COMM 296 is over, and my attitudes toward marketing become different from when I first heard about marketing. Before taking COMM296, marketing was just thought as doing advertisement for me. However, marketing, just the same as accounting, finance, logistics, and etc, is a field of study which is critical for the success of any business.

The most interesting things I have learned in marketing class is “Brand sponsorship”. This has answered the biggest question mark in my brain which was formed since I was young. I couldn’t understand why there are lots of company’s dashboard around the field when I was watching the world cup soccer game and other sports games. Also couldn’t understand why there are so many other company names such as “Nokia” “Hyundai” “Volkswagen” “Sony” company names on players’ uniform instead of JUST “Nike” “Adidas” “Reebok” and etc.

However, after reading marketing text books and watching marketing related videos, I have realized that it is called the sign of sponsorship; which indicates that team have companies’ names on the uniform and get sponsored by those companies. Companies get benefits by having their names on famous teams or players which makes the company more and more well known among people world-widely.

Although I couldn’t find that picture but there was a true story from a documentary which tells that just because Hyundai’s board on the soccer field was captured clearly when there was important moment of the game, their annual sales had soared in europe after that. Because after that capture of Hyundai’s board, more and more people had become known about this company, Hyundai; and thus this shows the power of “just a board on the soccer field”which is just a little part of a field of study, MARKETING.

The consumer behaviour according to several factors such as cultural, social, personal, psychological and etc are vital to to every business.

Consumer purchase decisions actually depend on several factors at certain point. Just as I learned in 06/feb marketing class, some people in who are raised in Canada will prefer to drink “Canadian” beer rather than “Budweiser” which is from US. This indicates that even consumer behaviour on beer purchasing depends on personal attitudes at certain points.

This also explained some of my “consumer behaviour” towards some products. For Example: I NEVER purchase Japanese products if there are appropriate substitutes from Korean producer such as buying SamSung digital camera from Samsung rather than digital Camera from SONY. As well as from my family’s purchasing pattern, all the TVs I’ve seen in my house since I was a kid was SamSung but NOT sony or something else from japan.

However, why i’m using Mac from Apple but not any PCs from SamSung now?

In my opinion, there must be marketing within it. For example: Mac is better looking than any of Samsung’s laptop. This is not just styling of the product, but marketing. Apple is not only targeting people who does professional movie and music making by its Mac, but also people or students who wants good looking or simple looking laptop. If comparing the Utilities by price of Samsung’s laptops and Mac, you can buy a Samsung laptop with way better utilities with the same price as buying a Mac. In addition, from “A New Light at RIM” Frank Chuanzhi Song’s blog RIM lacks marketing comparing to Apple. This can lead to the conclusion that careful marketing analysis and marketing strategy planning brings huge profits for companies.

In my own perspective, marketing was about luring customers by making fancy ads and attractive descriptions about the products before I open the marketing text book. However, marketing wasn’t that easy and simple, and was way more useful than I had thought.

“Customer value”, is the term that most frequently being seen in the marketing text book; just like “Money” in the finance text book. Marketing was not about just making fancy ads and attractive descriptions about the products, it is about managing profitable customer relationships by creating customer value and satisfaction. Apple can be a good example that has become successful by creating customer value.

Although customers have their needs and wants, it is hard for them to tell exactly what that is. However, in the early 2000, Apple had “told” customers what their wants were by introducing the Mp3 player which could save more than thousands of songs and could mobile easily. By introducing the product that satisfy what customer wants and demands, Apple has created and captured customer value and satisfaction within the industry, then has become the leader in the industry even the Apple was not the first one that invented Mp3 player. In my opinion, Apple has applied the marketing concept for their Mp3 player which is Ipod. It is because Apple has successfully delivered desired satisfactions for customers by knowing exactly what the needs and wants of the target market were.

From the Apple case example, it is obvious that marketing is as important as other area of business such as Accounting, Finance, Human resource management and etc. It has shown that successful marketing brings large amount of profits for the business and it is absolutely not negligible.

Hello All

Introduce yourself:

My Name is Dongshu You. I’m from Korea. I have nothing special to introduce about myself; No favourite food, drink, activities, and etc. I’m just a normal international student and speak Korean, English, and Chinese. UBC is a great school but Vancouver isn’t a good place for me to live. Rains too much during the winter and makes people feel depressed. However, the weather during the summer is crazily awesome~

Explain why you taking this course:

The reason that I’m taking this course is very simple. It is because COMM296 is in the Standard Time Table.

What your experience with marketing has been:

As a student, honestly, not very interested, but I know it is essential for most of the businesses and important for business students to know at least the basics of marketing. As a customer, marketing is annoying which makes people want to buy things.

Honestly, I have no interest on any ads. But I know there are at least a sentence of information about the drink on the most of the hard liquor bottles and it always sounds awesome.

Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!