Enterprise Week activities

During Enterprise week I had attended three seminars consisting of 'Telling it like it is', 'Marketing Industry Panel', and finally 'All Spin and Froth'.

'Telling it like it is' was all about former Bucks Uni students who have all graduated in different years and the different jobs they now have and what it took to get to the position they are now in. One of the ladies has worked all around the world and is currently living in Dubai. Another, graduated last year and is still living in High Wycombe and works for a PR company. Here, we met former students working from the client side as well. What all the guest speakers had said was to get as much work experience as we would into our first, second and third years at univeristy. This would make getting a good job after graduating.

'Marketing Industry Panel' included five highly successful business men and women who work for very largh PR and Advertising companies. Here, pages of notes were taken about the business they work in and answers to questioned which they were faced with. Some of the guest speakers included: Sue from MediaCom, Rick from RAP Agency and George from Millward Brown.
some of the questions which were asked was 'Does the consumer care about advertising?':
Rick had said that the consumer cares about the TV program but not particularly the advertising. Sue said that L'Oreal was a successful brand because it is tightly controlled when it comes to advertising. It has a clear brand image and doesn't make claims that they cant deliver on.

Some other things that were said was about how would one become successful in this industry. Some of the feedback included: Sue saying that you need to be both left brained and right brained and Sue saying that building a reputation with the clients is highly important.

The final Seminar I had attended was the 'All Spin and Froth' one. Here the guest speaker spoke about the effects of spin and froth within the advertising industry. She also mentioned the issue which arose with the Mclaren baby buggies and how they had chopped little kids hands off and how Mclaren dealt with the issue.



Also during enterprise week, there was the student enterprise competitions where myself and 5 other team mates got together and had to hold a doughnut stand in specified allocations around the Eden shopping centre against other Bucks student teams. Our team were given 50 pounds to spend on anything we liked in order to boost our sales. Our sponsors were 'Dreams' the mattress specialists. Through phone calls and looking through the local paper we were able to find a nice doughnut factory which produced top quality doughnuts which were very large and of different colours. Other teams took the easy way out and bought cheap jam doughnuts from Tesco. Luckily, my team got second place and made it into the next round. Here marketing skills and planning was essential. We decided to make a christmas hamper as it was close to the time. We did however sell out but at a very low price due tot he high costs of the actual box used to put the sweet and ornaments in. We hadn't made it into the final round unfortunately.

The whole enterprise week experience help to show me my strengths and weaknesses and what I needed to improve on which was mainly confidence when marketing to people. Listening to the guest speakers motivated me as it gave me hope and a positive view on the industry and hopefully to be working in it.

Personality and Self-Concept

My defintions:
Personality is the way in which a person acts and behaves due to a number of factors including their surroundings, upbringing and interests.

Self-concept is the different beleifs each person has about themselves and how each person views and values others.

Definitions from the internet:

Personality
The quality or condition of being a person.
2. The totality of qualities and traits, as of character or behavior, that are peculiar to a specific person.
3. The pattern of collective character, behavioral, temperamental, emotional, and mental traits of a person: Though their personalities differed, they got along as friends.
4. Distinctive qualities of a person, especially those distinguishing personal characteristics that make one socially appealing: won the election more on personality than on capability. See Synonyms at disposition.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/personality

Self Concept

an individual's sense of self, including self-definition in the various social roles one enacts, including assessment of one's own status with respect to a single trait or to many human dimensions, using societal or personal norms as criteria.

http://dictionary.webmd.com/terms/self-concept


Factors Influencing Behaviour:
Cultural(Culture, Subculture, Social Class;
Social (Reference Groups, Family, Roles and Status);
Personal (Age & lifecycle stage, Occupation, Economic circumstances, Lifestyle, Personality and self Concept)
Psychological (Motivation, Perception, Learning Beliefs & Attitudes)

Below is a print advertisement, grasping onto someone's low self esteem



Here, this advertisement, adds a bit of humour along with the model posing sexy. the humour part includes the sentence on the right area of the ad 'Bet you didn't notice the guy in the ape suit'. Down below the brand name/logo it says 'work your curves'. This targets ordinary people who are not stick thin models. The model in the image is thin but not stick thin and the humour brings a bit of fun to the image instead of a seductive and sexy vibe.

Below is a very famous Dove advertisement on the perception of beauty. Here, we see an ordinary young lady walk into a studio. From there, her hair and make up is done up and then a photoshoot takes place. Following that, she is drastically edited on photoshop. Her eyes are made bigger, neck made longer and thinner and her face made more defined. Towards the end of the advertisement it says 'No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted' which is very true these days with all the print advertisements and photoshop airbrushing. After that, its says 'Take part in the Dove Real Beauty Workshop for girls' and then the brand name and logo come in 'The Dove Self Esteem Fund'. This advertisement clearly targets the ordinary female with insecurities and pressures to look like supermodels. The objective of this advertisement is to show them the reality of how these people end up looking as good as they are. This makes people feel better about themselves oppose to depressed and have lower self esteem.

Harvard Perceived Risk Model

Harvard Perceived Risk Model

Here are the possible risks in the model:


FINANCE - what the financial risks are

TIME - How much time it actually takes to make the purchase decision

PERFORMANCE - What the risks may be when bought and not performing to the expected standard

EGO – Whether or not the purchase will be an ego booster or ego harmer

PHYSICAL - What risk is involved in this item as it may cause harm

SOCIAL – Whether or not this purchase will effect your social status


The results are different for different social groups as they all have different expectations for the same product.. An example may be an 18 year old buying their first car which will have a HIGH finance, take a LONG time to actually make the decision, it wont need a HIGH performance rate, it will have a MIDDLE of the range ego rate, the physical risk will be LOW and the social risk will be HIGH. For an middle aged man the finance will be LOW, time will be MIDDLE of the range, performance will be HIGH, ego will be HIGH, physical will be HIGH and social will be MIDDLE of the range.
Perceptual Maps
In helping you develop a market positioning strategy for your product or service, perceptual maps or positioning maps as they are sometimes referred to, are often used to help the organisation identify a positioning strategy.


When plotting a peceptual map two dimensions are commonly used. Below is a basic perceptual map. If we plot the UK chocolate market we can identify those brands which are high price and high quality. Belgium chocolates are plotted as high quality and high price, and twix is plotted one low quality low price brand. Once completed the perceptual map could help identify where an organisation could launch a new brand pherhaps at the medium price and quality range. In our basic map, you can see there is not much competition within that particular area.




http://www.learnmarketing.net/perceptualmaps.htm



Useful Definition:


Perceptual mapping is a graphics technique used by marketers that attempts to visually display the perceptions of customers or potential customers. Typically the position of a product, product line, brand or company is displayed relative to their competition.


http://www.nowsell.com/marketing-guide/perceptual-mapping.html






Perceptual Process


Perception is generally defined as the process by which a person assimilates and makes use of sensory data. In other words, perception is the selection, organization, and interpretation of sensory data. Perception studies are imperative because perception eventually leads to behavior.

http://socyberty.com/psychology/the-stages-of-human-perceptual-process/




















Things in which grab people’s attention are music in television advertisements, the colour of the advertisement, the actual actions occurring in the advertisement and the people in it.
When buying a product, people expect certain colour for certain products. An example of this is, medicated shampoo is usually in bright white bottles, white wine in green bottles and red wine in red. Feminine products are usually in pink packages and men in grey or black.

Perception and the Decision Making Process

Perception and the Decision Making Process



Kotler’s Buying Decision Process:
This is the study of how and why people purchase goods and services. The term (consumer buying behaviour) shows the decision making processes from the moment we see a good or services, to the final experience of using the product or service. The model covers the various influences on and the process of the reason why we decide to buy a product or not.
http://www.marcbowles.com/courses/adv_dip/module12/chapter4/amc12_ch4_two.htm



An example for this is buying a body lotion. Firstly, the consumer feels that perhaps their skin is often too dry. They then look around shops or online to see the different options available. After they may feel that maybe instead of a body lotion they have the option to buy body oil. They evaluate all the different lotions and oils available. Soon, the consumer has decided to buy the middle of the range lotion with extra moisture. The post purchase behaviour may be good as now the consumer has soft and smooth skin and at the same time did not spend too much.






Definition:

The actions a person takes in purchasing and using products and services,including the mental and social processes that precede and follow these actions. The behavioral sciences help answer questions such as :Why people choose one product or brand over another, How they make these choices, and How companies use this knowledge to provide value to consumers

http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~renglish/370/notes/chapt05/index.htm