Lessons Learned

The blogging process that our class has gone through over the course of the semester has been unlike anything I've done in a class before. Being someone who, like most of you reading this, doesn't ever write unless I am forced to for a class assignment, this was a difficult assignment for me. Although I've complained plenty about this assignment throughout the semester I think it did provide some good lessons for me.

First off I think It would have been easier had I chosen a single topic and done a series of blogs on it throughout the whole semester. I think I spent more time deciding what to write about for each blog than actually writing it.

Second is that if something is interesting to you, if you write about it you expand on it much more than if you just sit and think, it also causes me to have more questions than if a certain subject just crossed my mind. Which is a great lesson to learn for future use. If you've learned anything that surprised you from this assignment post it in the comments.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

In the last Issue of Time Magazine, as pictured below, there were several articles discussing America's soon to be President. The articles were full of people's opinions and the overall feeling that no one really knows what to expect. After reading a few of these articles and Matt Brownlow"s Blog on the subject I decided to share my opinion on our future President.

The Good: One way to look at President elect Trump is that he is a very successful business man, as exemplified by his vast wealth. And that if he is somehow able to apply that knowledge to his Presidency he could possibly help out our economy out quite a bit.

The Bad: Another way to look at him is that he has no political background whatsoever, and is completely out of his element in the position of President.

The Ugly: Finally one can see that in the past 17 months during his campaign, there have been many, many instances when Trump has been completely disrespectful to other cultures, races, and religions. He has even gone so far as to make fun of a man with a mental handicap. this, in my opinion, has definitely been my biggest problem with trump.

I'm no political expert these are just my thoughts from what I have heard, observed and read. In my opinion I think we will see a little of all of these aspects during the next four years, and I hope for the best. What are your thoughts on whats to come for our country?

The Season of Giving or the Season of Buying?

After reading my class mate Vanessa's blog about why we buy gifts for our loved ones I started thinking bout how I buy gifts for my friends and family. Ive noticed I always have planned to get get my loved ones small gifts as December approaches. Being a college student without a lot of expendable cash, I often just make every ones gifts by hand. Most times however by the time Christmas day rolls around I have doubled the original amount I was originally planning on spending for each persons gift. So why does this happen?

Looking at my own self I think that I start small, shopping online and around town, then I start searching for that perfect gift. Soon enough I find it but it's out of my price range so I make one exception. then I feel bad about spending more on one family member than another and son enough everyone is getting bigger and better gifts. I think this happens to everyone but just with different causes so if you are falling victim to this over spending on gifts let me know in the comments along with what you think causes it.

Are Advertisers Hurting Themselves.

As we all know, having gone through almost an entire semester of consumer behavior, There are more ads in today's world than ever before. with people seeing as many as 5,000 ads a day we have been asked this semester how we can cut through the clutter? I pose a different question are advertisers going to far? As we are sent ever increasing amounts of messages, as consumers, are we going to hit a point where we ignore all the messages we see.


There are already many types of messages that nearly everyone ignores, such as banner ads, so will there come a time when this happens to all types of advertising? I realize that advertisers are constantly discovering new vessels to transport their message whether its on video games, product placement in our favorite movies or subliminal messages. But speaking from my own point of view I already ignore almost every ad I see. It gets about two seconds for me to see what its advertising and if I'm confused or not interested it is out of my mind. What is your opinion are ads ever going to be entirely ignored or will the advertisers always be able to find a way into our minds.

Always Listening

In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned a relatively new Amazon product called the Amazon Echo. I find this product very interesting and a little creepy. Typically this device is placed in one's kitchen or living room, if onewants, one can get an aditional "dot" and place it in every room. When one says "Alexa" it starts listening. One can ask it any question and it will google answers, or one can have it turn on music, even make online purchases for you. In the picture below is a list from Amazon of other suggested uses.

When I first heard about this I was kind of creeped out, I don't know much about the technical side of computers but it seems to me if someone, for example a burglar, wanted to hack this device and listen to all of one's conversations, they could find out when one is going to be gone and whether or not one has a security system. It seems to me there could potentially be a lot of problems that come along with this device and the more you connect it to your house the more danger it poses if it does get hacked.

On the other hand just the other day one of my classmates was telling me he had read articles about how our phones are constantly listening to us. Then another student at the table said she is often talking about a certain movie and then she will see adds for that movie the next time she is on her phone, and yet we all have a phone so maybe this product wouldn't be any different. I do think this is a very cool product that would be very useful, but I probably won't be getting one anytime soon. Do you think the Echo is a possible danger, or just a use full tool that makes life easier?

How Not to do Sales

One of my favorite clothing stores is Eddie Bauer Their products are extremely durable and comfortable they re however quite expensive. So when I first started shopping there if I wanted to buy something I would wait, and only buy if I could get if for 30% off or more. However, I started to notice that every time I go into their store or get a catalog from them it seems everything in the store is always 30-40% off. Over the past four months I've been in the store once and received two catalogues from them, and wouldn't you know 30-40% off every time.

In case you were wondering this is
terrible sales practise. The purpose of a sale is to get people excited about getting your products for a cheaper price and bring in more business. By having a store wide sale for months at a time you are just sending the message to your customers that the real price of you products are when they are marked 30% off.

This creates a problem now for them because if their other customers like me find their products to expensive I now only make purchases from them if I can find items marked down by at least 40%, even then I feel as though after realizing these facts I am less likely to buy from them.

If they want to fix this it is my opinion that they need to lower the regular price on the products, and when they do have sales only sell certain items at discounted prices, rather than everything in the store.

The Big Nudge

Its that time of year again where every store one visits seems to be having it's biggest sale ever, and everyone is constantly scouring the Internet and searching store to store for the best deals. Sense 1952 Black Friday has marked the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Everyone knows that black Friday can get crazy, sense 2006 there have been seven reorted deaths and 98 injuries, but in my oppinion it is probably one of the greatest nudges that has ever been implemented. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(shopping)

All of these store are advertising about how much money consumers are going to save if they buy products on black Friday, and the consumers eat it up. But if you are spending money even if you get something 50% off you are still spending, which is the opposite of saving. The mannor in which all of these stores and online site frame their advertising is fooling consumers into spending money where they souldn't and because they get such good deals they buy fancier items than they normally would and end up spending more than normal anyway.