What I've Learned: A Reflection

The main purpose of a college education is to learn and develop skills that will prepare you to join the workforce but is also an opportunity to develop skills in time management, sociability, and connection. The BSAD 150 course is no different. Throughout my time spent in this class, there have been many lessons learned, many opportunities to seize, and many new skills that have been developed. There are multiple course objectives that have been laid out on the course syllabus that have been addressed in a myriad of ways. The purpose of this blog post is to analyze how these course objectives have been achieved not only through this blog project, but through everything that we have done in the class.

One of the objectives of this course was to “examine and convey basic and emerging marketing concepts and terminologies,” something that was accomplished in numerous ways. Firstly, the homework assignments on Connect was the main pathway that contributed to actually learning what these “emerging marketing concepts and terminologies” actually were and what they mean. For instance, I had no idea what the term legacy company meant until reading about it in chapter 14 of the connect textbook. Now I know that a legacy company is simply defined as a company that trace their origins to a traditional marketplace that have had to adapt to a digital marketspace in recent years. However, knowing the definition isn’t the only aspect of this course objective, we also were tasked to convey these concepts that we learned about. This is where the blog assignment comes into play. Over the course of four blogposts, we were tasked with writing about whatever we wanted, as long as it was related to marketing, and using concepts and terminologies we learned about in class to emphasize how these concepts work in a field we are personally interested in. If nothing else, the blog project has shown that marketing is everywhere, and it was fascinating to see how so many factors are at play in something that seems as simple as a movie trailer.

A few lessons were learned along the way in the continuing blog project, which I believe relate quite nicely to the second learning objective of the class: “To study and understand the marketing mix, target markets, consumer behavior, service marketing, social media marketing and the strategic and financial implications of marketing decisions on the other functional areas of business.” Specifically, I was able to learn first hand the importance of strategic implications of marketing decisions through my blog posts. Simple website design elements, like an interesting blog title, page layout, pictures, etc. really impacted how many of my peers wanted to interact with my blog. Multiple people noted how long chunks of text discouraged them from reading the post because it seemed to dense: There was no space to breath and really let the content sink in. This, in a way, is similar to how the promotional mix is used by companies. My blog acts as the company, which communicates with the reader of my blog, or the consumer for the company, to form a feedback loop. My peers’ responses to the design of my site as well as the content of my blogs simulated how marketing managers must take feedback from consumers to improve their own websites or social media marketing accounts. Marketing, I have learned, is a collaborative effort because of this interaction between consumer and company. Therefore, I can confidently say that the blog project helped me “recognize the importance of the consumer,” another one of the course objectives. If a consumer can’t decode the message I have tried to convey with my blog, they won’t interact with it. This is exactly how advertisements work. If a company fails to encode their intended message with finesse and clarity, the consumer will not buy, and profits will suffer.

Another course objective that was clearly tackled through our work in this class was an “opportunity to put marketing into action” through, specifically, the group project for WM. This project has tasked us with performing a competitor analysis of Waste Connections, one of WM’s biggest competitors in the industry. Not only are we simulating marketing research that would be performed by a marketing department in a real business setting, we have been given an amazing opportunity to actually work with a company. Essentially, we are getting real experience in marketing research that we may have to perform in our future. The project also develops skills that I find integral to the college experience. Cooperation and communication are both huge aspects of this project, as we are working with 4 other classmates. During the process of researching and writing a report, multiple issues with communication were bound to arise, and I had to learn how to deal with these problems and find a solution. Even with some hiccups along the way, the project has given invaluable experience in the process of marketing research, including how to define a problem, develop a research plan, collect relevant information, and developing findings. It is not our call to take marketing actions, rather our job is to provide informed recommendations to our client. This project is the most blatant example of this course objective being fulfilled.

Finally, one last course objective I would like to touch on is the objective to “set personal and professional goals and positively contribute in an engaged class.” Self-management is the first thing that comes to mind when I reflect on this objective. I always set goals for the classes I take at UVM, sometimes focused on which grade I would like to work for. With this class, I had a professional goal to get started early on the career path that seemed the most like the right fit for me: Marketing. I love writing and I’ve always found persuasive writing so fascinating, which is what marketing is all about. If nothing else, my goal for this class was to further develop my persuasive writing skills and learn how to apply them in different ways. To accomplish this goal, I need to contribute to the class in an engaged way. Not just for my grade’s sake, I complete every assignment to be ready for what will be discussed in class and be able to apply what I’ve learned to our group project: The most massive undertaking in the whole class in my opinion. It’s crucial to my success to set goals and when the goals aren’t met, I mull over why they weren’t. The blog project applies here, with the goal to make an improved blog with every post. Sometimes, the response wasn’t what I was hoping for, and the only way to improve is to act on what was subpar.

I’ve learned a lot in this class through the multiple projects and assignments I have been tasked with. At this point in the class, I am confident that I can use the lessons I have learned to develop my competitor analysis project into just what it needs to be. Looking ahead, this blog project specifically has prepared me for making an online presence, and I look forward to creating my own professional blog (probably about film) in the future.