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!

Class 6: Houston we have a problem...

So can you tell that the video clips are my favorite part of class? Well I won't get too into that, but I will tell you that tonight we covered ch. 8, "Decision Support Systems and Marketing Research" and the Apollo 13 tie-in is that we, in the wonderful world of business, need not wait until we are in the middle of a crisis to make an action plan. Part of being prepared before disaster strikes is being aware of what is going on in your market, and that means continually doing the research necessary so that you do know what's going on!

We also watch these segments on a magazine called,
It's really interesting; and they're marketing manager is good! Tonight we talked about their technology to better understand their customers. They use blogs, social networks (I just "liked" them on Facebook), on-line surveys, etc. And they have been very successful!

Day 5: Market Segmentation

Side Note: Good News, I finally figured out how to upload videos to a blog... really YouTube just has a super easy "blogger" button and it automatically goes to your blog!

Moving on:

Tonight we watched a scene from "The Breakfast Club" and likened it to market segmentation. This {Market Segmentation} was the main focus of class tonight, and Prof. Allen was, in his own words, "Pounding it into our heads"! So it must be pretty important!

This video shows a random group of high school students in detention. They are all eating their lunch and this video shows that we could easily separate them into segmented groups. We could separate them by gender, clothing preferences, extracurricular activities, and most obvious in this scene, FOOD! Enjoy the clip:

Week 4

This week we discussed chapter 5: Consumer Decision Making Process. I really enjoyed learning about this process because I am usually a terrible decision maker in general! The steps are:

1. Need Recognition

2. Information Search

3. Evaluation of Alternatives

4. Purchase

5. Postpurchase Behavior

This chapter also had a chart that discussed Social Class and Education; or the median household income based on education level. I have seen studies similar to this before, but it's always nice to see when you're in the thick of your college education (and nearing its completion)! It reminds you that this is all worth it... or hopefully so!

We watched a clip from Family Man, which I later put in my queue through my NetFlix account :)

Day 3

Today was a good day; we discussed Chapter 3, "Social Responsibility, Ethics". And we started by watching a clip from JAWS!!! We saw the scene where the chief has closed down the beach (after the first shark death) and the town leaders are pressuring him to open it back up so that the town can take advantage of it's summer-season tour attraction. Basically we discussed their different motivations and applied that to real business. And discussed whose point is most ethical? Is there a right answer? Is it clear?

Deep :) Other sections of the chapter included:

- External Marketing Environment

- Social Factors

- Demographic Factors

- Growing Ethic Markets

- Economic Factors

Day 2

Well that first week was as far as my "anal-ness" went; I'm already a day late for post #2, but what can you do?

Anyway, tonight we covered chapter 1 (which I got 100% on the quiz). Which included:

-The 4 P's of Marketing:

• Product
• Price
• Place
• Promotion

-Marketing Management Philosophies:

• Production Orientation
• Sales Orientation
• Market Orientation
• Societal Marketing Orientation

It's all pretty interesting; market orientation is by far the most popular, and it has the most positive points (in my opinion).

We also read an interesting case study on Netflix, the man who started it, and his amazing success (i 'heart' netflix)!

Day 1

Day 1 of BUS 3500 with Prof. Allen. This is my fourth class with him but I have yet to create my own blog for a class. This should be good. I'm a little anal and I wanted my first official post to be marked with the correct date!

Tonight was mostly a review of the syllabus and a introduction to the class. It will be a good one; and based on the short quiz we took I have a lot to learn!

I'm still not super comfortable commenting in class (I blush like crazy) but I'm glad we get extra credit if we do, it's a good push for me!