All Good Things Must Come to and End

Hi Everyone! Unfortunately this will be my last blog post of the semester. In my first post I introduced myself and explained what my overall goal of this blog was. But here in my final post I want to highlight some of our marketing course objectives and how our class touched on them.

Our first objective was to “convey basic and emerging marketing concepts and terminologies.” I accomplished this in several different areas of the course. Every Monday we would have a quiz on a new chapter in the textbook, and these quizzes tested basic marketing terminology definitions. Then, every other Friday in our blog posts I would incorporate some of these marketing concepts into my posts. Some terminology I included in my blog posts were the marketing mix, the product life cycle, product repositioning, market segmentation, and dozens more. I think by including real examples of the course terminology in my blog posts helped me fully understand their meaning and importance.

Our second objective was to understand specific marketing concepts such as the marketing mix, target markets, consumer behavior, service marketing, and social media. Throughout this course, our class learned these concepts and had to apply them to our marketing for a cause event and project. The marketing mix consists of the four P’s, and they are the factors a business has marketing control over. Our marketing for a cause event made us choose our place, product, price, and methods of promotion for our event. Our target market was also applied in this event, because we had to market our event towards Saint Michael’s College students. We also spent a significant amount of time looking at consumer behavior, and we studied examples of how real life companies such as Ben and Jerry’s, Cadillac, and Bud Light made marketing decisions based on consumer behavior. Also, social media is an important concept to study, because it is widely used by all types of consumers for all types of products. Again, our marketing for a cause event gave us an opportunity to promote our event though social media.

Our class also spent some time looking at ethical issues that managers often face. We learned the triple bottom line, and how all businesses should strive to maximize profits while having a sustainable impact on the planet and giving fair opportunities for all people. We also discussed how some business practices are unethical, such as child labor, unsafe working conditions, unfair wages, fraud, and false financial records. We finally looked at some real life examples such as the Volkswagen scandal.

Finally, our class also had the opportunity to work in teams, perform presentations, and create projects and reports.  I think that this was the most important aspect of this course, because after we graduate we will find ourselves doing similar tasks no matter where our careers take us. Learning how to give presentations and work in groups is an important life skill and we practiced it several times throughout this course. Also, the financial report assignment gave us some basic Excel skills, and gave us some experience working with financial statements.

Overall, this course taught us both valuable terminology, and gave us hands on experience working in teams, giving presentations, and working with media and technology. Our course objectives were introduced at the beginning of the semester, and by the end our class has accomplished all of them.