Feminine Products

Marketing:
Brother Eager came around outside the classroom, while we were waiting for the class before us to finally move out, and shook our hands and introduced himself. It was his way of saying, "We haven't had class together in a while."
We talked about Consumer Behavior today. We went over the Tivo Case, and that was okay, but the true fun came from his lecture afterwards. The thing that got me the most was a chart he drew up on the white board. It was a usual bell shaped curve, but it was marked with this info.
2.5% innovators – small group think of the ideas or refine it and (geeks)
13.5% Early Adopters – can see a cool idea, take risks.
34% Early Majority – like cool things but don’t like to risk.
34% Late Adapters – Conformists!
16% Laggards – “Just getting microwaves”, DVD’s
He did interrupt his own teaching to relate a story he had of going to buy a car in Sandy Utah. It was funny but it reminded me of this video. There are tricks to buying a car and that video and many on youtube will help you not have his poor experience in buying a new car. But the buying of a new car brings up the steps we take to buy a "big ticket" item.
1. Identify a need/wait/desire
2. Research
a. Internet
b. Friends
c. Consumer Reports
d. Store
e. Ads
3. Narrowing
4. Buy
5. Post Purchase (justification)
The last one we talked on for a good amount, but then it was onto talking about how hard it is to market to, or take people away from, their routine purchases. Examples of routine purchases, or brand loyalty, are type of deodorant, toothpaste, bread, milk, and as I so obviously put "TAMPONS"! For some reason that was uncomfortable to some people. I don't know why, we should be all adults there, but I guess not. Maybe I should have used a more scientific term like, "Feminine Products". Oh boo-hoo!

Finance:
This was quick and painless, we talked about what ratios are, and who they matter to most. We looked at some website that gave the ratios for a couple of companies. That was kind of interesting. I was more interested in making a sweet poster for our Marketing meeting. So that class went by fast and even got out 30 minutes early.

Outside of Class:
So my poster idea was to get people to stop and text the company name "STITCHED" to 41411 and get signed up for our text updates. No one seemed to like my idea much and I guess I didn't follow instructions very well. The goal was to explain what we did and mine was more geared toward getting people to know who we were first and also to get subscribers or fan base. I might be a bit too advanced (technologically speaking) for the majority of the students. Twitter is a completely complex and foreign idea to them. We'll see how things turn out, but I'm pretty sure Stacey (CMO) feels I have too much power and reign. Perhaps I do. I would love to know her thoughts on the matter and help out any way I can. I also have a vision of how we can use our resources to make this company get out there.
Most of my stuff is waiting upon a catalog, and we can't do much else on that front but wait. One thing I'm noticing is that my job may be under marketing, because I work mostly with them, but I am all over the place. With a web business, I need finance to start up a bank account. For the website I need a clear cut order form to coincide with the items we have for sale, so I'm working with supply chain. And everything I do seems to be shown to the CEO right off. Hopefully I don't step on toes and if I do, be ready to apologize.