Week One

This past week has been both eye opening and informative. Never before have I looked at business the way I do, and will continue to, after only two days in the classroom. For me, Peter Drucker's beliefs really stood out. I've always though about business in the mathematical sense, but to think about it from a marketing perspective seems to be much more logical now. I truly agree with his belief that creating and keeping a customer is the purpose of a business and the only way you do that is through marketing. Also, like Drucker believed, marketing is looking at the whole business in the point of view of results. This idea is extremely valuable to a business because their results are the most important aspect of their organization.

Additionally this week, I learned what marketing is, and summarized what it means to me:

1. Stresses customer satisfaction and processes to implement the philosophy as an organizational factor.
2. To create, communicate, deliver, and exchange offerings with value to a customer
3. Involves exchange (giving something up to get something else you would prefer)

I also found the four different marketing philosophies to be crucial to my understanding of marketing. To sum of these philosophies, I have included the chart below from George Mason University.

Throughout the past week, we have learned about strategic planning, and how that could lead to a competitive advantage. Strategic planning is the managerial process of creating and maintaining a fit between the organization's objectives and resources and the evolving market opportunities. In order to measure the strategic direction of a business (or what they should do for the best results) strategic alternatives are used. 

These alternatives such as Ansoff's Strategic Opportunity Matrix, the Innovation Matrix, the Boston Consulting Group Model, and the General Electric Model address where the company and the market stand and what the company should do from there in order for the best results. For example, in Ansoff's Matrix the company should focus on market penetration if the product they are selling and the market for that product already exist.

Further along we learned about a marketing plan, which is basically a guidebook for a marketing manager. Having a successful marketing and strategic plan can lead to a competitive advantage. 

As the image displays, there are three types of competitive advantage. A cost advantage means the company's cost to their consumer is lower than the competition's, but they still maintain a profit margin. A product/service advantage occurs when one company's product/service is better than another's for some reason, such as it lasts longer or offers something unique. A niche advantage targets and effectively serves a single market segment. Something I found interesting was that a sustainable competitive advantage cannot be copied.

Finally, I found the idea of a marketing strategy to be extremely important. A marketing strategy is selecting a target market and developing and maintaining a unique blend of product, place, promotion, and pricing (a marketing mix) to produce mutually satisfying exchanges.

Last but not least, this week we learned about the company Kaylx through a Shark Tank segment. During the segment, Robert asked the owner and creator, "How in the world are you going to compete?" Although Kaylx was not succeeding, I definitely think the product could have competed, even in the small market opening. I believe this because the Kaylx product provided value to the consumer that you cannot find as successful anywhere else.

The Kaylx bra provides functional value through quality and variety. The owner spent about three years researching to make the best product she could. If I was searching for a product like the one Kaylx offers, I would believe in the quality behind that much research. She also made three different types of her product. As you can see in the image below from the Shark Tank segment, there are multiple different styles and colors of the Kaylx bra.

Therefore, the Kaylx bra has both quality and variety to offer to the customer. The Kaylx bra also offers the emotional values of wellness and attractiveness. The bra reduces breast pain for women during exercise while aiming to maintain a positive image of themselves. 

By focusing on these values Kaylx could provide to consumers, they could have competed in the limited market. This is because they would have focused on the needs of consumers who are struggling with self image and/or breast pain while also providing a high quality product in a variety of styles. If they could do this, they would create a successful exchange between the consumer and the company because they would have created a product that the consumer wanted, and that they had to sell.

Overall, this first week has been one filled with learning the basics of marketing, and jumping right in to hands on tasks. I can't wait to see what the rest of the semester has in store.

-Kristen