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 :)