Monday, November 19, 2007

So, marketing has a dull side

At BYU, the first semester students are required to take MBA 550 Marketing Management. This year, the marketing professors are making us do a huge project that students didn't have to do in the past.

It involves ZMET, Laddering, and Ideal Customer Profiling. Last Tuesday, we went to Good Earth Foods to talk to employees about the type of customer that purchases the Solaray Brand.

We got some interesting results: Baby Boomer M/F. 18-30 year old males who are either trying or are in shape. And newly lactating mothers. :) I decided we wouldn't attempt to interview the last category.

Then on Saturday we went back to the store to contact some customers in these categories and see if we could set up some interviews. However, the number of us who returned Good Earth plummeted from 5 to 2. (it was understandable why that happened, but still annoying)

So 2 of use walked around Good Earth for 2 solid hours talking to customers. For the most part it was kind of intimidating-- kind of reminded me of being on my LDS Mission again. Adam came up with a good idea in that we said we could interview them at Good Earth so they knew we had permission and weren't just trying to steal phone numbers.

In the end, I was glad to be done with it all, but we made some good contacts and have some great insight to give back to Solaray.

You don't have to do a Field Study with a company like we're doing. We decided to do it this way because some of us need to build or marketing resumes a little bit more. (of course throughout the rest of my MBA at Brigham Young, I don't think I'll be this agressive about getting extra experience)

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