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.

Week 1 in Review

As my first week of the second semester comes to a close, I am both relieved and excited for the rest of it.  My first marketing class got off to an interesting start.  As I walked into the classroom I noticed I already knew everyone in the class.  That was a first.  The class ended up being made up entirely of kids from the honors management class last semester.  Nobody was sitting but that didn't seem weird because all the desks were pushed to the side and there was a semi-circle of chairs in the middle of the room.  I can't speak for everyone but I had assumed that the arrangement was from a previous class and that was not how we were going to be seated so I chose to wait and see what would happen when Doctor Spotts came in.  Turns out that was the way we were going to sit in class and that was confirmed when he came in and the first thing he said was, "Why is nobody sitting?"

After the initial realization that the semi-circle was meant for us, I quickly took my seat.  Because I was already comfortable with everyone in the class I didn’t feel anxious about being in the new class.  Having the same kids from the previous honors class really eased the stress of starting a new class.  The first day was pretty eventful.  We learned early that our professor, Doctor Spotts, likes to keep things fun and spontaneous.  Because of this, the first lesson on marketing stuck in my head.  We got learn about Peter Drucker.  If you don’t know who Peter Drucker is, he is an Austrian born business man who is considered to be the father of modern management.  I thought it was strange that we were learning about a manager in a marketing class but then we were shown how this man was actually a marketer.  Doctor Spotts showed several quotes said by Peter Drucker and asked us what we thought they meant.  Drucker was quoted as saying, “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”  What I took from this is that marketing is just as important as the product itself.  If you can’t market the product, then nobody wants to buy it.  Another quote we looked at was, “Marketing and innovation produce results: all the rest are costs.”  I think what Drucker is saying is that Marketing and innovation if done correctly will produce a positive result no matter what and they will make a business money where as purchasing supplies or renting a building will always result in negative funds.  Drucker knew that marketing was a key part to businesses but he is still known mostly for his management.  Not only did we learn about Drucker we also learned that Dilbert is a very good comic strip to read if we want to see a business from the perspective of an engineer.  Doctor Spotts told us about a particular comic in which Dilbert has to collaborate with the marketing department on Barbeque Wednesday.  This comic shows how another part of a company views marketing as a place where not much gets done.  I’m not saying every marketing department isn’t lazy but without a marketing department, there wouldn’t be much business.  Who’s going to sell the product you just made?  Who’s going to present to potential buyers?  The engineers?  No way they’re entirely too busy working on their next big project.  Selling a product is a full time job and it takes a specialist to get the maximum profit out of a product.  On Thursday we collaborated with Engineers to show how important marketing is.

            First thing on Thursday we were separated into groups and divided into groups made up of marketers and engineers.  My group is made up of Brady Lucia, Mike Chirco, Chun Chak, and Steven.  I was already acquainted with Mike so I got to meet Chun, Brady, and Steven a little.  All three are from the Springfield area and they all know what type of engineering they want to go into.  During the two truths one lie ice breaker I was paired up with Brady and I got to know a little bit about him.  He’s been to California and he’s got three dogs but I can’t remember what his lie was.  He’s been pleased with his time at Western New England, he did very well in his classes, and is looking forward to working in our group.  After the ice breakers we got right into the day’s lesson.  We started off by catching up the engineering students on who Peter Drucker is and then we got to watch an episode of Shark Tank.  In the episode, a college student was trying to pitch a new box design.  Unfortunately for her, she wasn’t in our Tuesday marketing class.  We had previously learned that trying sell a product where there is no market is like trying climb Mount Everest in shorts, a horrible idea.  The box she was trying to sell was more expensive than the current box design and it ended up taking up more space than a regular box.  It barely made any improvement on the original box design except for time saving.  As Mark Cuban brought up the average person using a box doesn’t really have a time constraint like a large company would have and a large company isn’t going to pay over a dollar per box.  Not only that, the woman was basically begging the Sharks to make a deal.  She really had no idea what she was doing.  Not only was her product unmarketable, she was a horrible marketer.  She was a horrible negotiator and severed ties with one of the Sharks before she even got an offer from another one.  If this was anywhere but national television, she would’ve left there with no offers and a failed idea.  While watching the show we would periodically stop it to talk about what was going on.  During the first stoppage, we were asked to think of what about her box was different from the old box.  We concluded that it was more structurally sound at the bottom and we thought it was smaller than a regular box but we later concluded it was the same size if not bigger when collapsed.  We also learned how to make statements in order to determine our market.  For the box, our group came up with, “A poor, busy college student needs to pack up quickly in order to leave for vacation.”  I found this part difficult because the box itself was very hard to market.  I learned that describing the person in great detail is very helpful in determining a product’s marketability.  Unfortunately the box proved to be too difficult to get a good description of someone who would prefer the new box over the old one.  After watching Shark Tank we were asked to look through newspapers and magazines to find three bugs or problems that people have in their lives.  I found this to be hard too because I think I was in the wrong frame of mind when looking.  I was looking for specific problems when I should have been looking for problems that were broader ad effected more people.  What I ended up finding is blood donating, global warming, and dumps.  Donating blood is a problem because we are always in need of more blood.  Not only that, blood expires very quickly so after a few weeks any leftover blood is useless.  Global warming is a growing problem because at the current rate we are going to end up ruining the environment so bad we’ll go past the point of no return.  If we were to go past that point, we would need a solution in order to stop anymore continued global warming.  Dumps are not so much of a problem as is the trash contained in them.  Dumps are overflowing and there really is no efficient way that has been creating to effectively remove all the waste we humans make.  This weekend I have to ask 4 non students what they think is a problem in their lives.  I’m looking forward to this because I’ll get to hear from people what they think some problems in daily life are.  Maybe I’ll learn of a problem that is so easy to solve I end up marketing a product that is a guaranteed problem solver.

Introduction

     Hi my name is Jonathan Chew and I am currently a freshman at Western New England University.  I live in Norton, Massachusetts so the journey to Springfield is just far enough for me to feel like I am away from home.  My current major is Sports Management and I am loving it so far.  Aside from my major I am also a part of the business honors program here at Western New England and I am excited to find out what future challenges this program has for me.  So far it has been a change from the usual classes I have had before because of the workload and independence you have in the honors classes.  I also joined the Sports Management Association too.  Naturally, the focus here is sports and how to get opportunities in the job field.  One of the first meetings we had we learned of internships for the Springfield Falcons hockey team as well as for the Volleyball Hall of Fame.  Because of the classes I took my first semester I was able to land a job on the football team so my career in Sports Management has already taken off!  When I'm not working you'll usually find me with my friends either just hanging out or playing basketball or soccer.  I have always been a lover of sports no matter what sport it is.  I'm not always the best one out there but I will always put it effort.  Aside from sports and relaxing I also love to learn new things which ties into why I am writing this blog.  My marketing class professor has asked that we write a weekly blog to tell what we've learned and what we have taken from each class.  I don't know a lot about marketing as I haven't really taken any classes on marketing before.  I'm excited to learn more about it and I can't wait to share with all of you!