Week Fifteen!!

Well everyone, it's the final week of the semester. As sad as it is to see it go, this semester has been one of learning, creating, and building friendships that we will not forget. Also, if I had to pick, this past week would have to be my favorite one by far.

On Tuesday, we summed up what we learned about the marketing mix. This included product, place, promotion, price, competition, consumer, performance, and the environment. The class was split into six groups and each was given one or two of the pieces of the marketing mix to focus on. We then had to get up and tell the class all about our section. Below is a picture of the worksheet we used in order to focus our thoughts.

My group was given the product section. Products can be summed up as follows:

1. There are four different types-convenience (candy bar), shopping (shampoo), specialty (car), and unsought (septic services).
2. They can be positioned in many different ways in order to change the way they are perceived by customers -emotion, competition, product user, attribute, price/quality, use, and product class.
3. There are four stages in the product life cycle-introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.
4. The way in which consumers adopt products also works in phases-innovators (push boundaries), early adopters (like change), early majority (followers but appreciate product), late majority (influenced by others, feel like they have to), and laggards (hate change, don't want to adopt product but have no choice).
5. The product mix includes all of the products a company offers including different product lines.
6. There are many different branding techniques including co-branding (two products together), family branding (Jack Daniels), and individual branding (Proctor and Gamble).
7. Finally, there are three different parts to a product.
1. Core-this is the benefit the product provides (a water bottle quenches thirst)
2. Tangible-the physical product (the water bottle itself, the cap, the straw)
3. Augmented-any additional/extra things that come with it (warranty, satisfaction guarantee, etc)

Overall, this exercise really helped to reinforce my understanding of all of the different aspects of a product. In general, I was able to listen to what the other groups had to say and again reinforce all of the most important things that we have learned throughout the semester.

Also on Tuesday we did the 4 P's assessment. The idea behind this assessment was to test our knowledge about the 4 P's that make up the marketing mix-product, place, promotion, and price. Although I don't think we got enough time to do the assessment, I liked the idea behind it. Doing it helped me to put what I had learned to the test, and apply it to a seemingly real situation. In doing this, I was able to see just how much I actually knew in order to make suggestions to help the company in the case.

Thursday was by far my favorite day of the semester so far. This was the day we got to present our smart project at the engineering expo. This whole semester, I had not been looking forward to the expo. However, once I got there, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. These past couple of weeks I have talked about our elevator pitch. Being able to give that pitch to the judges at the expo felt incredible. It is something that we had all been working hard on to make it right, and I think it turned out really well in the end.

All of the judges seemed to like our product and the idea behind it. Most of them said how it was a product they could use or would have used when they were in school. Additionally, every other person who came to our booth told us how great of an idea it was. The picture to the above right is what our booth looked like at the expo. We were extremely happy with the way everything turned out. Although we didn't win, being able to talk about a product we had invested so much time into was a great experience for all of us. I'm extremely thankful for this process and being able to work with the engineers throughout this semester. I have made some great new friends because of it, and I can't wait to see what the future holds for all of us!!

-Kristen

Week Fourteen

This past week was again focused on our Smart Projects. As the Expo is this coming Thursday, we have been working on the finishing stages of our project. From getting together our materials for our table at the Expo to finalizing our poster and product design, we have had much to do!

On Tuesday we met with our professor in order to discuss the last parts of the project we had to work on. One thing we talked about was creating business cards and a fact sheet about our product to present to viewers at the Expo. Our fact sheet has our value proposition as well as our buyer persona and information that is on our poster such as our target market, product features, and the value we provide. This fact sheet along with the business cards will be a great way to set our group apart from most of the other teams that are participating in the Expo.  Below is a picture of our fact sheet.

One thing that we talked about a great deal was the final design file. Over the course of the semester we have had to write memos documenting different tasks we have completed. In our final design file, we must include updated memos in order to demonstrate what we have learned throughout this process. This includes information about our customers and target market, our brand strategy, our product design, and our product definition. In general, we are really looking forward to seeing our final product and presenting it at the Expo this week.

Additionally, we got back our mind maps and blog posts that we have done since the middle of the semester. Unfortunately, as we have been given more tasks to complete over the latter half of the semester, the quality of both mind maps and blog posts have decreased. Although this is the case, I have still enjoyed being able to reflect weekly on what I have learned, even if these assignments are not my favorite to do.

Thursday's class was our final joint class with the engineers. This class was focused on two things. The first was making sure that both the engineers and the business students knew critical information about the project from the others' point of view. The other was making sure that we had our elevator pitches prepared and ready to go.

As part of the first segment of class, I learned some valuable information about our product that I didn't realize I didn't know.

1. our product was designed using SolidWorks and is being created using a laser cutter
2. inside of our product is an aruino uno which is like a mini computer, a distance sensor, a servo, and RGB LED lights
3. It was programed using labview because it can interface with the arduino and the sensor sets off the servo and LEDs when the door opens.

Overall, during the first half of the class, I learned how to explain the picture above which consists of all of the internal components of our product.

The second half of the class was for us to work on our elevator pitch. Our group came up with the idea of using a song as our pitch in order to set ourselves apart from the other groups. In general, the elevator pitch is a great way for us to introduce our product to potential investors in a short amount of time. While working on our pitch, we identified some important information that we wanted to convey.

• Our market size along with target market
• What our product does-in simple terms
• What problem it is solving
• How it is different from other products

The best way to differentiate our product is by recognizing that while other organizational solutions exist, very few, if any, combine organization with technology in order to create the easiest process for the user. Therefore, we feel as though our product can be successful in the marketplace. What I learned from listening to everyone else's pitches was:

• Use a confident, professional, bur relaxed tone
• Use the full amount of time (approx. 90 seconds) in order to get your point across
• Don't rush
• Don't use notes
• Have three important points from each section picked out as the things you need to get across while giving your pitch

Overall, Thursday's class was a very productive day for us. After facing issues with our poster throughout the week, we were happy with the way the final design came out, and ready to move on with the rest of the process. As most of the work is now done, our group is now getting excited to be able to finally display what we have been working on all semester to our fellow students as well as the Western New England Community.

Until next week!

-Kristen

Week Thriteen

This past week has been filled with an immense amount of work as well as learning in order to further our study of marketing as well as our Smart Projects. Tuesday's class focused on the former while Thursday's focused on the latter.

Logically, I will begin with Tuesday. We began this class by furthering our discussion of the communication process. This process involves how a sender creates and sends a message as well as how the receiver brings in and decodes the message. The communication process is shown below.

To me, the most important part of the communication process is noise. This is anything on the outside that gets in the way of a person's ability to decode the message. This could be anything from other advertisements to news articles to other store displays. The idea of noise interested me so I decided to look into it more in depth. I discovered that there are really four different kinds of noise, physical, physiological, psychological, and semantic. The first two types of noise occur more often when the communication process is verbal. A physical noise might be loud music interrupting a conversation while physiological noise might be a speech impediment of one of the parties. However, since we were focusing on advertisements, I chose to focus more on the last two types of noise. 

The first is psychological. An example of a psychological noise is a preconceived idea. This is something the consumer believes he or she already knows to be true. For example, last week we looked at the Burger King ad. Someone who believes McDonald's chicken sandwich is better is a psychological noise to the Burger King ad because they are less willing to hear the perspective that Burger King's could be just as good. Finally, semantic noise occurs when the two parties have different meaning systems. This occurred in class when we were looking at the British advertisements. Before we were told what the advertisements were for (a type of cigarette), we did not understand the meaning of the ad. This is because people in Britain have a different meaning or understanding of the humor used to create the ad. An example of one of the British ads is pictured to the right. This is a visual play on words (It's not over until the fat lady sings).

We also discussed the Old Spice TV ad shown below.

This commercial helped us to understand some advertising techniques. The first one is incongruity. By having the man in the commercial be in three distinct places (the bathroom, on a boat, and the beach/on a horse) Old Spice used incongruity. In other words, they associated things that don't usually belong together in order to make them more memorable. Additionally, the used the idea of primacy/recency. Primacy is the idea that a person will remember the first thing they see best. This may be why Old Spice chose to use an attractive man at the very beginning of their ad. The idea of recency is that someone remembers best what they saw most recently. This is why Old Spice puts the man on the horse at the end. If most people are like me, when they are thinking or talking about the commercial, or looking it up, they will think or talk about and search the man on the horse commercial rather than the Old Spice body wash commercial. 

Further along in the class we talked about marketing communications. The purpose of marketing communications is to inform, persuade, and connect. This is done through a promotional mix. A promotional mix focuses on creating "buzz." This is done through merchandising, campaigning, direct mail, advertising, public relations, sales, personal selling, and publicity. Sometimes, the differences between these things are hard to discern. The main definitions/differences we discussed in class are listed below, while the image to the left displays the idea of promotional mix.

• advertising-mass communication, always positive
• personal selling-to one person
• public relations-within the firm, manage publicity
• publicity-TV coverage, etc, out of firm's control, can be negative

We also discussed different types of media. The image below represents the three different types of media. Where owned meets paid can be considered enhanced engagement, paid and earned promotional interaction, and owned and earned organic interaction. Finally, there can be a fourth type of media called shared media. This is the word of mouth or buzz media that a company receives. All of these types of media are also part of the promotional mix.

Finally, we talked about the AIDA model. This is a model that helps companies reach their goals. It stands for awareness, interest, desire, and action. In order to be successful, an organization must create all four of these things, awareness of the product, interest in it, a desire to buy or invest in it, and the action of actually buying or investing. Examples of how each is created is listed below.

• awareness-articles, ads, podcasts
• interest-web content, newsletters, social media, email
• desire-white papers, e-books, brochures
• action-case studies, testimonial, data sheets, e-learning

Thursday's class was devoted to our Smart Projects. As the deadlines to finish our project approaches, more work needs to be done in order to be successful. However, my group has worked well together over the semester, and we are taking the final push to the end in stride. Thursday's class greatly benefited our group. Our original poster design was not very eye catching, and in general pretty boring. However, in my opinion, through our discussion with both Professor Spotts and Dr. Gettens, we were able to improve our poster drastically. The final product took a great deal of tweaking and attention to detail in order to finish, but we are proud of the way it turned out in the end. Our poster is pictured below. 

On Thursday we also discussed the elevator pitch. This is a 60-90 second discussion of our product in order to get a potential investor interested in it. We watched an example of a student doing a pitch, and were encouraged to start thinking about our own. The elevator pitch can be broken down as follows:

1. 10-15 seconds to define who you are
2. 45-60 seconds to describe what you do
3. 10-15 seconds to state what you want from this person

The purpose of an elevator pitch is to engage the person you are speaking to in order to fascinate them by your product in a short period of time. Some tips for a good elevator pitch include not speaking too fast, containing your enthusiasm, and not using notes. Along with our value proposition, the elevator pitch is something each member of our group should be able to deliver flawlessly.

During this class and the last few days, we have also been working on our brand strategy memo. As our engineers are finishing up creating the final product, we are focused on creating a strong brand for our product. As we only have eleven days until the expo, our group is finally seeing or project come together, and we are excited to be able to share it with our peers and members of the WNE community.

Until next week!

-Kristen

Week Twelve

Although we didn't do any activities that related to new content in the book this week, we were able to learn a great deal about our projects and the development of our products.

On Tuesday we had the opportunity to meet with our professor and discuss where we were in our customer discovery process. During this meeting, we talked about the insights we had gained, the surveys we had taken, and the summaries we would be coming up with. From our surveys, expert interviews, and market research we had three key insights discussed in our customer discovery memo. These were:

1. There is definitely a need for this product (as shown by public safety response about the number of calls they get a day to unlock doors and market research saying the educational security market is growing 3.6% per year until 2020).
2. Organized people will want to buy our product in order to stay organized (as shown by our target market survey and market research that says 34% of people consider themselves above average organizationally).
3. Our target market should focus on young people, specifically between the ages of about 25-54 (as shown by our market research because they have the highest propensity to buy organizational products).

On Thursday we had the opportunity to meet with the engineers in a combined classroom. Throughout the class, we did many activities that helped us think about our product in terms of our customers. The first thing we did was a customer journey map. In this process we talked about what happened before, during, and after the customer experienced the painpoint we are trying to fix. Our journey map is pictured below.

Through this process we identified a couple of emotions that our customers would experience. These include anxiety, panic, stress, and frustration.

As a continuation of this, we created an empathy map. An example of an empathy map is pictured to the right. The feelings and emotions we used were mentioned above. The most important defining word we decided on was roommates because our customers seemed to be reliant on their roommates to remember their keys or let them in when they were locked out. Some thoughts and beliefs we identified were "this won't happen to me" and "I don't need help staying organized." Finally, some actions and behaviors we thought were important were being in a rush, throwing your keys down when you enter your room, and leaving too close to class time. This helped us get a better idea about our customers' interaction with our product.

We also talked about our value proposition. This is basically a short statement about our product so people know what it is and become interested in it. Additionally, it is something that our entire group should memorize for the Expo. It should say how our product solves the problem, what benefits we will provide, and why we are different from alternatives.  The elements of a value proposition are shown to the left. Our first draft value proposition is written down; however, we are looking to edit it in the coming days.

Finally, we briefly talked about developing a buying persona and our posters for the expo. A value persona is a description of what our average customer would look like. This includes their age, activities/interests, income, residence, and any other personal qualities that could influence their buying behavior. My group is very excited about the development of our poster. We feel as though our concept with keys and doors will lend itself to having an extremely creative poster design.

In general, this week was all about our customers for our projects. We were able to learn a great deal about what our customer looks like and what they are looking for. This has helped us to get an idea of what we will talk about to people at the Engineering Expo, and how we can get our product to be of interest to customers. Overall, we are looking forward to the final weeks of this project and being able to share it with our fellow students and faculty at the Expo!!

Happy Easter!!

-Kristen

Week Eleven

This week's class focused on supply chain and distribution. I found this discussion interesting because it had been hard for me to tell the difference between the two.

On Tuesday, we talked about what a supply chain does. In general, a supply chain is responsible for:

• assembly of raw materials
• customer relationships
• order fulfillment
• production
• sourcing
• logistics

One thing we talked about in great detail was logistics and the inability to have complete disintermediation. This is because a company will always struggle to do everything better than they could have someone else do it for. For example, Fresh Patch may have been really good at marketing their product to their target market, but not as good at growing the grass. For this reason, they have someone else grow the grass so that they don't have to spend as much time on it in order to get the high quality product.

Additionally, companies like UPS, FedEx, and Amazon are examples of successful logistics organizations. These companies have made logistics the only thing that they do, and have made a great deal of money in doing so. Take Amazon for example. The reason that Amazon has become so popular is that they are able to store and distribute products for relatively cheap. As their name has caught on, people have begun to build trust in that brand making Amazon successful at selling products from companies we might not otherwise buy from.

We also talked about pickles and toilet paper. Basically, we were discussing how big box stores like Sam's Club can afford to sell their products at a lower price. The reason is that their target market is not actually regular people. Ordinary people don't NEED to buy a 50 oz jar of pickles. However, their target market is small businesses such as restaurants who need larger quantities of items but not enough to buy directly from the producer. Therefore, Sam's Club can sell 50oz jars of pickles to these companies and make money purely due to the fact that they will have to buy more than one, and will most likely keep coming back. Additionally, places like Walmart can then sell those products in smaller packages, such as 8 rolls of toilet paper. This is what is called "breaking bulk." This creates derived demand because the restaurant has a demand for the pickles in order to make sandwiches, hamburgers, etc for their customers.

On Thursday we discussed specific products and how they are marketed. The products and their product type are listed below

• specialty: Jaguar, Rolex
• convenience: Twinkies
• shopping: Suit, TV
• unsought: septic tank cleaning

We also talked about the different types of distribution intensities. The three different types of distribution intensities, along with their descriptions can be seen to the left. We then categorized each product type into the distribution intensities as follows:

• intensive: convenience
• selective: shopping
• exclusive: specialty

We also talked about how unsought products are seen as selective intensity because of how often we see their advertisements, etc, but behave as exclusive intensity because when it comes to buying unsought products, there are often no other acceptable alternatives within a reasonable time frame. 

In terms of our smart project, our product would probably be classified as a shopping product which would mean we would want to focus on marketing it in a few different places, not too many or too few. Additionally this week we worked on putting our target market surveys into one document. Our group is looking forward to talking with our professor this week about the final steps in the customer discovery process! We are also very excited that we have less than a month left until we get to present our product at the Engineering Expo.

That's all for this week!

-Kristen

Week Ten

Over the past week we have focused on a company that pitched their product on Shark Tank. This company is called Fresh Patch. They provide fresh patches of grass to customers in order for their dogs to use the bathroom and play on like they would outside when the outdoors is not available. The idea was created for customers who do not have a backyard, much like the creator of the product. Every two weeks a new patch of grass would be sent to the customer, as this product is mostly a subscription based product.

One aspect of Fresh Patch's marketing that we discussed in great detail was their target market. When we finished, we came up with a pretty full description of what Fresh Patch's customer would look like. They would be/have:

• pet owners
• limited access to grass
• living in urban areas
• busy
• an emotional connection

The emotional connection is extremely important for this product because if the owner does not feel guilty about not having space for their dog, they would not be willing to pay $25 every two weeks in order to bring in grass for them.

We also talked about the competition that Fresh Patch might have. One of their biggest competitors would be pee pads. Pee pads are pieces of fabric that are put on the floor in a home and used for the dog to go to the bathroom on.

Above is an image of a dog on a pee pad. Additionally, synthetic grass could be a competitor to Fresh Patch because it could be used in place of fresh grass. Finally, Fresh Patch has a patent on their grass patch which an undisclosed company was infringing on. This could also be a competitor if they figure out a way to get around the patent, or find another alternative to Fresh Patch.

We also focused on Fresh Patch's income statement. On Tuesday, we went over a basic income statement. This covered how much revenue the company made ($1,000,000) their costs of goods sold ($5/product), their variable costs (shipping-$11/product, average), gross profit (revenue minus variable costs and cost of goods sold), operating expenses (owners salary and website maintenance), and net income (gross profit minus operating expenses). At this time we also discussed Fresh Patch's break even point. The equation for break even point is below

BE=Operating Expenses/(price per product-(cost of goods sold + variable costs))

In order to break even, Fresh Patch would need to sell 7,222 units.

On Thursday, we focused on breaking down the income statement based on trial versus subscription users. At first, we assumed that trial users accounted for 75% of sales because they accounted for 75% of users. This led us to believe that the trial users provided the company with more money. However, a better assumption to be made would be that the trial users each only bought one unit of the 40,000 the company sold. This results in the subscription users accounting for most of the sales of Fresh Patch (96%). 

What I realized through this exercise was that what assumption you make about the market is important in your analysis. The assumption you make can effect the way you market your product to consumers so you have to be careful in making that assumption so you don't mislead yourself or your company. Thus, it would be important for Fresh Patch to focus on trying to convert some of the trial users to subscription users because the 550 trial users they have accounted for so much of their sales so far. 

We also furthered our discussion of pricing by applying some of the concepts of discounts to Fresh Patch. For example, we decided that in order to increase subscription use Fresh Patch could offer a discount on the product when bought as a subscription rather than individually. They could also discount the product in the summer when the weather is not so menacing and people would be less likely to keep their subscription. By discounting the price, Fresh Patch may be able to keep more subscription users over the summer months.

Lastly, we talked about the market size for Fresh Patch. Considering they have only had 2,200 people try their product and have made $1,000,000 in sales, Fresh Patch obviously has the ability to make a large amount of money. This is especially true considering there are over 400,000 people who fit Fresh Patch's target market living in the United States. We also decided that Fresh Patch could focus their marketing towards regions in the north such as Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Chicago because they are the ones that will be effected by cold weather. The people living there might not want to take their dogs out when it's cold so Fresh Patch would be a great option.

Clearly, Fresh Patch has done some things right seeing as they have so much in sales. However, they could also improve on some aspects of their business in order to make more money. This includes reducing their shipping costs ($14 to the east coast) and increasing the number of trial users. Overall, I enjoyed looking at marketing through the Fresh Patch lens.

Until next week!

-Kristen

Week Nine

Although it's been two weeks, and spring break went by too fast, it's good to be back here on the blog! This past week in marketing, we talked a great deal about pricing, as well as structuring our survey for our smart project!

Tuesday was a great opportunity for each group to meet with our professor and talk about the survey we each had developed for our project. For my group in particular, this meeting really opened our eyes to designing our survey in an effective way. It helped us to come up with questions that would give us the information we really wanted, rather than just yes or no answers. Below are some of the changes we made:

1. Instead of jumping right into questions about organization, we are now starting by having our subjects describe what they do when they enter and leave their rooms.
2. Do you hang your keys up? → Do you have a special place for your keys?
3. How often do you lose your keys? → Do you lose your keys? How often?

These are just some of the changes that we made in order to improve our survey. As a group, we are now looking forward to asking people these questions, and many more, in order to gain insight about our market and where this product could potentially go!

Thursday's class was specifically structured around pricing. I enjoyed the way the class was set up because it made the time go by quickly and allowed us to apply the pricing techniques to the projects we are working on.

One topic that we talked about was pricing objectives. The three types of pricing objectives are shown below.

My group decided that we would focus on a sales oriented pricing objective especially when our product was new to the market because it would help us to focus on getting our product out to as many people as possible. 

Additionally, we talked about pricing strategies. These tend to go along with pricing objectives; however, they are different in the sense that a pricing strategy will help the organization reach their pricing objective. The pricing strategy that corresponds with a sales oriented objective is penetration pricing. This type of pricing sets the product price low at first in order to gain market share and may increase it over time. The other types of pricing strategies are shown to the left. Price skimming is a strategy that aligns with the profit objective because it allows for a company to set prices high in order to make money. Lastly, status quo pricing aligns easily with the status quo objective in order for an organization to meet their competition when it comes to prices and making money.

One other aspect of pricing my group thought about a great deal in relation to our product was discounts and price bundling. Price bundling occurs when the company packages two products together and offers a discounted rate. The example below shows this occurring with luggage. Clearly, the price to buy the two products together is lower than the price to buy them as separate entities. Unfortunately, my group decided there would not be a great way for us to use price bundling. We felt as though there was nothing we could sell our product with to make it more appealing and allow for a discounted rate.

However, we decided that there were two types of discounts that could work well with our product. The first would be a bulk discount if we are selling directly to universities. In this way, if a university were to buy a certain amount of our product they would get a discount. For example if they buy 500-1000 they might get 5% off, if they buy 1000-1500 they might get 7.5% off and so forth. We also thought we might be able to offer a seasonal discount if we were selling directly to consumers. Therefore, if the product was bought right around the time the school year starts it might cost $25 but if it was bought in March it might cost $20. 

Some other pricing tactics that I found interesting this week that we did not discuss included:

1. Single price tactic: pricing all goods and services at the same price (ex. dollar store)
2. Flexible pricing: different customers pay different prices for same product
3. Odd-Even pricing: when odd numbers are used to represent a bargain while even numbers represent quality (ex. $99.95 vs. $100)
4. Leader pricing: pricing the product near or below cost with hope that the buyer will make other in-store purchases

Keeping it short and sweet this week! Until next time!!

-Kristen