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.