Day 14

April 28th. Last day of Class! It's a little bitter-sweet. I have actually LOVED this class (and the teacher of course :), but this was my last day of my last college class EVER! I still have 3 finals next week, but then I am GRADUATING and that is great news!

Moving on: Tonight we discussed chapter 18, "Selling the Right Price".

-We learned about different Pricing Strategies, and knowing which one is appropriate for different businesses, etc.

-We also talked a bit about the Legality and Ethics of price strategy. I also took a Business Ethics class this semester, so I found this section particularly interesting! Some of the tactics that I thought should be illegal aren't!

-We learned about other pricing tactics; like: flexible pricing, price lining, bait pricing, price bundling, and more.

-We learned about pricing options during inflation and recessions (again, pretty interesting to learn about after the last few years that our economy has had).

Thanks Professor Allen; it's been great!

Day 13

April 21

Tonight we discussed chapter 16: Sales Promotion and Personal Selling.

This chapter was interesting and kind of expanded on definitions we discussed in earlier chapters. - I thought it was interesting that sales promotion is usually targeted at either the ultimate consumer market, or members of the marketing channel (wholesalers and retailers).

-We talked about different tools that are used, such as: coupons and rebates, premiums, frequent buyer programs, contests and sweepstakes, sampling, and more.

-And we read a case study (also discussed in the text) on Ron Popeil "Salesman of the Century". I grew up seeing his info-mercials, but I never realized that he was the inventor and the salesman... genius!

Day 12

April 14th

Tonight we discussed Chapter 15; I liked it cuz I took a lot of notes:

• Chapter 15

• LO #1: Advertising Overview
• Graph: basically, after a certain point, the more you spend on advertising, the more return on advertising you’ll get; but after a certain point it levels off, and then goes down. So even if you’re spending more money, you won’t gain more.

• LO#2 Major Types of Advertising
• Pioneering; competitive; ...

*LO#3 Decisions in Advertising

• Advertising Appeals VS. Benefits:
• Appeals: the profit, health, etc. basically the facts. But Benefits tell “What’s in it for me?” (the consumer or the customer)
• Unique selling proposition: a desirable, exclusive, and believable advertising appeal selected as the theme for a campaign.

*LO#4 Cooperative Advertising: an arrangement in which the manufacturer and the ...

• magazines
• Media scheduling

* LO#5

* Public Relations: The element in the promotional mix that:

• evaluates public attitudes
• identifies issues as public concern
• executes programs to gain public acceptance
• Functions of public relations
• Public relations tools:

• product placement: example labels on food, cars, etc. shown in tv shows.
• event sponsorship example: Vans concerts, other events, etc. to raise awareness

Then we watched a clip from the movie EdTV, and again, I put it in my NetFlix Queue... they have you and this class to thank for a lot of my business :)

Class 11

March 31st:

Tonight's class covered chapter 14: "Integrated Marketing Communication"

This chapter talked a lot about PROMOTION. I always heard the term promotion and thought SALE. But it turns out a promotion is just communication by marketers that informs, persuades, and reminds potential buyers of a product in order to influence their opinion or elicit a response. They do this through advertising, public relations, sales protons, and personal selling. We learned when is the best time to use each of these tactics and looked at some good examples in our book.

Class 10:

Chapter 12 "Marketing Channels and Supply Chain Management".

We watched a video on the make-up company...

Sephora was founded in Paris, France but has since moved to New York, and every other main city throughout the United States (including Fashion Place Mall). They sell their own brand of make up and skin care, but they also sell products produced by many other companies. Some of these companies are exclusive to Sephora. This is "exclusive distribution". Where some of the brands they sell (like some Clinique items) can be found in multiple stores are "intensive distribution". The VP of Sales at Sephora like having the exclusive distribution items better. She said it's always better to be able to say you're the only one that offers this.

Day 9: No class... support USU basketball!

*Edit: week 8 was our Midterm... went well!*

Tonight our teacher canceled our class so that we could watch our beloved Aggies take on KSU in March Madness. I thought that was really cool since we're not in Logan and often miss out on regular "college student" stuff. It was fun to be able to sit at home with my hubby and cheer for my Aggies. They ended up losing, but it was still nice to have a night off!

Anyway, class was based on Chapter 10, "Developing and Managing Products". Though I was sad there were no video clips for me to relate to :) But one of the interesting points to me was the different categories of New Products. New products aren't just something new. There are actually 6 different categories that are considered "new products". Including, "additions to existing produce lines" and "lower-price products".

Another point in the chapter that I liked was the Product Life Cycles. There are 4 stages in this cycle. "Introductory Stage", "Growth Stage", "Maturity Stage", and "Decline Stage". Each stage is unique and (at some point) inevitable.

Day 7

Tonight we discussed chapter 9: Product Concepts. It was a very interesting chapter; discussing products in general; the actual definition is: "Everything, both favorable and unfavorable, that a person receives in an exchange."

We then discussed different types of consumer products (Convenience, Shopping, Specialty, and Unsought). We talked about different product items, lines, mixes and how they inter-relate to each other.

We also talked about Branding and how important that is, and different strategies.

The other learning objectives we discussed were Packaging and Warranties.

We didn't watch a super entertaining video clip tonight (usually my favorite part :) but we did a case study and learned about a really interesting company called Terracycle:

They started out (and kind of specialize) in making "worm poop" or plant and lawn fertilizer. They do really well in this area, but they had several other items that I thought were really interesting. For example: this Christmas Tree Skirt...

(obviously made out of recycled capri sun wrappers)

They also have several children's toys, made completely out of recycled candy wrappers...

So cute!

Anyway, I like to have a few pictures on my blogs... just to keep things interesting! But this was a very interesting chapter in general, and I did pretty well on the corresponding chapter quiz, so that made me like it even more!