Week 6

Phone Soap

The focus of the classes this week was primarily on the product Phone Soap as seen on Shark Tank. The product is a charger that also uses UV light to get 99.9% of bacteria off of a consumers phone.

The way phone soap works can be seen through the video above. It shows how the phone will be cleaned and charged within a 5 minute period and how you are able to switch out chargers to accommodate different phones or tablets.

One thing we focused on in class that was noted in the Shark Tank episode was who the market of this product would be? Is this product a Business to Business (B2B) Product or a Business to Consumer (B2C) Product? The Sharks were split in the decision with some of the sharks opting out of the deal do to this specific reason. 

The Business to Business side of it was seen by Mark Cuban. He saw the potential for the product to be put into hospitals to be able to sanitize them after seeing the sick. The fact that people were concerned with all the germs of a hospital he saw as a selling point and could be able to market it to sell it to the medical facilities.

On the opposite side with Business to Consumer, Lori Greiner saw high hopes in selling it on QVC. The creators of phone soap had already noted that their largest buyers were desk workers that were able to clean their phone while doing work in the office. Lori thought that was also their largest sellers and that putting it on QVC would get the word out more and hope to advertise it better. This helped to teach the importance of figuring out what type of product you have and where your specific market is.

Smart Project

For our smart project we had to finalize our last design as to what we are going to be doing. We to combine two of our original designs to be able to have both a dead bolt that would keep the door open if the key is left behind and also a weighted sensor to alert them if the key is still on the hook. The final design can be seen to the left.

Along with this we have a meeting scheduled to be able to get key advice from a senior marketing major. She will be able to help us with logos, colors, advertisements, and making sure we know exactly where we want to market the product to. That also goes back to what we discussed before with the B2B or B2C products. I feel this product could easily be a B2B product and we could sell it to colleges to be able to put in dorm rooms. We will have to talk it over as a group but will keep refining our product in the next weeks.

Week 5

Segmentation

Tuesday of this week started off with a look at the mind maps along with the advertisements we had to make prior to the class. Each advertisement was geared towards a certain demographic and we got a look at a variety of different groupings.

My own was Cosmopolitan and while there were other classifications that were just like cosmopolitan, they were all slightly different. They could be basically the same group yet they could be different in age, or they could be different in where they reside, or if they have kids or not. The slight differences made all the change when it came to the ads as well.

There were over 60 segmentations on the Prizm website we used to check out the different groups we would be gearing our ads towards. Here is a look at just some of them:

Smart Projects

On Thursday we had another combined class to look at our smart project progress. Since working on it this weekend we had 3 designs for the actual product as well as designs for the logo. The way the class worked that way was we were to first present our refined POV statement and then go on to talk about our different designs. After this we were to take a gallery walk to look at the other groups designs.

The walk was nice to see what everyone else had done with their projects. We were also to give feedback to other groups to help clarify questions or to make opinions on which designs seemed better. Then we were to come back and look at the comments made on our project. Some helped us to select which of our 3 logos might be the best, they can be seen below.

Other comments were more questions as to hazards about our products. Many were confused as to how people would be able to leave their rooms if they were in a rush. We were able to clarify at the end that our product wouldn't restrict access to the door but just give extra warnings to the person so they wouldn't forget their keys. After all of this we are to pick our final designs to be able to start work on making and marketing the actual product.

Week 4

Snow day week!

This week we were only able to have one class to talk about everything but in that class I feel we covered a lot. We're talked about the two chapters, 6 & 8, which focused on consumer behaviors and marketing segmentation. We also were able to watch a shark tank episode and were assigned a small project to go along with it.

Chapter 6 & 8

For Chapter 6 we focused on the decision making process which I posted about last week. Going through each of the steps: Need Recognition, Information Search, Evaluation of Alternatives, Purchase, and Post Purchase Behavior. We compared these to different purchases, like how if you buy a pen you won't be doing lots of information searching compared to if you're looking for a car to buy.

In Chapter 8 however we looked at the differences in certain purchases and the level of decision making.

The picture above shows the 4 different types of decision making that a person might go through when purchasing a product. A limited decision would involve a high level of information search but low level of involvement. So in this case a limited decision may be something like shampoo, you want to make sure you look into what the shampoo is doing, if it is for straight hair or curly hair or if it helps with dry hair or keeps color in. Yet with the shampoo you won't have a lot of involvement because there isn't as much risk that comes along with buying that certain product.

On the other hand the decision could be a routine response which is low information search and low involvement which is just something like an impulse buy, where you wouldn't think much about what you're buying it.

Shark Tank

In class we watched the Shark Tank episode for the product Bambooee. It is a paper towel product that is made from bamboo that can be reused up to 100 times. The product was picked up by one of the sharks for exactly what they wanted. After watching the episode we selected different demographics to market the product to. Mine was Cosmopolitan which is middle age people usually without children that enjoy more high end things.

After doing more research into the Cosmopolitan market I found out that they are located usually closer to large cities. While Springfield is a well known city it does not host many Cosmopolitan people. Along with my home town of Plymouth Meeting, PA which I learned actually is home to mostly older residence.

Smart Project

Our smart project is coming along nicely, to say the least. I feel as a group we have a general consensus on what all the features will be and how it will look. We're in the process of narrowing down names and working on our concept screening. Chapter 6 & 8 have been a large help with the smart project because now I feel we're looking at it from a consumer point of view rather than a manufacturing point of view. We can pin point what type of things will influence our consumer to buy the product, which type of decision making process will they go through before buying our product, and what demographic are they in. In knowing all of this we can make our product better than the rest and market it correctly.

Week 3

Chapter 6

Week 3 consisted of looking into Chapter 6 and also working more on our Smart Projects. Chapter 6 was concentrated on consumer behavior and how the consumers make different decisions and what affects them.

When it comes to Decision Making many customers go through a process to be able to determine if they should buy the product or not. There are 5 steps in the process:


Need Recognition

• Need recognition is basically just evaluating the product to see whether it is a want or need. Determining this can help the consumer to decide if they should buy the product or not.

Information Search

• The information search is anyway of finding information about the product. It can be through an internal search, where a consumer just remembers information, or an external search, where they find information from an outside source. These help to make a well informed decision of whether to buy or not

Evaluation of Alternatives

• After doing research the consumer will most likely try and find alternatives to the product. If there are alternatives that are more preferable to them they may take their money elsewhere.

Purchase

• The purchase can be one of three kinds; planned, partially planned, or unplanned. Planned is when the consumer has gone through all the other steps of the decision making process and know specifically what they want to get. Partially planned refers to knowing a general sense of what you are going to buy, and unplanned is going in completely blind and impulsively buing something.

Postpurchase Behavior

• After purchase there is a certain expectation that the product must uphold. Consumers are expecting the product to be as they thought and work properly. If not they may return it and set out for another product.

Aside from the Decision Making Process, there is also a number of different influential factors that play a role in how a consumer will buy products. Some of them include:

Consumer involvement is a large factor. If the consumer is more involved in the purchase then they may be more or less likely to buy something. If they are more interested in the product they may be more involved.

Social Influences such as family, opinion leaders, and reference groups will sway peoples decisions. If a person is unsure of a purchase they are likely to ask the opinion of others. In doing this their buying decision could change significantly. Things like buying clothes will sometimes be a group decision because you need a second opinion to make sure it looks right.

Smart Project
These consumer behaviors can help us to enhance our product more. One specific part is that for our product for forgetting your keys there aren't really any alternatives. There is no other device that really will do the same thing as ours which gives us an advantage.

With our smart project however we do have lots of work. We are still in the designing phase really. We aren't quite sure what our name is, how it will look, exactly all the usages of the device. We have created a problem statement and identified some trends, constraints, and criteria for the product though.

Problem Statement: To design a device that can prevent someone from locking their door unless they have their keys on them.

By identifying all of these it will help to make our process easier so we can go on to advance the product more and figure out exactly how we will make and market it.