Week 9: Product Life Cycle

Today we discussed the different stages of a product's life cycle. No matter what kind of product, service, celebrity, or singer you will always go through the typical Product Life Cycle. An exercise done in class where we listed off actors, actresses, and singers that fit into different stages of the cycle was very interesting and really put it into perspective for us students. For example, Lady Gaga is still in the "Growth Stage" where she is gaining popularity with her music, but is still not up to the "Mature Stage" like Jay-Z or Beyonce.

It was also interesting how you can easily start the cycle over with the same product, by simply modifying the product, service, or actor/actress, and singer.



-Posted by Arika Flynn

Week 8: Segmenting and Positioning

It is very important to segment your audience in a way that it appeals to your consumers. There are many ways of doing this but one major way is to define your audience by demographics, geographics, psychographics, and behavioristic traits. This results in very successful segmenting and can be very beneficial to your company.

Another major aspect of marketing a new product is how you position it within the market. Here, you want to make known your differential benefit opposed to your competitors. For example, we created a transportation service called The Cougar Express, which is very similar to Horizon Air, the Wheatland Express, and people's personal transportation. Although, we have positioned our product in the market to be less expensive than our competitors prices, which gives our service a differential benefit.

It is important to incorporate both of these factors into your promotional marketing plan--it can ultimately determine the success or failure of your product or service.

Week 7: Segmenting

This week in class we discussed marketing segmenting. It was very ineresting to learn how many factors can influence a consumer and how marketers segment them. For example, gender, culture, and geographic area were all factors that can influence how businesses market their product.

When you buy a product you never really think about how much goes into making that end purchase. Marketers think of every little detail that seems so minor to any normal person, and we simply think, "Why does that matter?" Although, when looking at research many of these factors can easily influence a consumers purchase.



-Posted by Carsten Bocchi

Week 6: Exam Results

We had just taken our first exam for Marketing 360, and I thought things went quite well. The test seemed pretty straight forward, although there were a few questions that I was second guessing due to the fact that the answers were pretty similar.

After getting my test results back, I was pleased with the score I got. Although, for the next test I might try to focus more on reading the text book; that way I can understand how to apply most of the terms, and look at the examples they use in the book. It would be nice to get someone elses perspective on the marketing concepts rather than just one persons.


-Posted by Arika Flynn