourists. As any other European tourist, I went shopping on Fifth Avenue, and there was a massive cluster of people at one point. As I tried to find out what was happening, hoping to see so kind of great celebrity, I realized people were actually waiting in line to go in and have their photograph taken with some hot guy standing at the door. I find it quite unbelievable that people make the same cue for A&F as for the Empire State.

The question is: How did Ambercrombie&Fitch (and Hollister) make so many people attracted to their stores? It can hardly be the slightly overpriced hoodies and jeans. A&F believes in a brand image of young, hip buyers that have a great lifestyle. The advertising campaigns have nothing to do with clothing or even accessories, however.

What is it about this ad that would make you buy the product (which isn't even displayed here)? A&F is all about marketing and the power of a brand image. You would go buy there only for the fact of being able to carry one of those nice A&F bags everyone has, to show your friends the photo of you and the model at the door, or just to say you where there. Is it sexuality attracting humans again? Or the "innovative" idea of placing men on the adverts rather than women?

However, A&F's theory of maintaining a high quality "luxury" brand image has some consequences. Especially in times like these, of economic crises, people don't depend so much on fashionable clothes sold by a hot model, but watch out for prices. The overprices clothing items sold by A&F are no longer such a great attraction to the average person.

Greek crisis

On December 2009, the world's three main credit ratings agencies, Fitch, Standard & Poor's and Moody's, downgrade Greece's debt.

Later on Greece admitted the size of its debt – nearly 13 percent of its annual gross domestic product, or four times the amount EU budget rules allow

Today, German Chancellor Angela Merkel met her Greek counterpart George Papandreou to discuss Greece’s financial crisis, as tensions rise over whether Germany will provide crucial support to an EU bailout for the heavily indebted Mediterranean country.

The chinese .com share

Baidu  It is something like the Chinese Google, and at the moment it is the most successful Chinese Internet Company. Growing fast: Qtrly Revenue Growth (yoy):111%, Qtrly Earnings Growth (yoy):400%.

Baidu.com has the same business model of Google, and it is actually gaining Chinese market share from Google. China daily: “market share of Baidu rose from 51 percent in August 2005 to 62 percent in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the three largest cities in China, while that of Google fell to 24 percent from 33 percent “

Baidu has still great room to grow revenues. It has very small revenue (108.04M) for the main search engine of the second largest Internet market in the world (. This revenue can grow very much as Chinese advertisers start investing more to gain Chinese customers who are become more affluent.