On Tuesday, the class met for the final time in the typical marketing class setting. During this time period, we were able to review with Professor Spotts on a few of the most important marketing concepts that we had covered over the duration of the course. Although the original plan was for the class to watch and analyze a SharkTank episode, based on the four P's that make up any organization, we were unable to view the episode due to technical difficulties. Instead, the students were assigned a category of the four P's that their group was in charge of researching. After spending some time looking up this information in our books, each group took turns presenting to the rest of the class what the meaning behind their assigned "P" is, as well as relate this meaning to a real life scenario involving a business. My group specifically was in charge of learning more about the PESTLR concept, and how it relates to real life businesses.
Although we had already learned this information in previous class sessions, it was definitely a helpful review in terms of further organizing our thoughts on these important marketing aspects. At the end of the class, we were given the Four P's Assessment, which is intended to be a cumulative exam that displays how much the students have learned over the entire semester. The exam consisted of two short answer questions that followed a given example of a theoretical business, through which the students were asked to evaluate and assess the four P's of the business, as well as think of ways in which the business could potentially improve one or more of their P's. Over this upcoming weekend, we were assigned our final mindmap to complete. This mindmap will be far larger than what we are typically used to creating, as it will be comprised of all of the most important concepts taken away from the entire course. Given the challenging nature of the assignment, I intend to set aside a large amount of time to devote to working on its creation.
On Tuesday night, my BedBug team had our final meeting prior to the exposition in order to finalize both our pitch and the product. We also made corrections to older memos that received suggestions for ways in which they could be improved, so that our final design file will display our best possible work. At this point in the SMARTProject process, my group had established an excellent sense of team chemistry and we were confident in both ourselves and the BedBug product.
Thursday was perhaps the biggest day of the semester for our HONB class, as this was the day of the engineering exposition, during which each group was given the opportunity to pitch their respective products in front of judges. Each member of the BedBug team was highly prepared with all of our materials and knowledge of the product, and were excited to finally demonstrate all of the hard work that we had put in over the course of the past few months. While we initially were slightly nervous in terms of delivering our pitch and speaking to those interested in the product, we soon began to warm up to the swing of things, which in turn made the experience a fun time for all of us. I found the exposition to be very satisfying and rewarding, as we were able to show others just how well we knew the product and how prepared we were to answer others' questions on it.
The day became even more of a success upon hearing the news that team BedBug had placed first overall amongst the freshmen SMARTProjects. This was a great feeling, and we could not have been more proud of ourselves as a team! I'm very glad that this project is in place, as it gives the students a chance to learn skills relevant to their fields in a realistic setting, as well as provide each student with experience that will benefit them in the long run. Overall, this was a great beginners' marketing course!