Blog post 9
Reflection
1. Through this class I was able to look at marketing
concepts I had no idea about and put them to use right away. As I mentioned
throughout my blog, my company, Stumble Clothing, was a great way to
immediately think about how the class material could be applied to Stumble. In
some cases I was able to think about how a term applies to my company, but with
some I was able to learn it, think about how I could improve Stumble, and apply
it immediately.
2. In class we learned about the Marketing Mix, or the 4 P’s
as we call them in class. The four P’s are; Product, Price, Place and
Promotion. I wanted to make sure that through Stumble’s advertising and
Marketing we are displaying these four things. I think we did a good job making
it clear that our products are good-looking, simple, quality clothing. The
price is not shown directly in any of our methods of marketing but in most of
our photos college kids are wearing the items implying that they are affordable
to other college students who make up the majority of our target market. We
also know that a purchase of this price will have a lower involved process for
older people so we target high school and college student’s parents. We learned
how important social media is to marketing these days, and although social
media was our main stream of advertising already we started amping it up more
trying to post more often, and gain more followers constantly.
3. Studying the consumer was one of the most important
things that this class taught me. Consumer behavior is much more predictable
than you would think. Throughout the year our growth and sales data have
changed constantly. I did not understand exactly why this was until learning
about consumer behavior. One example of this was after selling our first batch
of 50 shirts in less than four hours then taking a week to sell the second
batch. I was thinking about this and it made sense to me now. I think that the
first batch sold so quickly because the consumers were mostly people I knew and
they were more excited for the brand than the products. We also think the sales
took a little bit longer because the second order came in close to the final
third of the semester when money is tighter for many college students.
4. We looked at many ethical issues during this class, and
appropriately spend a lot of time looking at Volks-Wagon and their pollution
issue that emerged this year. Being a
marketing manager in this situation would suck to be honest. Your company has
to cut its budgets and there is not a great way to turn this into a positive
because it is not a positive thing with such poor ethics. At Stumble we looked
at getting shirts from Mexico but doing the printing here so the shirts could
technically say “made in the USA”, but doing that seemed sneaky so we decided
against that.
5. This fall I set a few personal goals directly relating to
professional goals. I wanted to become much better with my time management, so I
could calmly handle class work, soccer and Stumble. I was somewhat successful
but there was still some procrastination, especially after soccer games. One
other goal I set for myself was to gain a solid foundation in marketing so I
could personally grow my company all fall using what I learn to improve it. It
was a great experience running this company while learning all of this
material.
