EOC Week 4: BIG

The film “Big” is an excellent movie that revolves around a company coming up with ways to make more money. There are so many examples of research being done in the film for the toy company that Josh, Tom Hank’s character, works for. One example is focus groups. There are several instances where there are workers observing a focus group of children talking place where they are playing with the new toys that the company is developing. By watching the children react to the new products, the company can get an idea of how many units of the product they can sell based on how well the children like playing with the toy. There is also longitudinal research being done that is discussed in the meeting that Josh is in where he comes up with the robot bugs. This is the research that is being done on the toys that takes place over long periods of time. In that meeting there is another kind of research that goes into developing a new product taking place. That is brainstorming. This occurs when Josh suggests the robot bug and the rest of the group chimes in with follow up ideas that would expand on the product line and increase the revenue of the company. Brainstorming is kind of a way market research because it allows the company to really expand on an idea and see how far they could possibly take it in the marketplace.

BOC Week 4: Beautiful Stranger TV

The significance of Beautiful Stranger.TV, the website, is that it predicts trends before they are trends. This is kind of a way of conducting market research by seeing what people on the streets in their everyday lives are wearing or want to wear. It’s good for companies that produce clothing or accessories to look at this website because it gives them an idea of what the public likes to wear. It’s only a bad representation because it’s only in major cities. It doesn’t provide a clear look at the entire population and if you are a company, you want to market to more than just that city more than likely. It’s a creative, innovative way of seeing what people are buying and what they think of trends. The video section of the website offers a unique view point from professionals, mostly in the fashion industry. This is great for normal people to go on this site and be able to see what trends the professionals are agreeing with as long term and will give them an idea of which trends to buy into and which ones to let pass by. The blog is also a good source of information and even tells viewers where they can get some of the trends on sale. It’s a forum for advertisement that clothing companies and designers can easily use to reach potential customers.

Week 2 EOC: Survey and Results

This survey examines sales within the cosmetic industry in terms of items that are sold because of their color, such as eye makeup. The purpose of this survey is to outline opportunities to increase sales within the cosmetic industry. It outlines what women are spending the most money on in terms of their favorite cosmetic products. The survey uses applied research as they are finding out critical information that will help cosmetic companies when making important product development decisions. Descriptive research is done by Mintel in this particular survey as it describes in detail what products people are using in comparison to other products within the market. The longitudinal research design is used by examining information that has been gathered since 2004 in order to explain the opportunities for growth within this industry. It reports that eye makeup sales has increased 38% since 2004 compared to just 11% increase in the color cosmetics market as a whole. It also reports that mascara is one of the fastest growing segments in the market with 65% of people surveyed confirm that they use it. Causal research was also conducted in this survey as they suggest at the end of the report that retailers should highlight innovative ingredients in their products or utilize environmentally friendly packaging options to attract new customers. The report gets very specific when discussing the use of lipsticks and lipglosses by reporting the average ages of the women that use these products. (http://www.marketresearchworld.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3282&Itemid=77)

Week 2 BOC: Quiz

1. What is a booty pop, and what is its significance? Booty Pop is a shaping panty for women designed to give them the appearance of having more butt than they actually do. It is supposed to give the “bubble butt” appearance. The significance of Booty Pop is that they are not a new product. Butt enhancing underwear have been around for years, however they have never been sold via infomercial. (http://consumerist.com/2010/01/booty-pop-like-a-push-up-bra-for-your-butt.html)

2. Who spends more $ online, men or women? Proportion? (%, $) Women spend 58% of the commerce dollars online. In February 2010 12.5 % of women made online purchases as opposed to 9.3% of men. (http://jamiedunham.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/shocking-news-women-spend-more-time-than-men-online-shopping/) A recent PayPal report states that men in the UK states on average have spent 672 Euros more online than women over the past 6 months. It also says that 12.9 million men shop online compared to 10.3 million women. Over the past 6 months men spend 2,602 Euros online compared to women spending 1,930 Euros online.

3. Who spends more time online, men or women? Women spend an average of 1.2 hours per week shopping online. -- More than half (52%) of the time devoted to shopping for non-grocery items in a typical week is online. (http://www.girlsandthecity.com/articles/article.asp?id=223)

4. What advantage do marketers have for women shopping online than men? Marketers have an advantage when appealing to women because women control more than 85% of the spending done in America. That means that more women are paying attention to marketing than men since they are the ones doing the shopping.

Week 1 EOC: What I'm expecting from this class.

Marketing, promotions, and advertising are things that I am very interested in to start with based on what I have learned from previous classes. This class I am hoping will teach me how to be better in these areas of expertise. I am expecting that I will understand how to conduct new research that hasn't previously been done for a company in order to increase their market share and make them a more profitable company. Hopefully, these principals will be put to use in my own company. I would also like to be able to successfully complete this course in order to increase my own marketability in the work force and open doors into consulting in the future that I will be able to use even after I retire. This is a subject I hope to consider myself an expert in eventually. I have always considered myself to be a “researcher.” I was very interested in taking this class from the beginning in hopes that it would make me a better writer as well. The more that is known about a subject, the better when it comes to writing and being able to back up the opinions expressed. Knowledge is power and knowing how to dig deep into a subject increases the amount of power the words can have. I expect that the skills gained from this class will give my words the power to make a difference in this global market.