Mary Anne has her own blog now
Monthly Archives: March 2009

Despite the price of gasoline, consumers still buying gas guzzling big cars

by Mary Anne

My hubby and I have been talking about buying a new car in the next several months.  He has started some Internet research about the prices of cars he might be interested in buying.

I have been telling him that I want to look into buying the most fuel-efficient vehicle that we can afford.  The price of gasoline is soaring, with no reprieve in sight, and it is getting more difficult to find the money to pay for that.

Regardless of which type of vehicle we end up getting, we will probably need to get one of the many types of secured loans to help us purchase it. 

Secured loans come in a variety of forms; they all require that you use some type of collateral to ensure payment of the loan.  If the loan is not paid, then the object you used as security is repossessed.  In the case of cars, most people simply take out a car loan, but some people take out mortgages and use their house as the collateral.

My hubby is more interested in paying less money for the vehicle and getting a larger gas-guzzler than a smaller vehicle that will cost more but be more fuel efficient.  So we are having quite the discussion around that issue!

I was surprised to learn that the vast majority of people that are considering buying new cars in the near future feel the same way that he does, they would rather buy the larger 4x4s or larger passenger capacity than spend the extra money up front to buy a more fuel efficient vehicles.


Data Marketing

by Mary Anne

Several years ago my sister was working for a small company in the Washington DC area that does database marketing. I never really knew what that meant until she worked there and I had a reason to find out. The company gathered information on people from a variety of sources and built consumer profiles on each American household.

Her company knew how many vehicles you have, whether you voted Democrat or Republican, what brand of cigarettes you smoke, if any, and all kinds of personal information. They then sold that information to companies to be used in telemarketing and direct mail advertising campaigns.

Telemarketing has become much more sophisticated now. The information used by the telemarketers is more accurate so calls aren’t wasted on people that don’t qualify, and the calls are better targeted to the demographics and lifestyles of people who might be interested.

Small companies can now use telemarketing in select markets to their advantage. It doesn’t have to be a bad word – you should check out some of the good things that telemarketing can do. And with the price of postage going up again, it may make more sense to use the telephone instead of the mailman to deliver your company’s message.


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