The Backyard Swingers

This course taught me a number of interesting lessons about marketing. The project specifically taught me a great deal about the importance of primary research. First of all, it opened my eyes to my own capacity for researching. I learned about a number of helpful resources like surveymonkey.com. Furthermore, I found that I’m not too young or inexperienced to find things out on my own. Nearly any statistics or general information can be found with enough searching and analysis. With that said, the project proved that I still need practice on my survey methodology. The group and I started off asking loads of questions about the backyard that we thought were relevant, but ended up with little insight. We soon learned that questions should be specific for the respondent to understand and specifically looking for preferences or behaviors on the part of the researcher.

MKT 372 taught me the importance of knowing the needs of your segment before creating a project. It makes sense to fill a need that exists already instead of creating something you like and trying to sell it to others. This idea reminds me of the utopian definition of business I first heard in Management 336: Working to make people’s lives better. (Certainly beats the pants off of: Exploiting the public’s naivety for my own personal gain). Therefore, by taking the extra measures to see what is lacking in the current marketplace, I feel better about what I am doing as a marketing student. The final project taught me a tough lesson about finding customer needs before making assumptions as we all met two or three times about creating the “child tracker safety watch.” It was really rough to turn back after so much effort and planning had already taken place. At times it felt like a waste and as if things would be much easier if we just fabricated an interview or two in order to support our product. But, I’m really glad we avoided the easy way out and learned a real lesson—even if it was the hard way.

Emotionally my experience varied throughout the semester. I initially thought “Great, another group project,” but was pretty interested once the task itself was unveiled. It was really helpful to have class time set aside for meeting for the initial phases of the project. I feel like this helped solidify us as a group and allowed all members to have a say. Oftentimes it’s difficult to schedule group meeting times and members may get left out or left behind. But since we all started with a common ground and had the opportunity to interact in class, things began smoothly. This was my first experience with an all-female project group and it went quite well. I felt like everyone listened and communicated effectively. There were rarely disagreements, and when they did arise we all seemed willing to bend a little. Although I dreaded working with a team at first, I now feel this was one of the most important dynamics of the course. The project itself is really enjoyable to work with as a team. At the same time I am curious how the results would be if assigned to individuals instead of groups. That may be something to look into for the future. However, ultimately I would not change it as this is one of the few business school projects I enjoyed sharing with others. Likewise I felt like Professor Walls brought a number of helpful insights to the table. He seems really up to date with the marketing field and in turn I feel more knowledgeable after hearing his experiences. I really appreciated the TEDtalks podcasts and current event articles. I plan to keep up with business and marketing news more now that I have seen how interesting and relevant it is. Furthermore I really appreciated the exposure to guest speakers with all types of marketing experience. Professor Walls seems perfect for the course subject and I would definitely recommend this class to a friend.