Where did the time go?

I took this Marketing class as my business elective, and I am very glad I did. This was such an interesting class, and I learned a great amount from Professor Walls. I am graduating in two weeks and finishing up my college life with this class has been wonderful. At first, I thought the blogs would be boring, but I have actually enjoyed expressing my thoughts and learning about new marketing concepts. I never realized that marketing is such a big part of my daily life, and I am now aware of my surroundings and correlate it all back to marketing.

In the beginning of the course, Professor Walls lectured about the "Paradox of Choice." Not only is the paradox of choice relevant for buying products at a grocery store, they were extremely relevant in the group project. From the start, Professor Walls allowed each group to choose their own segment. If he just assigned us a segment like he did for the rooms, it would be easy because we would be forced to work with what we got. instead, a group of 5 people had to decide which segment would be easy to work with. Also, we had to choose a segment that we could easily relate to each room. Our group struggled with choosing a segment because there were so many that we brainstormed. We finally narrowed the choices down to two. We went back and forth between teenage girls and expecting parents. We finally chose expecting parents. The funny part is, a couple of weeks later, were were not satisfied with our decision, so we changed it to parents that just had a baby. This goes to show that making decisions are not easy when you have many choices to choose from. Also, it is easy for people to regret a decision and desire a change.

Another topic that I learned was that marketers really have to fully understand the consumer before attempting to sell a product. Looking back at "The Persuaders," I realized that Song Airlines really concentrated on connecting with consumers on a more personal level. They want to benefit the customer in a beneficial and emotional way. Our group tried to understand our target segment in the same way. By performing surveys, we got answers to their wants and needs, as well as an understanding of how they feel. We also got our participants to email us several pictures of their likes and dislikes in the bedroom, which helped us analyze what products would be useful for them. Without any of this research in understanding the consumer, we would have never been able to produce a prototype. Our group produced a baby monitor that text messages the parents when the baby is crying. This is a convenient item that allows the parents to be away from their baby when they need to relax. Many couples like to have their space from the baby, not in a bad way! They just like to have time to themselves when the baby is asleep.

I had a great time working on this project. My teammates were great! They all contributed in their own way and everyone was always on top of things. I thought we were extremely organized and separated the work evenly so that it was fair. I really enjoyed Professor Walls teaching this class. He really helped our group and gave us good ideas that we never even thought about. He was very nice to participate in our research and always took the time to hear our concerns after class. It was a great learning process and I like how we slowly learned more about our target segment each week. Each work day, we got to dive in and really think of new ideas and emotions from our segment and room.