The ongoing team project throughout this term was an extremely helpful, valuable experience which allowed me to not only learn more about marketing but also develop my teamwork skills.

The written marketing plan assignments gave me the opportunity to actually research, develop and produce a marketing strategy for a real company. Although we had previously learned about many of the concepts in class and through our textbook readings, the hands-on experience of researching and writing the marketing plan gave me a first-hand insight into how marketing is easier said than done. For instance, certain aspects – such as the analysis of the macroenvironmental factors, including culture, demographics and so on, and identifying a narrow target market – were much more challenging than I had anticipated.

In terms of the final assignment, which was the video, I had the opportunity to learn and develop new, creative skills that other courses in Sauder don’t cover. The project was challenging, as none of our team members had any experience with video filming, production or editing. Nonetheless, we were able to effectively collaborate in all stages of the video project; we each contributed ideas for the storyboard and script of the video, making sure to give constructive feedback to each other. We learned how to make our video more visually appealing through the use of framing and a variety of shots and angles. Overall, I’m extremely satisfied with how the video turned out, and I’m so proud of our team for being able to stay dedicated and supportive throughout the entire project!

I recently read an article posted on Adverblog titled “This store shelf is stalking you”.

Yes, it really is as creepy as it sounds. Allegedly, certain shelves in supermarkets such as Mondelez, are now able to detect the shopper’s identity, age, gender and other basic information thanks to Microsoft Kinect technology installed in the shelves.

The author did point out some of the benefits associated with this tactic. For instance, the data can be used to provide the customer with useful, personalized information (such as customized recipes). Each customer would presumably have a huge amount of data accumulated over time, and I can see and understand how this “scanning” strategy and the data the system collects can be extremely useful, for example to make future product recommendations based on the customer’s historical preferences.

The data collected would also be tremendously helpful to the companies, who could use the data to determine the most efficient and effective marketing strategies, thus lowering their costs and hopefully attracting more customers.

Nonetheless, I can’t help but feel that this is a huge violation of privacy. Companies would be able to keep track of you and everything you do. Imagine living in a world where the information on everything you have ever bought or considered buying is recorded, stored and analyzed by someone else? I personally would feel slightly uncomfortable with that fact, even if the only information that would be recorded is about my supermarket purchases.