Week 14 in Review

Getting down to the wire in marketing!
   
     This Tuesday we started off with a gallery walk.  We had previously noted in our blogs that the concept maps are getting harder as we no longer have the structure of the book to guide us.  I didn't find this map too hard because I was able to look at my situational and market analysis to help guide me and help me find terms to use.  Next week we should plan to do a cumulative concept map that will have us pick 6 really important marketing concepts and put them on the map.  After talking about the maps we started looking an equations sheet that was handed out to us.  We talked about the fixed and variable costs a company has as well.  We reiterated that fixed costs are something a company pays every month and it is exactly the same where as a variable cost is a cost that changes from one price to another.  We talked about sales revenue too and we were regaled with a story of how a senior marketing major had no idea how to calculate sales revenue!  It's very simple I think I even knew it before I took this class it's just the unit sales multiplied by the price per unit.  We also talked about contribution margin because it is important to know because it looks at your overall business performance.  We then moved on to talking about the simulation.  We started off by talking about price elasticity and we looked to see if our simulation was price sensitive.  Doctor Spotts had printed off a paper that showed the changes in the price of a product.  In order to see if a market is price sensitive, we needed to see if the lowest priced product had the highest sales.  It did not so that is a good indicator that the market is not price sensitive.  On the paper we got, it showed the price of a product going up and down.  When the price was increased, the unit sales went down but the total revenue increased slightly.  At a 10 percent increase sales went down and revenue began to fall.  This was the same for every price increase after the three percent increase.  When the price is lowered by 20 percent thereis a 19 percent increase in units but a decrease in revenue.  The decrease in revenue does not start until you drop the price by 20 percent.  This happens because when you lower your price, the margin gets smaller and smaller.  Since we are a cold medicine company, we need to be aware of our prices.  Our consumers will only buy our product if they are sick.  This is not a product you stock up on as medicines expire.  If we were to raise the price very high, people would either tough out their cold or go with another product.  We need to find a price that matches up with our consumers level of need for old medicine.  After talking about this we continued working on our marketing plan and we worked on our objectives.  These objectives will help us determine and check how well we did in the simulation.  We were advised to give our strategy a couple of periods in order to see the full effect of our strategy before changing it.  If it works, there's no need to change it and we can just tweak it in order to get the maximum effect of our strategy.  The performance dashboard will be used to keep a record of what we did and how we did it so we can stay organized and so we can look to see if we need to change anything.  For Thursday, we needed to finish our strategy and make our first period decisions.

     Before Thursday, Jon, Julia, and I made our decision.  We clearly did something right as we ended up in first for the first period.  I don't want to disclose what we did in case anyone from the class reads my blog this week.  We learned in class that day that net income is not something we as mid level managers should be worrying about and we should really be focused on the contribution after marketing.  We then looked at our objectives to see if we met all of them.  We ended up meeting all of our objectives except for our profit objective.  We wanted a 2 percent increase in profits and instead we got a negative 7 percent increase.  What ended up happening was because we dropped our MSRP price by 90 cents and increased our promotional allowance, a lot more money made its way to the ads and we also had a smaller margin.  We were able to tweak all of that and we found ourselves maintaining a constant stream or revenue, profit, and contribution.  We saw either slight decreases or slight increases in the 3 periods we did in class with our last period being our best one yet.  We have to do period five for class on Tuesday and I really hope we find ourselves in first place again because right now we are hovering around second or third behind the Matt team.  We missed an opportunity to reformulate Allround in order to make it non drowsy.  The Matts capitalized on this and their revenue and unit sales skyrocketed because of it.  We need to find a way to match their massive growth in these next few periods.    

Week 13 in Review

     Another great week in marketing!  This Tuesday we handed in another concept and we did a gallery walk.  These ones were particularly interested to look at because they were what we connected marketing to outside of the book and connected it with the stuff we are doing in class.  We also learned that we can go to the expo if we don't have any classes in the morning so we can help out our engineering companions.  I have classes in the morning but I am going to see if I can be excused from them so I am able to attend the expo.  We also learned that there will be five people from KEEN at the expo that will be going around and observing our designs.  After talking about the SMART project we then moved on and looked at some Dilbert comics.  We haven't done this in a while and it was good to start the class off with some humor.  Dilbert kind of reminds me of some of the engineers in our class who feel we are kinda useless.  We then talked about our executive summary and how we need to have a compelling story that tugs at the heart a little.  We can't just have technical jargon and just what the product does.  We need to garner some fanfare in our summary.  Some of the engineers don't seem to get that but we'll just have to help show them what we mean.  So once we were done with that we began our marketing team simulation.  At the beginning of class, we were put into groups that would be our marketing team.  I was put in a group with Jon and Julia and our team was dubbed J cubed.  I was named the team administrator for the simulation.  This means that I am the only one who can advance the simulation when we decide to.  This way we can prevent any chaos that may arise if we all could advance the simulation.  This also makes me the superior Jon.  We will be graded on how well our team comes up with and develops a plan and how we implement it.  We learned that the planning process boils down to three basic steps.  Objective, strategy, and tactics.  By the end of the simulation, we should have a better understanding of the planning process.  For the rest of class we worked on our situational analysis.  This was kind of like a scavenger hunt for us.  We used this to gather data in the simulation that will help us later on.  We also learned that some data may have been entered wrong so we need to be ever vigilant when we are filling out this table.  It was important that we finish the situational analysis before next class because we were going to start the marketing planning template.  The marketing template will help us find out what we are going to accomplish and what our strategy is going to be.  At the end of class we were asked to email our posters to Doctor Spotts so he could look at the and give us feedback.  On Thursday, Doctor Spotts was caught in a meeting and forgot some papers on his desk.  We then got time to work on our situational analysis while he went and got them.  We worked for about a half hour to finish them.  We then learned what papers he went and got.  They were our marketing templates.  In class we worked on establishing our unique value propositions, our competitive advantage, our marketing mix, and the consumer analysis.  This took the rest of class to finish as we had a lot of information to look for.  For Tuesday we should have our competitor, context, and SWOT templates filled in. 

Week 12 in Review

     Another awesome week!  This Tuesday we walked into class and there was another wonderful buffet left for us.  This time it was from the Marketing Club.  A chocolate chip cookie before class is definitely a great way to start!  We started off the class by talking about concept maps and our assessment.  We were told our assessments went well and we have a clear understanding of the four P's.  In terms of concept maps, we have moved away from the book and we should now focus our maps on our SMART projects and the simulation.  We should apply the terms we learned and structure them into our maps.  We then talked about our proof of market reports.  Our drafts were due Thursday but Doctor Spotts wanted an advanced copy the night before.  He wanted it to make suggestions to us so we were ready to present it to our engineers on Thursday.  We then took some time to talk about our 90 second pitch.  Doctor Gettens wanted us to structure it similarly to the senior class his engineers will be taking.  The instructions are on Kodiak and we reviewed it in class.  What the engineers don't know is, pretty much everything they are going to say at the expo at the end of the year will be written by us!  There's a chance we won't even be at the expo so this proof of market paper really needs to be good because it needs to prepare the engineers to talk about the market.  I would really like to go to this expo so I'm hoping I can be excused from my classes in order to help out at the expo.  After talking about the SMART projects, we then moved onto the marketing simulation.  I had already ran through the simulation once and I feel as though I didn't do too well.  The stock price fell by a lot.  In class we got a worksheet.  This worksheet had decisions 0-3 and we made decisions for these periods on the paper.  Doctor Spotts gave us information for these periods that we filled in to see what happens.  We then recorded our results at the bottom of the page.  When we finished recording the results, we were asked to look for patterns or trends in the data.  Luda and I learned that we were simulating a push strategy.  We significantly increased our sales forces while totally eliminating our promotion budget and significantly lowering our advertising budget.  What we found was we had a 2 dollar decrease in stock, a slight increase, and then another increase.  I feel as though the push strategy is not working because our revenue is constantly going up and down but it does not vary by a significant amount.  I feel if we changed nothing else for the rest of the simulation we would not see another increase in revenue because we have minimal advertising and promotions.  We then presented our findings to the class.  When we presented, we learned that our net income took such a hit because our promotion allowance was increased 7 percent.  Next Tuesday we will be put into teams and we will be starting the simulation in a team format.  Can't wait to see what my group accomplishes! 
      On Thursday we met with our engineer partners in Sleith.  Things started off smooth I realized I left the proof of market paper on my desk so I had to e-mail myself the paper to print at the end of class.  We started off by talking about our market and concept in the proof of market with the engineers for about 20 minutes.  I showed them our proof of market concept and they liked what they saw.  They had no questions for me or Mike.  The engineers then showed us how our product is coming along.  They have a totally wired slab of concrete that is a little rough.  We plan to sand it later in the week to make it smoother.  The entire thing is ready to it just needs to be wired up and tested!   From here we started talking about our expo pitch.  We started with a video from Dragon's Den, the Canadian equivalent of Shark Tank.  The video taught us about what makes a good elevator pitch.  We have to start by laying out what problem we are trying to solve and how our product solves the problem.  The format for our elevator pitch starts with a compelling story.  That should take about 30 seconds.  Then name the product and its benefits for about 25 seconds.  How the market will buy should be talked about for 25 seconds and then next steps for 10 seconds.  We then saw how our expo poster will look like.  We were given a poster to practice what our expo poster will look like.  We also worked on our elevator pitch for the next half hour.  We worked on our pitch and Brady said the whole thing in a minute.  This means we need about 30 or so more seconds to add to our pitch.  We didn't have enough time to tweak it as the random pitches started up.  I went second and read our pitch.  I only took 45 of the 90 seconds to read our pitch so for next time I have to add a more specific description of the target market into the pitch.  In regards to our poster, we need to add visuals along with staying away from bullet points.  We are so close to finishing this project and I'm so excited to see the results!

Week 11 in Review

     Another week down in Marketing! 

     We had quite the week this week.  We are no longer working out of the book.  We've gotten everything out of it that we could and it's time to move on.  From now on these blogs won't be so book heavy and I now have to start connecting my newly acquired marketing knowledge to the outside world.  This Tuesday we had to present our concept maps.  Because we no longer are using the textbook, this concept map had to do with a previous chapter and applying it to the outside world.  I must have missed the memo on that because I just did a regular concept map like the last few.  What I should have done was apply the marketing topics to last week's shark Tank episode on Pork Barrel BBQ.  But I didn't and that it is that.  We did our usual gallery walk and then started class.  We talked a lot on promotion Tuesday.  I learned that attitude is important.  Attitudes are made up of a set of beliefs.  These are beliefs an individual holds and your evaluation of those beliefs makes up your attitude.  Companies look to change your attitude.  They do this through persuasion.  Persuasion is changing a person's evaluation of a belief by adding a new on or taking one away.  To start, we have an attitude towards a certain brand or product.  Our attitude and social norms play into whether we have any behavioral intent.  Behavioral intent would be our intent to purchase said product.  The price and location of the product also play into our behavioral intent.  If we have a positive attitude towards the product or brand, we will have a positive behavioral intent which means we will exhibit a positive behavior and buy the product.  If our attitude is negative, we have a much higher chance of not buying that product as we will have a negative behavioral intent towards buying the product.  An example of this would be Apple products.  I have a positive attitude when it comes to their products.  I would buy this product because I already have a positive attitude towards their brand/ products.  If I had a negative attitude towards Apple, they could try and persuade me and change my attitude of Apple.  They could do this through things such as ads that show the positives of buying Apple products.  Although it is important to remember just because we have intent to buy something, does not mean we are going to buy it.  At the end of the class, we presented our posters for Pork Barrel BBQ.  Matt and I went with a simple approach for a poster.  We had a push strategy so we had to make the consumers interested so we can push our product through the market.  We suggested in the poster that people should try the sauce and played on the Patriotism that comes with Pork Barrel BBQ products by adding an Uncle Sam vibe to the mascot.

     Thursday was a bit slower than Tuesday.  We had to take an assessment on the 4 P's of marketing.  Every marketing 200 class has to take this assessment and we were no exception.  I did not find the quiz to be particularly hard, but I still felt challenged.  I felt like I didn't write enough for certain parts of it but we'll have to see when I get it back.  The assessment took up a majority of the class time.  and we did not have much time left.  Once everyone finished, we started talking about the simulation we are starting this week.  We had a worksheet with the 5 C's on it that we filled out using the simulation briefing.  Once we finished talking about that, we got a template to help us with our proof of market paper that is due next Thursday.  I found it to be very helpful and hopefully we can get the paper done in a quick manner of time!

Week 10 in Review

     Another week gone in marketing class!  This Tuesday we talked a lot about promotion.  We talked a lot about how politicians today are getting a lot of earned media.  We learned that Donald Trump has had an exorbitant amount of earned media.  Trump will make an outrageous statement.  This statement then gains traction on social media.  People sharing his statements try to get other people to be as outraged as the sharer.  This then puts the spotlight on Trump.  Now when he explains himself, there is a much bigger audience to see what he really meant by what he said.  There is a bigger crowd because of all the outrage his statements make on social media and other platforms so there are more people listening to see if he does it again.  Instead he brings up more rational points which is seen by a larger audience which potentially converts people to his side.  Trump is a master at getting himself earned media which is really helping him garner support for his presidential campaign.  We talked a lot about how different kinds of media add to the promotional mix.  The two other types of media, owned and paid, are obtained by the business itself.  Owned media is when a brand creates its own media.  This would be anything the company creates on various media platforms such as blogs, websites, and social media accounts.  The idea of owned media is the company owns what its brand is putting out into the world while keeping the customer's needs in mind.  Paid media is a lot more similar to traditional advertising.   And traditional advertising usually sticks to the traditional media types.  This would be your newspaper and magazine ads, radio ads, TV ads, Internet ads, and outdoor and alternative media.  Newspaper ads are classified as cooperative advertising.  Cooperative advertising is when the retailer and the manufacturer split the cost of advertising the manufacturer's brand.  TV ads have the traditional commercial advertisements that are seen in between TV shows but they also have a special kind of advertisement called the infomercial.  The infomercial is a thirty minute or longer advertisement that is typically used to present a product that has a lot of complicated information along with the product.  Internet ads I feel are similar to billboards.  They are basically banners across websites that are in the background for the most part.  Although the use of advergaming makes ads a little harder to avoid.  These kinds of ads are placed right into a video game where the ads will pop up in the middle of a game.  These are honestly horrible and ruin the games they are placed in for the most part.  I'm closing an ad more than I am actually playing the game.  We then looked at a company on Shark Tank who had very little promotional presence.  The company was Pork Barrel BBQ and they sold BBQ sauces and rubs.  After watching the segment, I was paired up with Matt A.  Our job is to create a marketing a promotional mix for Pork Barrel that fits their specific market.  We also have to draw a point of position for the company.  I have a few ideas already but I don't want to say any here in case anybody tries to steal my ideas!  Next class when we present should be fun.

     This Thursday we finally met with the engineers again.  The past few weeks I have heard groups voicing their unhappiness with their engineers.  Mike and I are lucky enough to not have any problems at all!  This class we presented our research to other members of our group and began to organize our data.  We extracted data such as common stuff that was said in our interviews.  We also looked for thoughts and feelings that were similar in each interview.  We also looked for insight that our interviewees gave us  We had to write down the insights and then derive some needs from them.  After that we did a how-why chart that helped us analyze a problem.  We then discussed our Proof of Market paper with our engineers.  Mike and I will be writing this on our own so we had to get as much info from our engineers as we could.  It may seem like we didn't do much this class but we got a lot of thinking done and that takes time.  I can't wait for when we have to present this project I feel as though we are doing very well.

Week 9 in Review

     Spring break was nice but it is nice to be back in class again.  This Tuesday we talked a lot on chapter 16 and we also watched another Shark Tank episode.  The product being pitched was Balm Chicky Balm Balm whose thing was the "Friend End" of the stick for other people to use.  The Sharks determined that the product would not fair well in the market because the product really only had a market in the adult novelty category.  We used this episode to help us with our SMART Project to determine market research.  We then started our discussion of chapter 16 by writing down questions.  We then placed these questions in a hat to be randomly asked to our peers.  Because I came in late, I was on the chopping block as one of the first people to draw a question from the hat.  I ended up going second.  I actually drew my own question which I found funny.  I picked Stephanie's name out of a cup and she answered my question.  Luckily she knew the answer because I really had no clue.
     On Thursday, we started with the questions again.  Some of the topics covered were advertising, paid, earned, and owned media, and why companies who are on top spend the most money.  Proctor and Gamble, for example, spends 5 billion dollars on advertising which works well for them.  I feel as though spending large sums of money on advertising works for big companies but smaller ones can't keep up the big spending.  Smaller companies need to do the most advertisement so early adopters start buying the product.  Using social media is a good way to get your product out there.  Facebook and Twitter are good ways to get free advertisements and companies can even pay a small fee to have their company advertised on social media.  After talking about this we started talking about the communication process.  We then got a paper and watched Pepsi commercials in order to find out how they communicated to drink Pepsi.  We even watched a foreign commercial and it was very easy to see the message despite being in another language.  We also watched a Coke commercial to look how Coke communicates.  We found that the Pepsi commercial was aimed towards women who are in there 20s and 30s and the Coke commercial was aimed towards couples and young people.  Thanks for reading!    

Week 8 in Review

     Finally Spring Break is here!  All I have to do now is tell you all about how my week went.  On Tuesday we had another mind map gallery walk to do.  Instead of having a specific chapter assigned for the week, we had to encompass everything we have learned so far in marketing.  I thought this one was a bit easier as I didn't have to learn any new concepts!  In our last blog, we had to take a look at the Southern Culture Artisan Foods video and do some calculations for break even and margins.  I for whatever reason did not include this in my last blog and put it in my notebook instead.  Probably a force of habit but you won't see it happening again!  I'm also kind of glad the calculations weren't in my blog because I learned in class my calculations were very wrong.  But you live and learn and that is what we did.  We learned about how a wholesaler will buy products at a certain price and the manufacturer's margin will come from that while the wholesaler will sell the products to the retailer and collect a margin from that.  We didn't factor in a wholesaler when we did the math for Southern Culture Artisan Foods.  After Tuesday's class I feel I have a much stronger grasp on these concepts.

     On Thursday we started to talk about what we learned from chapters 14 and 21.  We were asked to watch the Shark Tank episode on the product fresh patch and we talked about the type of distribution channel the company had.  We learned from the book that there are four types of distribution channels.  The channels are direct, retailer, wholesaler, and agent/broker.  We also learned about channel intensity and how it relates to product type.  A specialty product is distributed on an exclusive channel.  A shopping product on a selective channel and a convenience product on an intensive channel.  When looking at Fresh Patch, it was determined the product went through a distribution channel.  Fresh Patch is a specialty product and customers can only get it from the company's website.  Once someone places an order for a Fresh Patch, it is shipped from the distribution plant straight to the customer's doorstep.   When a deal was made between Fresh Patch and the Sharks, one of the constituents was that Fresh Patch had to sold in retail stores.  This should help increase his market because the product will be seen by more people.  He also wants to build a distribution plant on the east coast using the Shark's money which would help keep the Fresh Patch fresh for east coast subscribers.  This will hopefully help his consumer retention rating because it is currently very low.  I can't wait for this break to be done to talk more about Fresh Patch and its new margins!

Week 7 in Review

     This week flew by.  On Tuesday in class we talked about break even.  Doctor Spotts drew us a very detailed chart in order to help us visualize the idea of break even.  Break even itself is the fixed cost of a company divided by the difference between the selling price of a product and its variable cost.  The difference between the selling price and the variable price is also known as the contribution margin.  A contribution margin is also the profit a company makes.  According to the graph from class, when the total cost is equal to a product's total revenue, that is the point of break even.  Anything below that would result in a loss.  It is a loss because it costs more to make the product than it earns in revenue.  Anything above break even is a profit because the total revenue exceeds the total cost.  A product also has to deal with fixed costs which are costs a company pays at a fixed interval.  An example of this would be a company paying a monthly lease on a production facility.  We also learned about MSRP.  MSRP is the manufacturer's suggested retail price which is the price the manufacturer sets as a recommend price at which to sell their product.  A company doesn't have to sell the product at this price the producer of the product just gives a recommendation.  After talking about profits we watched another shark tank episode.  We missed a day of shark tank so I was very happy to be able to see one.  This episode was about a company called Southern Culture Artisan Foods which was an organic breakfast company that specialized in pancake and waffle mixes.  We were asked to pay attention to the pricing in this episode.  We found out she was selling her mix for 7.99 and it cost anywhere between 99 cents and $1.50 to make.  The 7.99 would be her MSRP because that is how much she recommends the mix be sold for.  We also learned that after one year she had over 100,00 dollars in sales and 62,000 dollars in gross profit.  The 100,000 dollars in sales would be her revenue and the 62,000 dollars would be her profit.  We then concluded that the variable cost would be about 38,000 dollars.  We figured that out because profit is just revenue minus cost.  We new the profit and the revenue and just solved algebraically to find the variable cost.  From there we talked about market objectives.  One objective is profit maximization which is driven by a return on your investment.  You are looking to sell at high prices to achieve a high margin quickly.  There is also the sales objective.  This is when you look to sell quantity at a lower price to gain some market share and sales revenue.  Then there is the status quo objective which is when you sell a product at a similar price to your competitors.  We concluded the class by getting homework that involved researching the product shortstacks further.

     On Thursday we met with the engineers.  This class was different.  Instead of focusing on our product directly, we talked a lot about the customer we are trying to market to.  We learned a lot about how to approach our market research.  We watched a video of people in a laundromat and filled out a sheet that helped us work on our observational skills.  This helps us because an important part of market research is the observational study.  We need to be able to see how people react in a natural environment to a problem that our product would potentially solve.  We also watched how not to conduct an interview.  I'm not saying I know how to conduct an interview but I can honestly say I would not be nearly as bad as the woman we saw conduct an interview.  The interview is an important process because that is how we know how a potential consumer feels about the problem we are trying to solve.  If they see it as a big problem then our product may fare better than a product for a problem people see as a minor issue.  We then brainstormed as a group to come up with questions we would ask people in an interview.  We focused on making sure our questions were not yes or no questions but questions that evoke detail and explanation from someone.  For homework we have to put our market research skills to the test and actually go out in the field and talk to people to find out about our market.  I can't wait to see what people think of the problem we are trying to solve!

Week 6 in Review

     On Tuesday, we discussed chapters 10 and 11 for all of the class.  We started with a gallery walk of the two chapters.  The difference this time around was we had to make our maps with visuals being 50% of it.  I really dropped the ball this week and completely forgot to do that!  Everyone's maps looked really good and the visuals people had were very creative.  Next week we have to do the same thing for chapter 20 and hopefully I remember this time to include visuals.  After the gallery walk, we spent time talking about Bello Verde again.  We went over in greater detail its product type, augmented product, tangible product, core product, and its branding elements.  We determined Bello Verde to be a specialty product.  This is a product that would be sought out after extensive research into the brand and quality of the product.  The average person can't afford to get custom clothing so this product is specialized to people who either require custom clothing or can afford it.  It's not a convenience product because the product being sold is expensive and requires shopping effort.  Convenience products are more of products you by on a regular basis like detergent or bath tissue.  Bello Verde also is not a shopping product.  This is because although shopping products require more time to look at brands and pricing Bello Verde sells products that a consumer would not accept a substitute for after extensive research.  They become exclusive to Bello Verde.  Although shopping products such as refrigerators require research and time, I wouldn't have any kind of brand loyalty to any specific brand.  It's not unsought either because the product is not something people would not like to think about buying like a burial plot or life insurance.  The augmented product is the product the company offers to lower perceived risk when buying the product.  An example of this would be including a warranty or money back guarantee.  Bello Verde will send representatives to take your measurements or you can take a survey to determine your measurements online.  If the measurements don't turn out correctly, the company offers a guaranteed fit so they will fix the clothes you bought to fit you correctly.  This reduces the risk of someone regretting buying the product because if the suit is guaranteed to fit then there's no chance of it not fitting and Bello Verde doing nothing about it.  The tangible product is the physical features a company has in its products.  In the case of Bello Verde, this would be their clothing.  They have suits, belts, ties, and shoes.  They also have a specific type of stitching that someone who is very fashion savvy would pick up on and look for in their clothing.  They also have their brand name that would appear on their clothing.  This would display to other people what kind of clothing you are wearing and the quality of the product.  The core product is the intangible benefits the company provides with its clothing.  Bello Verde has the core product of a better fitting, better quality suit than what you would get in a department store.  This also helps make it be a specialty product because it is custom and of a higher quality than perhaps a shopping product.  The brand elements of Bello Verde did not really help them on Shark Tank.  Bello Verde has another product line, Astor & Black, that is already an established company.  The owner uses A&B for shoes, belts, and ties, and Bello Verde for suits.  With two product lines also comes with two logos.  The owner also had two celebrity endorsements to present his pitch with him as testimony for the quality of his clothing.  He chose wisely because he picked to celebrities that really could not go into a store and pick out any old suit because of their sizes.  The issue with Bello Verde is they have low brand awareness.  Only one shark had heard of A&B even and he was in the fashion business.  With this little awareness it is going to be hard for him to expand his brand and company.

     For the second half of class we talked about how the diffusion of innovation is connected to the product life cycle.  When a product is just starting out, sales are slower because nobody knows about the product yet.  This means your revenue is climbing but you're most likely still in the red in terms of profit.  At this time the people buying your product would be innovators.  These are the people who are on the cutting edge of what's new and upcoming.  They are the first people to go out and buy the newest thing.  As sales begin to rise, so does revenue which soon turns into to profits.  This is when early adopters and the early majority have started buying the product.  Early adopters are not innovators.  They rely on how their community perceives them with this product.  This is the group marketers focus on because they are the ones to start viral buzz for a product.  This leads to the early majority.  People in the early majority do not lead the opinion of the product but instead research the product and take some time to look into it.  If they feel the product has good reviews, then people in the early majority will buy it.  This is when sales and revenue start to take off and profits really go up.  The next group to help feed into a product's revenue is the late majority.  The late majority buys into the product typically after all their friends have it.  They go with the crowd and eventually buy into a product that everyone has.  After revenue and profits stop increasing, a product has reached its maximum level of popularity.  Once the product falls out of favor and revenue and profits begin to drop, this is where laggards tend to purchase the product.  Laggards are skeptical about the innovation of today and prefer to stick to tradition and not change very much.  Marketers tend to avoid this group because they are too unpredictable and are hard to reach online.  

     On Thursday, we met in Sleith with the engineers.  I thought we had our SMART project pretty much done but this class made me question our entire idea.  Brady and I had a very long discussion about how we were going to make our heated driveway different and how are we going to make it cost effective.  After speaking with two of the advisers from Sleith we realized our idea has a few problems.  We need to find out how much it costs to heat up a square foot of driveway.  This way we can establish a size we can do that makes it still cost effective to have a heated driveway.  We made it clear that we want our driveway to melt snow before it has a chance to accumulate instead of after because that way it will require less energy to melt a large amount of snow.  We also need to look into the correct market location..  Doctor Spotts brought up a good point when he said selling this in places where they get 10 feet of snow would be harder to do than somewhere where they get a foot or less.  It is a lot more expensive to melt 10 feet of snow as opposed to one.  What I also thought about is why limit ourselves to driveways? If we found a way to make a design similar to how sod is made, couldn't the heated wiring just be rolled out at any size to cover any surface?  Why not have heated stairs or even heated walkways?  We could sell our product to cities that have snow problems.  They could run the heated wiring through new sets of stairs as well as sidewalks or walkways so people can safely walk after it snows.  This could also be used at universities that have a lot of paths to different buildings.  This decreases the area the heated material would have to cover because stairs are a lot smaller than driveways which means it would require less energy to heat a staircase than a driveway.  Hopefully by next class we'll have all of this figured out.  

Week 5 in Review

     Last week was an interesting week.  On Tuesday, we did another gallery walk this time on chapters 6 and 7.  I found that a lot of concept maps focused more on consumer decision making as opposed to business marketing.  For most of the class we went over the purchasing cycle for paper towels and the Buzzy product.  Matt and Julia presented their paper towel visual together.  Mine varied a little bit from theirs.  I said the trigger was a consumer needed a product that would be able to clean household spills.  The information search would consist of the consumer traveling to a local store and looking for the aisle containing paper towels.  The consumer would then browse the paper towel selection looking for the ideal paper towel.  The consumer would compare price, absorbancy, amount of paper towels per roll, and they would also look at the brand itself to see if they know it.  They would then purchase the product they thought would be best for them.  Then they would decide if the paper towel was a good or bad purchase.  If it was good, the next time they need paper towels they will get the same kind.  If it was a bad product they would start the process again in order to find a better product.  Buzzy is a different selling process entirely.  Buzzy, according to the Sharks, should be sold to businesses which makes it a business to business purchase.  Stephanie made a very good presentation on her visual for the purchasing of Buzzy.  Doctor Spotts cleaned it up a bit and adding a few important pieces.  The trigger for the purchase is a Doctor seeing a need for a product that eases the pain of shots for children.  The doctor initiates the trigger and then goes to the hospital's purchasing department and tells them to look into a product that will help with the pain of shots.  So the hospital's purchasing department looks into different products on the market that would solve this problem.  Somebody comes across Buzzy and recommends it be purchased.  If the hospital finds it acceptable the Buzzys will be purchased for the Hospital.  The Doctor, now the user, uses the product to help ease shot pain.  If the Doctor finds it to be a good product, the hospital will continue to buy them.  If they end up being bad, the Doctor may ask the purchasing department to look for something better.  When talking about Buzzy, we also talked a little bit about derived demand.  Derived demand is the demand for a product that is derived from the demand of something else.  Because there is a demand for a less painful shot experience, the demand for Buzzy increases.  After talking about this we ended the class by watching Shark Tank.  On this episode, we saw a man pitch the custom clothing company Bello Verde.  This episode was used to teach us about product and branding.  Bello Verde would be a specialty product because it is custom clothing which is a luxury the average person does not have.  The company seemed to lack any augmented product because the show did not say  if the clothing had any kind of guarantee that would reduce the perceived risk of the product.  In terms of a tangible product, the company offers full canvas construction as well as a huge range of custom clothing options.  The core product though is the custom clothing process.  On their website Bello Verde has a list of questions that will size you without even needing to leave the house.  They also have local representatives that will go out and create a custom design with you for you.  They pick the style for you if you have no idea what you are doing.  The Sharks ended up ripping him apart.  He had bought the company he previously worked for and was now using the old company's name and Bello Verde at the same time.  They also believed he valued his company at 10 times the actual value because he believed that the company would grow into a company of that value. 

     On Thursday, we met with the engineers except instead of them coming to us, we went to them.  We went the Sleith Hall instead of meeting in the library and I had to go on an exploratory mission in order to find the stairs and then the classroom.  We sat at tables that had a big post-it easel and three large sharpies.  The first thing we did was write out the 5 of our environmental analysis on the post-it and presented our findings.  We discovered there are two ways that heated driveways currently radiate heat.  Heat is radiated either through water or electric wire.  The next point was that our competitive environment included snow shovels, snow blowers, and other heated driveway companies.  The third was that our economic environment included people of the upper class that could afford the get a driveway hooked up with a heating system.  Our socio-political environment was people who were older, limited physically, or they were too busy to shovel.  Unfortunately I cannot recall our fifth point.  After presented our findings to the class, we moved onto a team share.  We re-wrote our POV statement, we found our criteria and constraints, decomposed the problem, and we also defined the market.  Our POV statement was very similar to our original one because we felt it described our problem well enough.  Our constraints we found to be money because we only had 100 dollars to create a prototype.  Size was another constraint because we can't fit an entire driveway into the room where we are presenting our design.  The second constraint is safety because we can't let our customers get electrocute by our product.  Our criteria was that the product had to acctually melt snow because if it didn't, it wouldn't be successful.  We also want it to be cost effective in order to make it a more favorable choice over other heated driveway companies.  Our decomposed problem included the problem of how are going to find out how much resistance is required and how are we going to make this more desirable to customers with less money?  We defined our market as people who were either too busy to shovel, unable to shovel, or too old to shovel.  They also needed to be located in an area with a regular snowfall to make the heated driveway worth it to buy.  We the did a gallery walk and got to view everyone's ideas.  We had to leave three comments.  I found that most of the other groups, their POV statements were still too vague.  Most had a solid market definition though.  After walking around we returned to our seats and we all sketched out an idea for our product.  We then rotated the paper and attempted to finish each others drawing.  After the first time, all of our products looked exactly the same.  We did it again but this time we had to do totally different designs.  We all settled on what we were drawing and go to it.  My group ended up really liking my design so now we have a bit of a dilemma.  Which design are we going to go with? Hopefull by next week we'll have it all figured out and ready to go by Thursday. 

Week 4 in Review

     This week was a little different than the last three.  On Tuesday, we did another gallery walk for chapters 4 and 8.  We talked a lot about the environmental factors that go into a market.  A lot of people put in their mind maps information about the ethnic markets that are growing in the US.  It is important to pay attention to these markets because they are growing and these ethnic markets will soon be the majority markets in this country.  We also talked about how different generations have different factors that effect what they buy.  For example, selling to teens requires two important factors.  The first factor is to make the product modern and convenient.  As a teen, I know how lazy we can be and I know how we like our stuff shiny and new.  If the product doesn't meet those two factors, I'm probably not going to buy it.  Teens also have to be engaged through promotions that get them involved.  Teens like to have some power so adding an online vote or some kind of challenge or contest enables us to wield some kind of power that we'll have in the near future.  After discussing factors such as these, we watched Shark Tank.  On this Shark Tank episode, we were introduced to Bambooee.  During the show, we filled out a paper containing factors that go along with the product Bambooee.  When it came to political factors, Bambooee is currently patent pending and is a proprietary technology.  Something we don't know is where this product is made which makes me question if they have to do any importing or exporting.  From an economic standpoint, Bambooee is about 5 times the cost of a paper towel roll.  On a soci-cultural level, Bambooee is environmentally friendly and they plant a tree for every roll sold.  Also, people outside of the USA don't use paper towels, they use cloth towels and rags.  In my opinion, paying attention to socio-cultural factors is the most important factor for a product.  Culture is how people live.  If your product doesn't match the culture you're trying to sell to nobody will want to buy it.  Because people aren't used to having reuseable paper towels, people need to learn about them.  Bambooee was put on QVC so people could see a demonstration on how to use the product.  It worked wonderfully and the product actually sold out on QVC.  The competition for Bambooee is other paper towel companies but things like sponges and other kinds of rags are also competition for it.

     On Thursday we talked about buyer behavior when it comes to paper towels.  People recognize that they need paper towels in order to clean a mess.  A customer would go into a store and look for the aisle containing paper towels.  Once discovering the aisle the customer will compare the paper towels.  The brand, the price, and past experience with the paper towel.  The customer then purchases the paper towel to use.  Once the paper towel has been used, the customer then evaluates if the purchase was worth it.  If it is bad, the customer may try another paper towel brand or if it was good, they'll buy it again.  Matt brought up a good point in class when he said a paper towel brand could be on sale.  That may compel a customer to try it because it is cheaper and if it works, they may switch brands because it was cheaper and works well.  Paper towel buying is an example of a routine purchase.  This means people put minimal thought into the purchase because there is low involvement, low cost, and the purchase is being done in a short period of time.  Other types of consumer behavior are limited and extensive.  Limited is right in the middle of routine and extensive.  Extensive purchases have a high involvement, high cost, and usually take a long period of time.  There is an internal and external information search as well.  An example of an extensive search would be purchasing a car.  Cars are expensive and people will take a lot of time looking into different car brands and types.

     Buyer behavior isn't only business to consumer, it's also business to business.  On Thursday we watched a Shark Tank episode on the product Buzzy.  Buzzy is a device that relieves pain from a shot.  The doctor selling it wanted to market it to consumers and businesses.  The Sharks disagreed and said she should market it only to care facilities.  In the case of Buzzy, this product would be sold to an institution.  In this case the institution is a hospital.  The purchase of Buzzy isn't for the hospital to make money.  It is to make children feel more comfortable getting a shot.  In purchasing this product a hospital is trying to achieve the goal of making a child feel more comfortable when getting a shot.  Buzzy is also subject to inelastic demand because even if the price fluctuates, the demand will not change.  The purchase volume of Buzzys probably won't be incredibly huge especially if they are being used in doctors office because it seemed like they could be reused so on any given day maybe 6 will be needed.  Buzzy is now manufactured in the USA which makes distribution of the product easier because it is now subject to domestic distribution processes and not international distribution.  It takes out an entire part of the distribution part which should keep costs low.  Businesses will typically buy products like Buzzy in a more formal manner.  These type of purchases are often done by professionals who can even earn the title Certified Purchasing Manager.  Businesses will buy Buzzy as accessory equipment so basically businesses will continue to buy Buzzy every year.  Buzzy is the kind of product that if it does its job, hospitals will continue to buy over and over again.

     Now that this week is over, I get to look forward to meeting with our engineering group next Thursday.  This week we worked outside of class to fill out the packet we got last week and decide on our design.  We setlled on the heated driveway and I think we have a very solid idea. 

Week 3 in Review

     Week 3 has come and gone and now it is time to let the internet know what happened.  On Tuesday we presented our mind maps.  We laid out all of our maps and we had our own gallery.  A lot of us had the same kind of setup.  A lot of the maps also had very similar words that were connected which led me to believe we all had a similar understanding of chapters 1 and 2.  After our gallery presentation concluded we began to talk about chapters 4 and 8.  We focused our discussion mostly on chapter 8 this day.  We talked about Successful Market Segmentation.  Market segmentation wasn't even a thing until the 1960's.  Companies like Coke really only had one soda that they threw into the soft drink market but today they have over 12 different sodas being produced.  Through the readings and in class we learned that marketing segmentation is important because it enables marketers to identify groups of customers with similar needs so a company can analyze the characteristics and buying behavior of these groups.  Segmentation also provides marketers information to help them design marketing mixes for one or more marketing segments.  Marketing segments themselves need to meet four criterion to actually be considered marketing segments: substantialty, identifiability, accessibility, and responsiveness.  We learned about the four criterion through and episode of Shark Tank.  The product being sold was a device that could control the climate of a bed for you.  We learned the product had almost no substantialty because people in this guys market were switching over to upholstered beds which couldn't even fit the climate control device under them!   The marketer also claimed that there are over 100 million beds in the US but he didn't really identify his market because how many of them can actually fit the bed device under it?  He did well with accessibility because the device was going to be sold in mattress stores along with mattresses so the device reaches part of the market the product would have.  We don't really know how the market responded because he had not started producing his product until after the show aired.  I feel it is important to have a firm grasp on your market segmentation.  The guy on this episode of Shark Tank clearly didn't do enough research.  His product was very overpriced and he hardly had a market for his product (he probably could've benefitted from Chapter 8).

      In Chapter 4, we learned about the marketing environment.  The chapter taught that it was important to understand the external environment of markets.  One of the hardest external variables in our environment to get a grasp of is the social factors of a market.  This includes age groups like tweens, teens, generation y and x, and the baby boomer generation.  Being a teenager, I personally attest that we are HORRIBLE to market for.  Trends change so quickly and often its hard to have continuous success in the teen market.  I know personally I can hardly focus on a product for more than a week if it isn't essential to get me through my day.  Also, the growth of ethnic markets has opened new doors for marketers.  The Hispanic American consumer market is now the 14th largest economy in the world.  Other ethnic markets such as the African and Asian markets are equally as important to pay attention to because the ethnicity of America is skyrocketing like never before.  Marketers have begun to work with ethnic groups like the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies in order to target ads towards these specific groups.  Another factor in the marketing environment is the economic factors.  Something like the consumer's income is very important because if the group that should be consuming your product cant afford it, how will you make any money?   Inflation plays an important role as many customers are not willing to spend more than they feel will still be a value.  Marketers try their hardest to keep prices at a steady level despite the level of inflation so as not to provoke the wrath that is the consumer.  Recession also plays a role in the marketing environment.  People tend to cut out non-essentials and will often buy a generic brand instead of the name brand of a product.  The customer will also use their credit less often so as not to accrue any debt.  These factors are important to look at so a marketer can get a feel for what the consumer needs and wants and what they are willing to spend on a product.

     On Thursday, we met again with the engineers.  On this day we presented our three BUGs and our solutions.  My fellow marketer Mike and I got to present the technology for our three BUGs I presented the technology on our cell phone device as well as our heated driveway idea.  Mike talked about our alarm clock mat.  Chun, Brady, and Brian talked about the market for each of our products.  Mike and I had no trouble explaining the technology because our engineer counterparts detailed them very well in our memo.  The three didn't seem to have much trouble with our market because Mike and I provided them with more information before we presented which helped them out.  For the rest of class we listened to the other groups present their three BUGs.  After the presentations, I felt we had some of the better ideas in the class.  This became more evident after I read our sticky note comments and there were very few that expressed criticism.  Our group plans to meet on Monday in order to determine our go and no gos for the project which means our week 4 starts a little early!  

Week 2 in Review

      This week in marketing was much busier than the last.  Tuesday we learned we learned about exchange.  The way we learned about it is through Shark Tank.  We watched an episode on the Chapul energy that use cricket flour as a sustainable protein.  Like it says in our marketing book, there are five criterion that make an exchange.  The five criterion we were looking for were that it involved two parties, it involved something of value, the parties were able to communicate and deliver in the exchange, the parties were free to accept or reject the exchange, and the product was desirable to deal.  In the case of Chapul, I found that the two parties involved were Chapul itself who were dealing with adventurous athletes that are conscientious of what they eat.  Chapul's protein bar was their product of value while adventurous athletes had money which was something of value to Chapul.  Chapul was in communication with its distributors which means that people have easy access to the product and Doctor Spotts even e-mailed the owner who sent him some samples to try.  This level of communication clearly shows that the company has a focus on customer value.  Chapul seems to be after customer satisfaction of a specific target market based on the way the owner was pitching his bars.  He said he was passionate about having a sustainable protein bar that is both good for people and the environment.  He also gave many examples of how he is trying to build relationships with customers.  He sent our class some of the bars for us to try and he also got on Shark Tank and pitched his product to the Sharks and millions of viewers in the USA.  He spread his message about his health protein bar and I'm sure that resonated with some viewers.  Going back to the exchange the Sharks and the owner were both free to accept or reject the offer put on the table.  The owner didn't want to give up for than 10% of his company but Mark Cuban managed to convince him at 15%.  He wasn't forced to accept the deal he could of said no and walked away but if he was forced to go one way or the other, that would not have been an exchange.  Both Cuban and the owner found the exchange to be desirable as well which helped the deal go through. 

Beyond the classroom we also had to read two chapters in our book.  What I found to be really interesting to learn about was the Strategic Business Units as well as the Strategic Alternatives.  An SBU is basically a single business within a broader business or company.  An example of a company comprised of SBU's is General Electric which operates many SBU's.  They even have a strategic alternative named The General Electric Model.  The strategic alternative is a tool that is used to manage the strategic direction of an SBU.  The GE Model is essentially when a business assess its position in a market and also looks at how attractive the market is.  There are three options and SBU has in the GE Model they can either invest, cautiously invest, or pull out of the market entirely.  An example of when to invest is when an SBU is in a thriving market with a strong business position it would be smart for them to invest.  If there is an average amount of attractiveness towards this market and you have an average amount of business position in this market, the GE Model says to cautiously invest and pull out if the attractiveness begins to slip.  Another Marketing Alternative is the Boston Consulting Group Model.  This method involves dividing markets into four categories.  The categories are stars, cash cows, problem children, and dogs.  Stars are products are fast growing leaders in a market.  Cash cows are products in a low growth market that make significantly more money than they require to make so they are able to survive in a low growth market.  Problem children are products the show rapid market growth but low profits.  They can either become dogs or they can become stars.  I find these to be very risky and if I had a problem child I probably would pull out to be safe.  Dogs have low growth and have an even lower share of the market.  If SBU's go through with the Boston Model they have the opportunity to either build, hold, or harvest.  If the SBU has a potential to be a star, the company should try and build up the product in order to make it better and therefore increase profits down the line.  If an SBU is already a cash cow, it may be best to just leave it where it is as a hold.  If a product has become a dog, it may be best to cut losses and harvest what they can from the market before pulling out entirely.  The final Strategic Alternative is Ansoff's Strategic Opportunity Matrix which matches products with markets.  Business can either try for market penetration, market development, product development, or diversify.  Penetrating the market involves trying to enter a new market that has already been established and attempting to take business from the companies that are already there.  Market development involves creating a market that doesn't exist already.  For example, McDonald's has move overseas and has been one of the few fast food restaurants outside of the USA.  Product development would mean making a new product for a present market.  Nintendo did well in this sense by creating a new Wii system but allowing it to be compatible with the old Wii.  People were able to use their old equipment but on a more high end console which was already familiar to them.  Diversifying involves introducing new products into new markets.  This means that a company tries to create a product that few have tried to create while hopefully satisfying a market that has yet to be satisfied.  Uggs hit the nail on the head when they created a men's line of the popular boot.  Nobody had really been making men's casual boots but there quickly became a market for them as sales took off. 

Another important part of the company is the Marketing Plan.  Market planning is the basis of all marketing strategies and decisions a company is going to make.  Writing out a marketing plan is important because they are too big to be only discussed through word of mouth.  The elements of a marketing plan include the business mission statement, situation, objectives, the market strategy, and the implementation of the plan.  The market strategy includes the marketing mix.  The marketing mix includes the 4 P's which we learned about on Tuesday.  We looked at another Shark Tank episode that showed us the online company Cheek'd.  We were given a paper and were told to identify the market, competition, 4 P's, and the performance of the company.  We found that the market was business to customer.  The customer is single people having difficulty meeting people.  The competition the company faced was other online dating companies.  The 4 P's which are product, price, place, and promotion and what people usually think of when they hear the word marketing.  They are the some of the basics of marketing.  In this case, the product was relationships, cards that were handed to people, and the website.  The price was 20 dollars for the cards and 9.95 in order to stay on the website.  The place was online but the company itself had a presence in 47 states as well as 28 countries.  The highest amount of activity was also probably in cities.  The promotions for Cheek'd included the cards as well as a phone app.  Knowing all this information is very important for a marketer in order to see if a product can actually be marketed and successful.  We also found out that the website performed horribly as it went down frequently and Cheek'd had very few paying customers.  This is important to know because a marketer can now clearly see that this company is horribly managed and would need a complete overhaul to even get close to other online dating sites that have dedicated servers and actual online dating. 

On Thursday we met again with the engineers.  We walked into a classroom divided into 5 sections by whiteboards.  Each group had their own whiteboard walls as well as markers.  Our task was to apply the FACE M method to our sticky notes.  We had to categorize our sticky notes and eliminate ones that didn't fit into groups.  We then took the opposite of the BUGs we made to try and see if they developed other BUGs.  Our group only had one that created another BUG but we ended up eliminating it as well.  We also didn't have many BUGs we could modify so nothing came of that step.  When we voted on our top three categories we settled with snow, mornings, and parents worried about kids texting and driving.  After narrowing the categories, we had to randomly pick three cards and try to adapt them into our categories and BUGs.  I didn't really find this step to be helpful because a lot of the cards had nothing to do with our categories.  I thought it would've been more helpful if we created separate ideas that we could fit into our categories instead of trying to apply them to our preexisting BUGs.  We came up with a couple good ideas that ended up getting tossed out because they didn't connect.  We then essentially threw out our BUGs and tried to create solutions to to our three main categories.  We didn't find one for parents being concerned with kids texting and driving but we did come up with heated roads for when they get icy and and alarm clock you have to step on in order to turn it off.  Overall I did feel the exercise was helpful but I felt it kind of fell off at the end.  I understood we were trying to narrow in a specific problem but I felt like we were getting too complex in order to do so.  After such a busy second week I can only imagine what we get into next week.