Coffee Machine Failures and Finals Week

First thoughts on what a student wants during finals week (and not just A's on finals), coffee. Coffee is the delicious drink of the gods that gives us all energy and sometimes stomach gurgles. Coffee is the perfect way to end this semester of blog posts because I will be drinking so much very soon.

Here at the Miller College of Business, we have a coffee vending machine. It's coffee is marginally better than drinking nothing. It costs 75 cents max (and that is for the 'premium' stuff), which is relatively cheap next to Starbucks with their 4 dollar coffee.

 For finals week, the coffee in the coffee machine is only 25cents. I heard the news and went to find a quarter, but alas, the cheap coffee was only for the cheap coffee. I usually drink my coffee almost black at home, but I cannot do that here. The regular coffee (and the decaf I assume) tastes very burnt.

None the less, Canteen vending is discounting their coffee to meet a need. There is a heightened need for coffee in the college of business this time of year, but where does the line for quality come into play? I suppose some students will appreciate the coffee being 25cents cheaper. Honestly though, I wish the foo foo drinks were on sale because those are the only ones I can stomach.

The placement and price are on point for this product. The product itself is lagging though. The promotion is minimal as you can see by the sign posted on the vending machine. Word of mouth is the only reason I heard about this promotion. 

Learning Achievement Memo

I saw that this could be completed through alternative media, and I thought my blog would be perfect. I want to integrate pictures and links to my memo, and I think doing that on word would be difficult and messy. The text is also color coordinated to the rubric. The three components are broken into these colors. 

Knowledge

Application

Importance

I’ll be honest, I was wary of taking a marketing class. I’m a student of business and not some advertising student. I didn’t realize there was a difference between marketing and advertising.  I figured it should be in the communications college with advertising. People talk about how marketing is the blow off business major. I would like to apologize for my ignorance. Marketing belongs within the college of business and it is a serious major.

Surprisingly, this guy isn't public enemy #1

Marketing is about looking at a need and finding a way to satisfy that need. The customer isn’t being sold something they don’t want, the customer has a need. I always felt uncomfortable about sales/marketing because I felt like it was the art of getting someone to buy something they don’t want (kinda like a used car salesman). I realize now that marketer’s really just fix the market to best satisfy needs. I’ve had numerous conversations with my classmates about how competition effects the perception of marketing and we always talk about how competition makes promotion efforts stronger. I’ve concluded that is why I think people feel they are being sold something they don’t need. 



"There is not a perfect product, there are perfect products." This was from Malcolm Gladwell's 'What we can learn from spaghetti sauce'. This was a major realization for me. I always knew that people didn’t like the same things all the time, but I suppose I didn’t think about how it could be related to other aspects of life. There isn’t a person that is perfect to be friends with everyone. There isn’t a class that everyone should take. There really isn’t one sauce for everyone. I have a food blog and I used to be in search of perfect dishes. I wanted to make the perfect use of chicken, perfect ramen noodles, or perfect way to make kale taste good(notice there is no link because it's impossible). I now am in search of finding my perfect sauce. 

Lets talk about the product life cycle, and how my economics classes betrayed me this one time. I never thought about the product life cycle until this class. It makes complete sense. I had never thought about the drastic growth in a product or the inflation of others into the market before. In my economics courses there was always perfect competition and I had never considered a market where there was little competition. My mind was completely blown and I will always remember this concept. 

 

There are a lot of social networks out there, but it's time to be professional.

My Self Branding. I remember reading that article about self-branding the first week of school. It always seems to pop up in the back of my mind now whenever I’m tweeting. I don’t use my real name on Twitter or Facebook. I don’t think that an employer would be able to find me, but if an employer were to ask for my social media information, I'm not sure what they would think. This semester I have greatly slowed down my political rants on my social media, but I think I could cool it more. Before this semester I was obsessed with my klout score and I realized I would much rather have a low klout with the content that will keep me a job than generate high buzz content (which is usually inappropriate and not professional) for a higher klout score. 



I suppose we all market ourselves all of the time. We not only are our own brand, but we are trying to satisfy the needs of many people around us. We almost change ourselves to be what we are needed to be every day. I’m needed to be the roommate that takes out the trash. I’m needed to be the employee that shows up before everyone else just to open the office. I’m needed to be the student who asks questions to break up a lecture and create a discussion. 

We all are needed to be something or someone, and we market ourselves to do that. In a job interview, we do our best to let the potential employer know that we are what they need. We satisfy the needs they have. We can supply them the labor needed for the job at a price that is acceptable. We market ourselves all of the time unknowingly. Walking away from this class and starting to consciously market myself has been one of the most invaluable experiences of my time at ball state. Thank you for everything Dr. Brudvig, it has been a great semester.