In Response to Rebecca's Post...

If this trend continues, what kinds of things will you do in order to cut back on the money you spend weekly on gas? Do you think that people will change their lifestyles to save money? 

The increase we have seen in gas prices already is astonishing. Yesterday when I went for a walk in the morning I saw the price of gas to be $3.99/gallon and when I walked by the same gas station just 3 hours later it had already gone up to $4.02/gallon! As Rebecca stated in her post, gas has an inelastic demand for it since people need to purchase it no matter what happens to the price. I do feel however that even though the demand for gas is inelastic, people will try to cut back on consuming it by carpooling and taking other means of transportation. Recently I took the Amtrak train to Burlington, VT from Brattleboro, VT and the price of a ticket each way was only $12 making the roundtrip to be $24. When I drove to Burlington from Keene about a month ago I spent about $50 in gas total. Taking the train is clearly much cheaper than driving a car and I will now try to take the train whenever I can in order to cut back on the money I would be spending on gas. I definitely think other people will start trying to change the way they go about their daily lives in order to conserve gas.

What is another major product you can think of with an inelastic demand? If the price of this item increases do you think consumers will find ways to conserve their overall use of the product?

Top Brand In The World

As of the start of 2012, Apple Inc. became the top brand of the world putting Google in second place. The value of the enterprise is at $350,257 million and Apple's brand value is worth over $70,605 million, up about $40,000 million from 2011. Apple sells everything from smart phones to digital music and is best known for its Macintosh computers and iPods, iPhones, and iPads. Apple is the most valuable technology company, surpassing Microsoft. Microsoft dominated the business world providing goods and services that satisfied the needs of businesses, yet Apple's focus is on satisfying consumers wants and needs and this clearly generates the largest revenue. There are four distinct components of brand value which include reputation value, relationship value, experiential value, and symbolic value. Apple has become the most successful brand because they possess great value within these four components. Apple is always improving it's products and coming out with new versions of products that sell well. This helps create a great brand loyalty which Apple has with each of its consumers and has given Apple a good reputation value. People rarely complain with their Apple products and people have such a good experience with their Apple products that when a new version is released, they demand it and this has given the brand a good experiential value. Consumers find the Apple brand to be very reliable, and Apple provides good value for the money that is exchanged for their products which has helped establish a good relationship value with its consumers. And lastly, the Apple brand has a symbolic value which consists of being "the best of the best". When people see the Apple symbol on products they know that the product is   an Apple product and is of high quality and is worth a good amount of money.

When you see the Apple symbol/logo what do you think of? What are your first thoughts that come to mind about the brand or product?