Marketing is all about understanding people.

This is probably my key take-away from the course. Through the analysis of several firms and their promotional campaigns, I got a better insight in why it’s important to understand the customers “wants” and “needs”.

I think the group assignment was interesting. The three stage process  gave us the ability to look at the firm multiple times, instead of just having a final paper, where most of the workload would have been done in perhaps a hasted manner. Furthermore I appreciate Sauder’s approach to  teach students alternative skills, such as video editing and so forth, and force us to tap more into the right hemisphere of our brain.

That said, I find it crucial to point out that group work was far from optimal, and by this I mean that the group synergy was  poor. Having now five and a half years of upper education in my backpack I believe I have seen my fair share of  assignments/tasks/projects. Over the years, my understanding was that a team becomes stronger by pooling the resources of all the members, and emphasise the qualities of each team member. Diversity in educational and professional background offer a wider variety of perceptions and help push the project to a higher level. Still, this was not applicable in our group. Instead, I feel like some of our group members had a very individualistic approach and wanted to strive as individuals within the group instead of making it more of a shared experience. Often times, it was unacceptable to approach the idea at a different angle, and decisions were not open to constructive discussion but instead were just the way to do it, “because that’s the way to do it”.