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.