Blog post 9

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.

Blog post 8

Blog post 8

From start to close

I do not have exact statistics but it is very hard to start a successful new business. On average about 30% of business’ fail with in their first two years.

About another 20% will fold in the three years following that.

Only about 1 out of 10 companies will last for an extended, longer period of time.

I thought this was something important to talk about for a few reasons. One is that being an entrepreneur or a businessman or woman, you cannot be afraid of statistics.  There are going to be many statistics going the other way and that is okay. Also just because your business did not succeed does not particularly mean you lost money because often you will not loose money depending on the type of investment you made.

I wanted to write about this because starting my own company I realized it is hard to start a successful business, and I was scared of the stats. The thing I realized though is you have to just go for it and take risks. It took me a while to get to where I am today, but the company is doing well and we take risks hoping to grow exponentially. 

 

Blog post 7

Blog Post 7

What to trust?

In marketing the goal is to put an idea in the mind of the consumer. In some cases the marketers will skew the truth or manipulate information to promote their product, service or idea. Marketers will do anything to get the attention of consumers. Sometimes they will hide things or lie.

One example I hate is with IBM. It’s not so much that they lie. But they will support American causes in times of need to get their name in the media. The reason I do not like this is because IBM sold technology to Nazi-Germany during WWII.

Another example of a company skewing the truth is VW. They were advertising their diesel cars as environmentally friendly and great on gas. As they may be great on gas their engines were giving off for more pollution than the legal limit allows, therefore not being an environmental car as they advertise it to be.

There are many common phrases or play on words that can work to the marketer’s advantage. Phrases like this are dangerous to consumers; “Our 30 day program will get you rich!” (Particularly very gullible or uneducated consumers)

Blog post 6

Blog Post 6

Product life cycle

The Product life cycle is the main course that a product takes during its life span in the market.  There are four steps throughout this process. I will list the 4 steps as well as a brief definition.

1. Introductory

This stage is when the new product is brought to the market. There are often few competitors, you are only introducing one product, skimming or penetration pricing strategies occur, and the promotional objective is informing and educating consumers about their new product.

2. Growth

This stage is the point of more competition. During the growth stage more options and editions of product are available. Pricing strategies and now used not to enter the market but to gain market share. During this stage the distribution increases, and the marketing objective is stressing points of difference among competition.

3. Maturity

By the maturity stage there is much more competition and full product lines are offered. The pricing strategies now used are to hold the market share they have. At this point a company would like to maximize distribution.

4. Decline

At this point there is reduced competition, and only best-selling products remain in the market. New pricing strategies are implemented to stay profitable. Often at this point there is less distribution, and little to no promotion at all. 

 

Blog post 5

Blog post 5

Marketing Failure

Marketing publically is an art that is hard to master. Of course, marketing is such a big part of a company’s sale that a failure here can result in a failure of the company. There have been some fantastic advertisements out there and some are more effective than you could even realize. But like in any part of life, with these great success’ there have been many failures. A lot of the failures are those ads you see on TV and after watching it you say, “that commercial was stupid” or “what was the point of that”. Often those commercials are taken off the air pretty quickly.

 

For Stumble we have not seen any posts or ads indicating failure of any marketing but we also have a small marketing budget. The only failure we have really seen was a lack of marketing with the hats. We did not market our hats enough and they did not sell as quickly as we would have liked.

Blog post 4

Blog Post 4

Market Segmentation

Market segmentation-“ is a marketing strategy which involves dividing a broad target market into subsets of consumers, businesses, or countries who have, or are perceived to have, common needs, interests, and priorities, and then designing and implementing strategies to target them.”

Market segmentation can be broken down many different ways. As the definition says, you want to break each group up by common needs. Often when you are breaking people up by common needs you end up breaking them up as types of people.

For Stumble our target market is a college student, but of course we will sell to anyone. When we look at our sales we realize we can be more specific. Some items sell better to girls than to guys. Some shirts are more expensive and really only purchased by older folks as well as our most loyal customers.

Each of these pieces of info we were able to gather helped put us in the right direction for segmenting our market. We now market more to women than we previously did. We also make our new lines more available to adults and people who are not on college campuses’.

There are a few categories that you can generally use to guide your market segmentation.

Blog Post 3

Chapter 3

Consumer Behavior

The Consumer Purchase Decision Process breaks down each step a consumer’s mind goes through when making a purchase. This decision happens with both high and low involvement products. Although this happens with both types of products the high involvement products make the last four steps much deeper than they would be otherwise. I am going to list the 5 steps as well as a simple explanation and an example from my own experiences with Stumble.

1. Problem Recognition

           

-When the consumer realizes they have a need

           

*When Stumble Clothing LLC was officially formed we searched for a manufacturer to get our clothing from.

2.Information Search

-When the consumer makes an effort to seek value

*As a team we contacted many manufacturers, looking to find what types of shirts we wanted to purchase.

3. Alternative Evaluation

-When the consumer assess the value between products.

*We narrowed our search of manufacturers down to two shops. They offered different prices but the products were slightly different as well.

4. Purchase Decision

-When the consumer comes to their decision

*After evaluating which of the two shops was offering us a better value, we ended up going with the more expensive shop because they could offer more detail.

5. Post-Purchase Behavior

-When the consumer examines the value in consumption and forms an opinion about their purchase.

*We were satisfied with many aspects of our shirts, but unfortunately we were unhappy with the tags. We decided exactly what we liked and did not like, then we let the manufacturer know.

Blog Post 2

BLOG POST 2

Environmental Scanning is a big part of success in marketing. It is important to see and analyze the world and internal and external factors of the market you are trying to reach. Environmental Scanning is the process of continually acquiring information on events occurring outside the organization to identify and interpret potential trends. When reading this chapter, I was able to think about each and every one of these concepts relating to my clothing company. When I first heard this term I was able to stop and think of what events outside my company will affect our sales. 

After thinking about it, it was hard to decide what external factors would effect us the most. There were a few possible situations I thought we would need to be aware of. The first would be if another startup clothing company appears on any of the campuses we are present at. That would be a factor that would cause us to ramp up our advertising and show that we provided a superior product. 

There are 5 environmental forces. I will break each one down and provide an example of each relating to my company. The five forces are Social, Technological, Economic, Competitive and Regulatory. 

Social: This force includes demographics and cultural influence. This means population statistics, such as age, gender etc. The cultural piece refers to the values, ideas and attitudes each group represents. For Stumble, my company we are targeting mainly males from the ages 18 to 25ish. With this group being targeted it makes the most sense to try to sell on college campuses. The cultural part of this is easy for us right now. No matter how you were raised all college kids have some of the same things in common, some things we can to see eye to eye on. Being 20, I feel I understand our market well. 

Technological: These forces are innovations or inventions that change the efficiency of our market. For Stumble this comes mostly with payment. Clothing trends come and go of course and we are able to change with trends but the payment methods now are a game changer for us. With the market we are targeting it is a lot easier to get our customers to pay with card than cash. We wanted to make our payment process as easy as possible for our customers so we have square readers, so we can have people swipe and sign anywhere. We are also planning on using Venmo in the near future. 

Economic: This is the force that relates to income payment and other money related issues of our market. Since we are reaching out to these college age kids we assume we can not price our products too high. We do not want to make anything too expensive but with the companies we want to be compared with we need to price our stuff for a bit more expensive than what college kids would typically pay for clothing. With creating limited quantities we are able to make a balance that works.

Competitive: This is other sources that could provide satisfaction to the same market with a similar idea or product. For us we are a start up company being run by people of the same age as our market so I think it provides an advantage. With that said, there are many other companies out there providing similar products to ours. 

Regulatory: this is the last force. This is the state or federal laws that impact our company. Because we are such a small company we have not had to deal with this too much yet so I don't have too much personal experience with this.

 

 Jackson Steele's Marketing BU-214 Blog

Hello Everybody! I am Jackson Steele and I am a sophomore at Saint Michaels College in Vermont. I am a Business Administration major and I have not yet declared a minor. I am a member of the Men’s soccer team and a big supporter of all Saint Michael’s athletic teams. Coming into my sophomore year I definitely set the bar higher for myself, and I want to get as much out the classes I have enrolled in as I can.  I have high expectations for myself this year and with a strong work rate I am confident I can reach all my goals. On top of taking more challenging courses and creating a harder schedule for myself I have started a clothing company with one of my teammates. Our company is called Stumble Clothing Company and it is an LLC. I think this will be very beneficial to myself, because with all the concepts I learn this year in business classes, I will be able to practice in the real world gaining real life experience. I hope my introduction intrigues you to keep reading and follow me as I discuss the terms and concepts I learn throughout the semester, and how I can apply some of these ideas and these terms to Stumble.

 

These first two weeks of class I have learned basic marketing strategies and about creating customer relationships. We have looked into basic terms we will need for the rest of the semester such as “marketing” which is the activity for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that benefit its customers, the organization, its stakeholders, and society at large. We have looked at other main terms for the course as well but I think that everything we learn in this course comes right back to that definition.  One of the other key terms we learned was “market”. This is people with both the desire and ability to buy a specific offering. I have already found this very useful, and I was able to go back in my companies marketing plan and re-evaluate the market we are trying to hit. This brings me to another key term from the first few weeks; “Target market”. A target market is a one or more specific groups of potential consumers toward which an organization directs its marketing program.  I was able to sit down with my co founders and re word our stated target market. We are a clothing company selling our clothes for what we see as mid level prices. We were able to decide our target market is teen age to college age males at prep schools and colleges in New England, rather than just college students, which what it was before.

The last major concept that I think is key when talking about what we have learned the past few weeks is the marketing mix. The marketing mix is the 4 P’s of marketing and how they are used. The 4 P’s are Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Product is a good, service, or idea to satisfy the consumer’s needs. Price what is exchanged for the product. Place is a means of getting the product to the consumer. The last one is Promotion and this is a means of communication between the seller and buyer.