Month: January 2012

Last class, we discussed primary and secondary data collection and approaches to retrieve this data. Secondary data is the data that has already been gathered and collected. Using secondary data is cheap and quick but may not provide the most current and relevant results. Primary data is actually going out and collecting the data yourself. The three approaches that we discussed are observation (observing people, actions and situations), surveys (a set of questions needed to be answered), and experiments (cause-and-effect relationships). What we learned was online surveys tend to be the quickest and easiest way to gather primary data. What we didn’t talk about was how online survey can be incorporated with social media marketing to increase interaction with customers and gain feedbacks. This article I found (link below) explains that when incorporating surveys into social media marketing, there’s an opportunity to make that intersection a part of our social cycle of interaction through 6 steps. These steps include: listening, grow network, crowd source survey questions, invite surveys socially, recognize super friends, and promote survey results socially. I agree completely with this article because surveys are getting boring and people have less time to waste. Online surveys need to be targeted towards the right group of people, and these people need to trust and be interested enough in the survey in order for them to take the time to complete it. Social media can help to find the topics of interest. It helps to grow a strong and large social network across different channels, so that when we have a large enough network, trust can be earned. Social media can also quickly leverage feedback to construct the flow of online surveys. Different relevant communities can also be tapped to help promote surveys and increase survey exposures. Moreover, social media can help to recognize people who contribute with good ideas and who help promote surveys, this kind of public recognition encourages further contribution from people to future surveys. Finally, social media can be used to promote survey results, I think through extensive communication about survey outcomes; we can quickly gain knowledge from survey feedback and learn what’s working. Overall, I think social media really helps to improve the efficiency of online surveys.

Article:

http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/08/online-surveys-social-media/

Hi, my name is Chloe Chen and I am a second year commerce student planning to major in Finance and minor in International Business. I came to Vancouver from China when I was in grade ten. Leaving my home country was a big step, but I never regretted simply because I love this city so much!

I am taking this course not only because it’s a requirement, but also because I want to gain a deeper understanding of marketing. Marketing is a very essential part of any types of business, having a good understanding and knowledge of it will allow me to see business practices from different angles.

My experience with marketing as a consumer has brought much joy to my life. I find a lot of commercials played on the TV or advertisements on billboards very interesting, I enjoy them very much personally. However, if I’m presented with the same ads with too many times, my interesting for some ads fades away eventually, and the ads, which are used to be engaging, can become quite annoying at the end. That being said, I still think marketing is a great way to help sellers to reach out to their consumer by exploring existing consumer needs and wants. Therefore, marketing, in my opinion, is a great way to explore customer desires and create values, as well as a way to try to satisfy consumer desires. I, as a consumer, am very much entertained and satisfied by marketing. My favorite ads would be those charity advertisements. They promote awareness in the society, and those ads are touching and meaningful. Not only do they provoke discussion about our society and our conscience but also donation to support people or communities in need.

World Vision Ireland TV 

Last but not least, something personal about me that I’d like to share with the class is that I love dancing! I embarked on my journey of dancing more than ten years ago. Through dancing, my flood of emotions is expressed in the most universal and natural language of all- the body language. By learning different types of dance, I have been exposed to various cultures and expressions. This has greatly promoted my understanding of the world.

Finally, I’m looking forward to learning more aspects about marketing in this class!