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!