Week 4 EOC: My App

If I had to design an app that provided some sort of utility to the general public, that would make everyday life a little more simple, I would design an app that would function as a middle man or secretary if you will for all of your mobile apps and games. If you’re like me and you play multiple mobile games, or at least have a bunch of mobile games downloaded (whether you play them or not), we’ve all received those annoying notifications from our various mobile apps and mobile games. They can become really obnoxious especially if you’re getting multiple notifications from multiple games all day. For example: you may be in a class or expecting a call or text, it can be really irritating when your phone goes off, only to check your phone and find out it is only a stupid notification from one of your mobile games telling you that your gems are full or whatever it may be. This is even worse when it is coming from multiple apps at once. Now I know that you can turn off these notifications but what if you don’t really want to do that? What if you just wish there was a way to manage these notifications? Well I would invent an app that would do just that. The Mobile App Middle Man or the Mobile App Secretary would be an app that you could go too if you wanted to check out the progress of all of your mobile gaming resources all in one place. You also wouldn’t have to deal with all of the annoying notifications because they would all be sent to the app. This would be the app that I would create if I had to make an app using no market research.

Week 3 EOC 2: My Demographic

In the book Marketing: An Introduction, in chapter 3 they discuss the topic of Demographics. The current demographics in today’s society are the Baby Boomers, Generation X, and the Millennials. Baby Boomers consist of about 78 million people; this generation began after World War II and lasted until 1964. Generation X is the generation that followed immediately after the Baby Boomer generation; this generation started in 1965 and ended in 1976 and consists of roughly 45 million people. The last generation the Millennials, began in 1977 up until 2000; it is by far the largest generation containing approximately 83 million people. I just so happen to be one of these people. So I wanted to know how the book portrays Millennials and how accurate I feel they portray my generation (as a member of it). One of the major things they discuss about the Millennials is their “utter fluency and comfort with digital technology” (Pg. 73). I would have to agree with this, as a millennial we have much more success when it comes to learning and adapting to technology vs. the previous generations. They continue to state, “They don’t just embrace technology, it’s a way of life. The Millennials were the first generation to grow up in a world filled with computers, cellphones, satellite TV, iPods, and online social networks.” I do agree with this statement as well, however I don’t think that this is the case with all Millennials. Yes, the Millennials that grew up in the latter years are raised with technology but people back in the early/beginning years on the Millennial generation probably didn’t have the same privileges. Overall, I think that the book does a fairly good job of identifying the main attributes of the Millennial generation and adapting their market strategies to fit our demographic.

Week 3 EOC 1: For Profit Organizations That Give Back

When most of us think of “for profit” companies we picture companies that are run by a CEO corrupted by greed. It is easy to think of these companies having a sole purpose of raking in as much money as possible. However, there are several “for profit” companies out there that give away a tremendous amount of their profits to charities and people that are in need. There are many companies out there such as Tom’s that give away one product to someone in need, for every product purchased; but what about companies that aren’t built on that similar form of mission statement? One example of a company that wasn’t brought up on the “Tom’s” style mission statement but still is known for giving back is Kroger’s. According to www.forbes.com “Example: In 2010 Kroger, the Cincinnati supermarket operator, gave away 10.9% of its $589 million in 2009 pre-tax profits, amounting to $64 million”. That is a lot of money! I personally was shocked to see that Kroger would give 1/10^th of their profits for the year to charity and people in need. “Forbes put together two lists. The one we think is most meaningful: The companies that are most generous in their cash donations as a percentage of pre-tax profits. Kroger tops that list.” According to Kroger’s vice president of corporate affairs, “Lynn Marmer, $40 million of Kroger’s cash giving flows through a 15-year-old community rewards program, where shoppers who carry Kroger’s loyalty cards name a local charity they want to support. Kroger then gives 2%-5% (determined by local stores) of each shopper’s bill as a cash contribution to the school, church, or community group chosen by the customer.” I think this is a very generous way that Kroger chooses to benefit society. The money goes to charities and non-profits that the customer chooses.

Week 2 EOC: Boston Consulting Group: Video Games

There are many game systems that have risen to the surface in the last 50 years. These game systems have come from companies such as Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo, and etc. So what are some examples of these game systems and how are they doing in the market place as of right now? In my personal opinion, out of the many systems available to people today, the Wii most definitely would be considered a “dog”. When Nintendo released the Wii, it was a new innovative experience. They are responsible for making motion sensor technology more popular in video games. At the release of the Wii I feel like it was a real question mark for Nintendo; that sadly didn’t do much. Another system Nintendo has come out with is the Nintendo 3DS. The 3DS, in my eyes would be a question mark. According to http://www.digitaltrends.com “Nintendo surprised industry watchers today by announcing it has sold 4.5 million units of the Nintendo 3DS in the United States in the first year since its introduction.” However, regardless of the surprising success in its first year the DS systems never really seem to go anywhere. Nintendo is always making another DS system, but this one has seemed to shock the community with its success so it may continue to shock us in the future. I think the ultimate cash cows of the video game industry have to be the PS4 and the Xbox One. My reasoning for this is because the ps4 and the xbox one have nowhere to go. Everyone wants one and they are capable of playing multiple games but the ps4 and xbox one themselves won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. There is going to be a PS5 eventually, and the PS4 will have served its purpose. According to http://www.techradar.com ” It probably won't happen this year, but the PS5 is almost guaranteed to arrive on shelves eventually. Yep, we'd bet our game collection that the Sony PlayStation 5 is probably in development right now.” It seems as though the PS5 may already be in the works. Of course at the end of the day, the star will remain the same. Mobile Gaming, it is a fairly new market for video games and it has potential for tremendous growth. Games in the app store are fairly cheap but they sell a lot and are filled with convenient micro-transactions which is the source of the majority of their money. Just to give you an idea of how successful mobile games can be, “As of publication, Apple claims that there are more than 700,000 apps available for its iOS devices, including the iPhone, with more than 35 billion downloads since the iPhone's introduction in 2007. While Apple does take a 30-percent cut from all sales, it has paid over $6.5 billion in royalties to developers.” (http://smallbusiness.chron.com). Overall, I think mobile games take the jackpot. Phones and mobile devices continue to grow and get more advanced and so will their games.

Week 1 EOC: Great Customer Service

As a starting out Audio Student, I was curious about purchasing microphones and other various equipment that I could play with. I was referred to a company called Sweetwater. Sweetwater is an online store that specializes in all things music related, instrument related, and/or pro audio related. This was really intriguing to me, so I decided to check it out. Sweetwater had anything and everything that you could think of. They also had several specials and sales that were going on. One sale in particular was on some new Blue Encore 100s, these microphones are essentially the Blue brand equivalent to the Shure SM58, which is basically your standard handheld performance microphone. The sale was a buy one, get one free sale. I couldn’t believe my eyes! Two microphones for the price of one was an amazing deal. I was wanting to purchase a new performance microphone because my band was getting ready to play shows, not only that but I could use it for several other things. So I placed the order, they told me that the shipping would take a couple weeks at the most, I had the microphones by the end of the week. Not only was the shipping very timely, they assigned me with my own Sound Engineer Tech representative that I could email if I had any questions or problems concerning the product and/or anything else I was curious about. Along with the package I received a massive catalog of all the products they were selling which included several specials and deals that were on the products. My decision to use Sweetwater was a success and a very pleasant experience. I was very impressed with the quality of the service and how caring and considerate the employees were to me as a customer. “Taking good care of customers starts with a deep-down, customer-focused culture.” (Marketing: An Introduction) P4. I personally think Sweetwater functions off a similar mindset. Their workers are all professionals and experienced within the culture of all things Audio related and they are very helpful.