Week Six Reflection

This past Tuesday in HONB 200-02, the class once again reviewed and discussed the importance of market segments in the eyes of a business looking to target certain potential consumers of their product(s). This discussion heavily tied into the assignment at hand that had been given the prior week. Near the end of the previous class, we were randomly divided into teams of three and were given a take-home, group assignment consisting of three parts that altogether incorporated the class topics explained earlier. The first part of the said assignment involved the individuals viewing a Shark Tank episode in which the product in question, known as PhoneSoap, caused a bit of a debate among the sharks.

The debate was primarily centered around the question of whether PhoneSoap is essentially a business to business (B2B) product, or a business to consumer (B2C) product. While other sharks decided that the technology was not worth their time as they deemed it to be more of a niche product, meaning that it would appeal to only a specifically small market of consumers, Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner embarked in a minor battle over the product and whom its targeted market would consist of. Whereas Mark saw the product as becoming the next big thing in the medical world, specifically in doctor's offices and other related health service businesses, Lori saw the phone cleansing device as being very popular amongst the everyday, middle-class consumer. 

These two radically opposing views represent the ideas behind how valuable a product may be deemed to be, and thus how and where the said product should then be distributed, or sold. This ties into the two main business models: volume and margin. Whereas a volume business operates due to mass amounts of people willing to buy products without spending significant amounts of money, a margin business is effective due to smaller amounts of people who are willing to pay more for the products.

The second part of the PhoneSoap assignment was reviewed in class on Thursday. In our groups, we were given the task of taking the product information and creating a ten question survey that would enable the company to pinpoint exactly how large of a market this product would have in terms of demand, as well as what segments of people it would attract. A few of the groups' surveys were shared aloud with the class to provide some feedback to the rest of the class members in terms of what types of questions should have been included in the surveys, as well as how consumer surveys similar to this are typically formatted. 

The distinction between observational studies and focus group research methods was also thoroughly discussed, allowing the class to then have a solid understanding of what research techniques work best for what product/company situations, i.e. whether the product has been newly introduced to a specific market, what types of consumer markets the company already attracts (if any), etc. 

Upon learning of all the ways in which companies can conduct market research studies, I anticipate that my SMART project group will be able to both effectively find the target market for our Bed Bug product and to then advertise for it accordingly based on exactly what type of consumers the said target market encompasses. Our group has made a substantial amount of progress recently, aside from the business standpoint of the product, and we plan on meeting again within the next couple of days to create another memo documenting our ideas and work thus far in the project's development.