Class 12 - April 14, 2011

This week we learned about Chapter 15, Advertising and Public Relations.  The part of this chapter that interested me the most was learning about the 3 types of product advertising:

• Pioneering: Stimulates primary demand for new product or category & is used in the PLC introductory stage.
• Competitive: Influences demand for brand  in the growth phase of the PLC & often uses emotional appeal.
• Comparative: Compares two or more competing brands' product attributes & used if growth is sluggish, or if competition is strong.

I thought it was interesting to see the correlation between the type of advertising and the stage of the product life cycle. 

Class 11 - March 31, 2011

This week we discussed Chapter 14, Integrated Marketing Communications.  The part of this chapter that interested me the most was the very beginning, where we talked about the role of promotion in the marketing mix.  Promotion is the communication by marketers that informs, persuades, and reminds potential buyers of a product in order to influence their opinion or elicit a response.  The promotional strategy is a plan for the optimal use of the elements of promotion: advertising, public relations, personal selling, and sales promotion.  The main function of a marketer's promotional strategy is to convince target customers that the goods and services offered provide a competitive advantage over the competition.  A competitive advantage is the set of unique features of a company and its products that are perceived by the target market as significant and superior to the competition. 

Combining the elements of the promotional mix - advertising, public relations, sales promotion, and personal selling - will help achieve the organization's overall goals and reach the target market. 

For my business, I will need to combine advertising, especially word-of-mouth, and personal selling to create my clientele and build up my business.

Class 10 - March 24, 2011

Today's class was cancelled so that we, students at USU, could support our basketball team in a big game.  Instead of having class, we still read Chapter 12 - Marketing Channels and Supply Chain Management and took the quiz, but then we also had a group discussion about Kandy Kastle online.

The case study was a lot of fun to do this way, rather than discuss it in class.  It forced everyone to get involved and contribute to the discussion.  I chose the question about the Spin Pop - a spinning sucker -"To what category of new products does the Spin Pop belong?"  At first I wasn't sure if it would belong to improvements and revisions because it was really just a new "spin" on the ring pop, or if it was a new product because it was the only spinning sucker.  After lots of discussions and thought of other students in the class, I think it could kind of be both, but mainly an improvement and revision product. 

It was a fun way to have class.