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!