In the beginning of this marketing class, there were outcomes and objectives defined for us to accomplish by the end of the course. I believe most of these were achieved through the in-class and hands-on learning opportunities we had.
One of the content outcomes for the course was to “understand the functions, roles, and responsibilities of marketers.” Through the marketing simulation, I learned how much marketers are responsible for. When most people think of marketing they immediately think of advertising. The backpack simulation and the content discussed in class made me realize that marketers are in charge of making decisions on much more than just advertising. I learned that marketers have to make decisions on price, distribution, and promotion. They also have to figure out how to connect all of their efforts to adhere and appeal to their target market, which they also have the responsibility of defining. Marketers play a vital role in the success of a business. Through practice marketing, I learned that as a marketer you have to learn to adapt and change your strategy if things aren’t going well. I think flexibility and creativity are important characteristics for marketers to have.
Another content outcome was to “understand that the marketing process starts and ends with customers and consumers.” I think a huge takeaway from this course was realizing the importance of the customer and that they need to be the main focus. Every decision that marketers make is made with the consumer in mind. The reason you create a product is to meet the needs or wants of customers. Appealing to customers is the driving force behind all marketing actions. In practice marketing, we designed our backpack to appeal to luxury trend followers. All our decisions revolved around what our target market wanted in a backpack. And in the end, the major thing that matters is if the customer is satisfied with your product. Unhappy customers will not buy your product again and may speak badly of the product to their friends. In the simulation, if we didn’t meet the needs of our target market, we didn’t sell a lot of backpacks.
The practice marketing simulation also gave me the opportunity to create and analyze an income statement. I learned the formulas to create the income statement needed to keep track of how our backpack was performing throughout the simulation. It was really helpful to go over these formulas together in class so we could easily track our performance on our own. This allowed me to achieve the cognitive outcome to “analyze and evaluate basic financial statements and business formulas.” I think financial statements are a great way to keep financial information organized and it makes it easy to evaluate how your company is doing.
In this course, we did a lot of presenting independently and with a group. I think I really enhanced my presentation skills and feel a lot more comfortable and confident presenting in front of a group. The individual presentations were to present a Ted Talk and two different advertisements. We were supposed to show our classmates how the videos we chose related to the chapters in our textbook. Another part was to show how the advertisements were effective in reaching their target market. One of the application outcomes was to “use written and oral skills to persuade a target audience”. I think this was accomplished through the practice I got with presenting in class and also in my blog, as I had to convince my readers why certain topics in marketing are important. When I presented in class I had to convince my classmates why or why not the advertisements were effective or successful.
Overall, I gained a lot of knowledge and experience of the marketing world and what it means to be a marketer. I was able to learn and understand concepts in class and recognize how real marketers utilize these concepts when marketing their products. Then I was also able to use the example of other marketers to apply these concepts to the practice marketing simulation. I got to participate in a group of other “marketers” to effectively market a backpack. I feel I had the full opportunity to put marketing into action especially when we had the chance to make a commercial to market out backpack. I had to work with my group to design a logo to put on our backpack and then think of a creative way to display our backpack to appeal to our target market. I think this aspect of putting marketing into action was vital to tying the whole course together and creating a full learning experience.
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