Over
the past semester in my marketing class, I feel as though I learned a lot about
marketing, and also a lot about myself as a student. This class certainly
pushed me and required me to put in more effort than I had for any class
before. I do think, however, that all of the effort I put into this class has
paid off. I have come out of it at the end of the semester having learned about
the concepts of marketing and have learned how to be a better student.
The
largest course objective I think I grasped was to address how marketing can
have an impact on environmental sustainability. We spent a lot of time
discussing this concept in class and were assigned to read articles on the
topic. The article that I think helped to reinforce this the most for me was
about the sustainable practices of Disney World. There was also an entire chapter
in the textbook about various sustainable marketing practices. Chapter 16
discusses some of the social criticisms about marketing; which include high
prices, deceptive practices, high-pressure selling, harmful products, planned
obsolescence, and poor service to disadvantaged customers. Learning about how
marketing can affect social responsibility is important, I think, because it is
good to know how your practices are impacting the environment around you.
Another
objective that I think I will take away from this class is to have the
opportunity to put marketing into action via team and individual projects,
research, reports and presentations. I think that I took away a lot from the
NewShoes simulation. I not only learned about the practical uses of marketing,
but about working in a group and also about myself. By changing the price of
the products, it truly impacted how many shoes we were able to sell. Gaining
this knowledge through the simulation will be useful in my future career and I
can apply other various concepts in the future.
I was
also able to get many things out of the learning objectives assigned for the
course. One of the largest learning objectives I grasped was to appreciate the
integrated role of marketing in business decisions. The activity that helped to
reinforce this concept the most for me was the NewShoes simulation. This was
because every decision that we entered for each period affected everything
about the company, from the Cost of Goods Sold to the Net Income.
Another
learning outcome that I feel the simulation helped me to achieve was to
incorporate key concepts to make business decisions and evaluate outcomes. The
simulation was able to reinforce this outcome for me because we were required
to create excel spreadsheets to evaluate the various outcomes. For each
decision we entered, the spreadsheets we created would tell us about how well
we were performing as a marketing department and we used these spreadsheets to
predict how we would perform in the future. I feel as though I now know how to
use marketing to make essential business decisions.
The
final learning outcome that I feel the simulation helped me with was using
written and oral skills to persuade a target audience. The final step for the
simulation was to present to the class as to why we should be the group to
continue on and sell shoes. While we didn’t win this challenge, I think that my
group was able to present a good case to continue on. We spoke about the
successes of our group, but also about our mistakes and how we can learn from
these mistakes and grow as a company. I think that the idea for our shoes would
have been successful if we had been able to continue on. Our oral skills and
the way we presented our successes, failures, and ideas proved to our audience
how well we were able to work together. I truly feel as though I was able to
learn a lot about the concepts of marketing and myself as a student through
this class.
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