Week 7 - February 22, 2012

Update:

So I posted the post for last week today. I actually just finished writing it, sorry.

So this past weekend and the last couple days I was doing some reading for my online Management class. It was nice and interesting to see how the text and subject matter for the first few chapters tied together with classes I have had and the classes I am having now. I think I'm starting to see how my classes tie together and how they are preparing me for the future. I don't see how everything works, but I thought it was interesting that I was starting to see some ties.

OK, sorry this is so late. So we went over chapter 9 in the text last week. Product concepts. A quote I liked from class "the foundation of marketing is a product".  As the midterm was coming up we talked about concepts from previous classes a bit too, but not much. "A product unknown to the potential buyer or a known product that the buyer does not actively seek is referred to as an unsought product."(page 132 of the text book) I have a bit of a hard time with this, so I asked the Professor a question. They are different, an external force (ex an insurance sales man) pushes for the purchase. He would consider a washing machine breaking down to be a shopping product. I guess this makes sense and they did use that as an example in the book. I just got confused. So there are four kinds of products, Convenience, Shopping, Specialty, and Unsought. We also learned about branding. There was so much more too it than I thought there was. A product family is similar, an entire product line/width. Family brand is several different products.

We also talked about brand licensing and the pros and cons of doing so. Our video discussion was based on Kodak from a few years back. It was different, as several things have happened to Kodak since then. We had two presentations on YouTube. Something interesting is you can use your current Gmail account, but you have to sign in and not create an account like you normally would. This was interesting because as Google now owns Blogger and I was able to create an account using my Gmail/Google account to save some time and effort. But I couldn't do that with YouTube. Well not right away, I still need to finish setting up my account/channel on YouTube, so I have a basic account right now. I'm glad Professor Allen provides PDFs covering things we need to know but the book doesn't cover. This can make a big difference. I'll blog again later. Back to studying :)

Week 6 - February 15, 2012

February 14, 2012 - Valentines Day and the day before class
So today I joined LinkedIn. Yes, it is required of the course. I'm not quite sure how to use it. I was surprised at the number of possible connections I already had. I wish I understood it a bit better. I guess I'm just used to the way Facebook works. LinkedIn will be something new.

Class:

Class was fun tonight! We learned about Market/Marketing Research. There is actually a difference between the two but it is very small and hard to describe. I liked learning about marketing research. "The steps in a marketing research project are:

1. Identify and formulate the problem/opportunity
2. Plan the research design and gather primary data
3. Specify the sampling procedures
4. Collect the data
5. Analyze the data
6. Prepare and present the report
7. Follow up"

See chapter 8, page 115 of the text book I mentioned in an earlier post.

I found it interesting that the text talked about secondary data before primary data. But I guess that is because of the fact that there was a lot more to be said once they started talking about primary data.
While we talked about marketing research I somewhat thought of my English 2010 class, where I have to write a persuasive research paper that is due at the end of the semester. All of the different ways of gathering research, and the different processes and ideas involved in the research were interesting to read. I enjoyed the chapter and the lecture in class.

Our discusssion/case study this week was on a site called Look Look. It was a bit hard to talk about some of the questions because the page has changed. After looking at it some more after class, I think it is the same people but they have changed it. They don't have as much information available as might have been available in the past.

I'm sorry this post is so late. I was pretty tired after class last week. I'll talk about current things that have happened or I noticed between class on the 15th and the class tonight.

Week 5 - February 8, 2012

Update/clarification:
OK, I'm writing this prior to class this week. I wrote about Twitter because joining twitter was an assignment/part of the class. Also, Tweeting my professor in class is extra credit. Joining Twitter was a big thing, as is starting to blog. If you ever need some more clarification please feel free to let me know through a comment. I will get back to you as soon as I can, remember I moderate comments.

Class:

Tonight we went over chapter seven in the book. It talks about segmenting. Segmenting is dividing a market into different segments or groups. This can be done using different factors or bases: Geographic, Demographic, Psychographic, and Benefit are some of the ones I remember. We also had a reminder of what the 4 P's or Marketing Mix are: Price, Product, Placement, and Promotion. I'm glad we reviewed this quickly. It is something I have a hard time remembering.

I have to join LinkedIn before next week as it is an assignment with an associated quiz. It's interesting how you divide up the market and figure out how you want to target a market segment or segments. We also went over a case study for Coke Zero. I can't believe it took two years to re-release Coke Zero in the US with the new color scheme, granted maybe the case study was off. Either way, I'm not a big fan of Diet Coke, etc. I'm more of a Sprite or Root Beer person.

In case you were wondering the text book we are using is MKTG by Charles W. Lamb, Joseph F. Hair, Jr. , and Carl McDaniel 3rd edition.

Week 4 - February 1, 2012

OK, so I'm writing this the day after class as I was tired last night. I wish I had written it, granted it probably wouldn't have made much sense. Last night we covered Chapter 5 in our text book. So we learned about LinkedIn in the instructional presentations by classmates. I liked learning about the Consumer Decision Making Process. I'll admit I had to look at the powerpoint, it's amazing what you can forget in just a short amount of time. We also learned about the factors that influence a buying decision and some different aspects of buyer/consumer behavior.
Some of the different factors can be(source one of the powerpoints from class):

• Social
• Cultural
• Individual
• Psychological

 I wonder how many times I have bought something then questioned it, or how often others have. That is Cognitive Dissonance. There are so many different aspects to marketing, I don't think I realized how many and yet there are still more. This is only the fourth week of the semester.

I am not responsible for others who link to my page/blog.

Week 3 - January 25, 2012

Tonight's class was a nice class. I used Twitter to tweet during class for the first time. Don't worry it's extra credit to tweet my Professor. We delved more into marketing today, it's a marketing class remember. So I learned about Corporate Social Responsibility and it's four parts: Philanthropic, Economic, Social, and Law and Political. We also covered ethics. This included reading a provided PDF containing the AMA(American Marketing Association) Code of Ethics. It was really quite an interesting chapter and lecture. I haven't been feeling so great with a bad cold so I think that was a factor, but I plan to do what I can to get ready for next week and stay healthy. It's not fun getting sick. I liked reading about the different generations, according to the book I would probably fall in the Y generation. Isn't that odd? Well remember, to do your best no matter what you do and try not to procrastinate if you can help it.