Week 7 Reading Reflection

     In “Yankelovich & Meer: Rediscovering Market Segmentation”, I thought it was interesting to learn about the different segments for different purposes, on page 3. The thing I found most interesting was that when you are defining your segment for your product, you have to look beyond psychographic segmentations. Which makes sense, when I think about it now, because when I was trying to determine the target audience of my opportunity for interviewing costumers I had a hard time just defining them in terms of lifestyle, a psychographic segmentation, because my audience was more than just people who drink coffee daily.

     I didn’t find any particular part to be confusing. This reading had some parts that were confusing in the beginning but as I continued to read, a lot of the concepts that they mentioned were cleared up.

     I would be interested in knowing why he says, “the fact is that even the most memorable advertising, if based on a crudely drawn segmentation, will do little to spur sales or garner market share” (Yankelovich & Meer 4). It might be due to my lack of marketing knowledge but I would have assumed that if something were memorable than sales would increase. Something else I would be interested in knowing, which kind of relates to my first question, is how can you avoid the wrong segmentation. It seems horrible if you make the most memorable advertisement and it doesn’t produce many “spur in sales” just because you were in the wrong segmentation.

     In this reading I didn’t disagree with anything that Yankelovich and Meer said, which I think is mostly due to the fact that the reading focused on a lot of topics that I haven’t been taught before and therefore haven’t formed my own opinion. It would be interesting to read this article after I have taken introduction to marketing to see if I now disagree with anything.

Free Money

     I spent the majority of the weekend in the library studying for a couple of exams that I have later in the week so I decided to approach people that were studying in the basement of Marston or outside of Marston. I approached people that were studying for their midterms as well and seemed to be engrossed in their notes. When I went up to people I started the conversation by saying “Hey. What are you studying for?” or “How’s it going” after they answered I asked if they wanted a dollar, kind of for good luck on their midterms.

     Out of five attempts, I thought I would be able to give away three dollars. I thought that my reason for giving away the money seemed kind and I thought that people would respond in a positive way and take my money. After approaching five people, four out of the five people took the dollar that I offered them. I didn’t find the number to be surprising because of how and where I approached them. Even though I predicted the wrong number of people I was still close. I think that more people took my money than excepted because I offered them a break from studying, which a lot of people generally welcome, by giving them a dollar they could go get something to eat or drink from the vending machine. Here’s a video of 2 people I approached outside of the library, since it was quieter.

     Overall, I understand what the point of the exercise was but a part of me hoped that no one would take my money so that I wouldn’t have to give it away. However, the exercise proved to be easier than expected and people were generally willing to take my money. I assumed that people whom were studying wouldn’t want to be bothered and would just wave me off but that proved to be wrong when people were more than happy to talk to me instead of studying.