This Is How We Roll

At last, I've finally met all three blocks/classes of Mark 110/Consumer Behavior. I hope we are all in the same page already, having been oriented with what this class is all about and what we plan to acomplish till the end of the semester.

So, this is how we roll. Stand by. Lights. Cue music.

Class Management

We still have remaining issues though with Mark 110-2 and Mark 110-9 that I hope will be resolved before we meet again on 24 January.

Mark 110-2 needs to look at starting the class earlier, say 11:30am or 12NN so we can end by 2:30pm. This will allow some of you to attend both your 2:30pm and 4pm classes. Please look for an available classroom ASAP.

Mark 110-9 is still roofless during the first half of the class (8:30-10am). Please look for an available classroom ASAP.

Kindly coordinate this concern with CME officials. I'll also do what I can do from my end.

Papal Visit Holiday

We will miss another class time this week due to the Papal Visit holiday. For our class to keep moving however, all outstanding assignments should be submitted by Saturday, 17 January via email.

1. For Think Pieces, submit your essays in MS Word format. (For those who have submitted their Think-Piece assignments last Saturday, the instruction above is not for you.)
2. For Trends, Text and Tools, submit your reports in MS PowerPoint format using not more than 12 slides.
3. For Test, submit your 2-3 page report in MS Word format.

Notes on Test Assignment

Recall that Group 3 should have reported on 3 economic concepts last meeting: Indifference Curve, Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility and Deadweight Loss. In addition to that, they should have shared with you the article On the Economics of Giving, published in BusinessWorld on 22 December 2014.

Said article revisits the classic debate on gift-giving and asks why do we subject ourselves to all the hassles of shopping for something that may or may not make the recipients of our gifts any happier.

Noted Economist Joel Waldfogel of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania wrote a paper in 1993, "The Deadweight Loss of Christmas" which posits among others that:

1. Consumption choices are made by someone other than the final consumer
2. Gifts may be mismatched with the recipients' preference
3. 10-30% of the value of gifts received are lost or destroyed due to the mismatch/diminished utility
4. Giving cash is better and more economically efficient.

"Mr. Waldfogel surveyed Yale University students. They were asked how much they were willing to pay for the gifts had they bought these themselves barring "sentimental value." The responses were then used to calculate the deadweight loss by getting the difference between the gifts’ price and the students' valuation of the gifts.

The results showed that the students valued the gifts less than the price the giver paid for them. The difference was much bigger among givers who did not really know the recipients."

In 2013, 46 economists from the Initiatives on the Global Markets at the University of Chicago School of Business were polled on the question: 

"Giving specific presents as holiday gifts is inefficient, because recipients could satisfy their preferences much better with cash."

The poll results can be viewed here.

Now back to your assignment.
You will TEST whether:

1. The Deadweight Loss of Christmas is real among Filipino consumers who have had experienced participating in any gift-giving activity at any time (kris-kringle/exchange gift) by calculating the increase/decrease in the value/price of gifts received.
2. Filipino consumers prefer receiving cash because it is more satisfying than receiving gifts.

As discussed during class, each of the groups will be assigned with a certain population (PLM faculty members, PLM students, friends, family members, strangers) where you may get your sample size of 20.

You are free to devise your own sampling methodology (whether probability sampling or non-probability sampling) and your survey instrument (questionnaire/interview question). Demographics and psychographics are optional depending on how you envision to use the data gathered.

Your report should follow the format below:

I.  Introduction/Background

II. Data (Gathering, Sampling,

III. Analysis of Results

IV. Conclusion (use economic and behavioral concepts/principles/theories)

V. Application to Marketing (new product/new market/new ways of marketing products, etc)
VI. References
VII. Appendix (questionnaire, data set, etc)

Watch out for my next post: To-Do's for 24 January 2015.

That's how we roll. #THWR

Class Card Distribution on Wednesday

First, congratulations to the following students for getting a score of 1.00 (or equivalent to 98-110 points) in the Final Exam:

1. Jacklyn Maute 
2. Jesa Alysa Pita
3. Patricia Ann Claridad
4. Joana Marie Desabille
5. Louie Ericson Pascual

Class cards and exam answer sheets for all sections will be distributed on Wednesday, 26 March 2014 at 8:00 in the morning. We can meet up first at the vicinity of CME office then look for any available room at the 3rd or 4th floor of Gusaling Lacson. Kindly spread the word.

There are some of you however who doesn't have grades yet from the Panel. These are the groups that were late in submitting their Strategic Marketing Plan. Hopefully I can get your grades from the panel by tomorrow (March 25).

Allow me to say that it was a great experience for me to be your instructor in this class, despite the limitations and shortcomings. Whatever your final grade will be, please always remember that learning does not stop in school, and grades are not the sole determinant to success- but it matters!

Finally, let me leave you with a few words from Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain- American author and humorist who wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "the Great American Novel.

See you around!

Recap: Panel Presentation

Congratulations to each of you for surviving the panel presentation last Monday and Tuesday. You all did a good job, really, considering the limited time that was given to you to prepare and submit your Strategic Marketing Management Plan. Good job!

Before we started the panel presentation last Monday, I gave a short opening remarks addressed to you- my students- and to the members of the panel to set the tone of the panel presentation. Here is a screenshot of my notes (there might be some changes of a few words or phrases during actual delivery but the essence remains the same) for those who were not there to hear it. 

In summary, 9 groups passed the oral defense while 3 groups were not as lucky. For those who were less successful, don’t fret: we are here to learn, and failures are part of the learning process.

“Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. Most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”

Here are some of my observations from the whole exercise, and I hope you’ll use these as valuable lessons (you may also add your own list of ‘lessons learned’ in the comments section below):

1. Unfavorable comments from the panelists stem from your lack of understanding of your industry and even of your company. 
2. Most papers were not supported by a simple consumer research, even as simple as asking your family or classmates about your chosen product.
3. People notice it when you Copy-Paste what you are writing in your paper. Stop that habit. Do not plagiarize.
4. Experience what you are writing about- see, feel, taste, smell it so you can have better credibility.
5. Read. The quality of your writing and speaking reveals your lack of grasp of what's happening around you. 
6. Improve your presentation skills. You should learn to engage your audience, and not just read from the screen or from your notes.
7. Improve your writing skills.   

Lastly, I’d like you to read Steve Jobs’ graduation speech at the Stanford University given on 12 June 2005. I’m sure many of you have encountered this before in one way or another, but it is important to be reminded again by the powerful words of this one great man.  

Or watch the video. (Better yet watch the video while reading the speech- or turn on the subtitle).

See you again on Saturday, 22 February. I'll post soon our agenda for the next meeting.

Cheers!

Strategic Marketing Class Recap: Day 2

Dear fellow learners,

By now you should be ready to undertake an analysis of external and internal environments - the first step to any strategic management process. 

Below is the topic outline that is due on Sunday, 26 January 2014, 12MN 11:30 p.m. or before midnight strikes. This should be prepared in a Google Doc/Google Drive document. All members of your group should have editing access to the document, including me. I will track your progress online and will give feedback as soon as I can. To better understand how Google Drive/ Google Doc works, you may view the tutorial video below, or click here for Part 1 (Introduction) and here for Part 2 (Composing Google Docs). Your group's output shall serve as your midterm examination.

Below is the topical outline and writing guide.

ANALYSIS OF EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL ENVIRONMENTS

I.                 

          Market Situation & Analysis

External Audit or analysis of the macro-environment.

Issues which may have an indirect effect on your company. Some of the most significant opportunities and threats for the business may be found through analysis of changes and trends in the macro environment.

Tools: PEST: Political, Economic, Social & Technological; may include other factors such as Ecological, Legal/Regulatory, Cultural depending on the market that your company serves.

II.              

          Competitive Environment & Market Analysis

Audit of the industry and market environment.

Evaluation of the competitive environment in order to develop and sustain competitive advantage for the business. This section should identify where the main current competition stems from and where it may come from in the future. In addition, this section looks at likely actions from competitors in reaction to moves your business may take.

Tools: Porter’s 5 Forces

III.      

          Situation Analysis

Audit or analysis of the firm’s internal environment.

Process of internal appraisal, examining elements of the business and their effect on the organisation. This should include appraisal of all functions of the business and also includes the profit-making potential of the company and the facility to exploit identified opportunities.

Tools: SWOT, Value Chain Analysis, Sources of Competitive Advantage, BCG 

Send me a message on Twitter or Google+ if you have questions/ clarifications. We can also have a Google Hangout if you wish to have a live online consultation. Just let me know in advance.

Good luck!

PS. The presentation materials used in our last lecture can now be accessed in Google Drive or by clicking this link. I divided the slides into 3 parts.

Strategic Marketing Class Recap: Day 1

Hello! Welcome to your virtual Strategic Marketing Class. This blog aims to provide you a summary of our class discussions, and shall serve as additional channel for posting announcements and other class assignments. This space is also open for everyone to discuss class topics, and other related topics.

https://twitter.com/notty_romero

Last meeting I had the opportunity to meet all of you. We did not have the luxury of time so I dispense of the usual individual introductions. But since you very well know each one of your block mate (except for the irregulars), I don’t see any real need for introductions anymore. Your individual performance in class will help define who you are.

As for me, I presented an interactive biography that I created through Vizify. You should try making one yourself, and track your progress as you graduate from university and enter the “real world”. But first, you have to start creating your own presence in multiple social media platforms.  (Apologies to the morning class, in as much as I want to, there were no way we can use the multi-media projector as there was no adopter available at that time. But you may click the link above to see the online bio).

There was also a video that I wanted to share to the class but only one section was able to see it. Again, due to tech limitations. Click play to see the video.

I wanted to show this to class as a way to start our strategic marketing study. I'd like you to remember that this world is both old and young, and the opportunities out there is vast and limitless. It is also to remind you that our world started from nothing, that from various "goldilocks conditions" came "threshold moments". Now look at your world, here we are trying to understand and respond to people's various needs and wants. From nothing, this world, the humans specifically, now want a lot of things in order to live a comfortable life. As a marketer, we must find these "goldilocks conditions" in order to create a breakthrough. We are also being reminded that our world is on a crossroad- we can either contribute to its progress or cause its demise. 

In summary, what we did on our first meeting are the following:

1. Preliminaries, which include the introductions, collection of class cards, formation of groups, introducing the course (read: syllabus), and leveling up on the requirements of the course.
2. Review of your Principles of Marketing course, and as I noted, you need to read back your notes from this class and re-familiarize yourselves with the basics of marketing.
3. Introduce Strategic Marketing Management.

Preliminaries

• Those who were not present during our first day of class (11 January) should have a very valid and compelling excuse for your absence.

• We already divided the class into work groups, for classwork and for the Strategic Marketing Plan. The Strategic Marketing Plan is tentatively set to be presented to the CBE panel on the first or second week of February.

• You have also chosen a team leader for each group. The primary task of the team leader is to be the focal person of the group for the Marketing Plan, and other class assignments. Your team leader may also assign 1 or 2 members of the team as focal persons for a specific class assignment or specific chapter of the marketing plan. In principle, the output of the group will determine the grade of the group members. BUT- at the end of the class, each one of you will have the chance to rate your group members’ contributions to class assignments, including the Marketing Plan. This peer rating process aims to discourage you from being a freeloader of the group.

• We will be using Marketing Management by Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller (14^th edition) as main reference of this course. Any previous edition of the book is also acceptable.

• I also asked your class secretary to create a Google Doc of the class directory. This should be completed by next meeting, with everyone’s required information completely filled out.

• To further systematize class communications, I also required everyone to create a Gmail account. Our class will heavily rely on web and social media technologies- because they are there, and because these technologies should be making our lives better, right? Once we all have our Gmail account, each class can then get connected as a circle in Google+. I know you all have your own Facebook Group. Let us keep that your own exclusive social network while the Google+ circle will serve as our virtual classroom. That means I should be part of that circle. Add me up notty79@gmail.com.

• Lastly, I encourage you to create and manage your own Twitter account. This is not required, but desirable. I already explained why marketing students should be present in social media platforms. You will gain more understanding of this as we go along. If you are on Twitter, you may follow me (@notty_romero) and tag me a message using hashtag #MARK106 (+ your Strategic Marketing Class section) so I’d know which section you belong.

Review of Principles of Marketing

In a group activity, I asked you to answer the following questions: 

• What is Marketing
• What is Strategic Marketing
• What are the competencies of an effective Marketer

Most of you gave satisfactory answers to these 3 questions. The first question asked you to go back to your previous class in Principles of Marketing while the second question asked you to remind yourselves of the attributes that you should have, as future marketers. These two questions asked you of what you think is the ideal. You should always remember your answers to these questions.

The last question is actually a jump off to the core topic of the semester: Strategic Marketing Management. Many of you provided a good answer, but only a few actually hit the mark.

Introduction to Strategic Marketing Management

So here we are. But first, the definitions:

“Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders. Marketing management is the art and science of choosing target markets and getting, keeping, and growing customers through creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value.” - Philip Kotler, Marketing Management 14E

But what makes marketing management strategic? We defined strategic as a game plan for the future. We said that it should be both outward-oriented and introspective, looking at the external environments (market, industry, global) for trends and projections of future scenarios. Strategic also means looking at a future desired state while assessing its past performance (historical) and internal capabilities (tangible and intangible assets, internal business processes, human resources, etc).

In our next class, we will discuss the strategic planning process (Chapter 2 of our textbook) and the outline of a strategic marketing plan.

Class Assignments (All due next meeting - 18 January 2014)

Assignment #1- Group:

As a group, I asked you to read the case study on Google, and answer the following questions: 

1. With a portfolio as diverse as Google’s, what are the company’s core brand values?
2. What’s next for Google? Is it doing the right thing taking on Microsoft with the concept of cloud computing, and Apple in the fight for smart phones?
3. What is Google’s corporate mission, vision and values?
4. Identify Google’s strengths and weaknesses (internal capabilities)
5. Identify threats and opportunities to Google (external forces)
6. Identify and describe Google’s competitors

Assignment #2- Group:

Submit the name of the company (your client) that your group will work on in developing the company’s strategic marketing plan. In choosing your client, you should make sure that your group will have easy access to company information of at least 5 years (2009-2013). Second, as much as possible, choose a Manila City-based business. 

If choosing a company becomes very difficult, I am widening your options by allowing you to choose a subject matter (client)  based on any of the following:

Institutional Marketing – these are non-profit entities like a museum, a school, a park (Manila Zoo), or a hospital. It could also be a tourist attraction (Intramuros) or a business district (Ermita/ Malate/Binondo). As scholars, what best way to pay it forward than by applying what you have learned in class to your immediate community!

Social Marketing- marketing a cause, an advocacy, or a social good

Marketing for Start- ups- these are small or medium enterprises founded and operated by entrepreneurs with less than 5 years of operating experience

Assignment #3- Individual:

Each of you will have to review your notes in Principles of Marketing. Plus, start reading Chapter 1-4 of your textbook (see above).

Assignment #4- Individual:

To keep ourselves abreast with what is happening around us, we will start each class session with a roundup of Marketing News from around the world. You must pick one that interests you and tell the class of its marketing implications. As I said, everything in the world should be of interest to a marketer. That is how we can find the "goldilocks condition".

I will randomly call 2-3 students to share your news to the class. For everyone else, share that story in your social media feeds- Twitter, Facebook, what-have-you.

See you on Saturday!

Postscript: Thank you for agreeing to abide by my 2 rules: respect everyone and be responsible. Let these 2 rules guide us throughout our learning process, both online and offline. I also encourage you to call me by my first name (Arnold) or nickname (Notty). If you feel uncomfortable, Teacher will do. This article from Rappler partially explains why.