Blog 8: Final Reflection

In marketing, there are specific factors to determine whether a company is successful or not when it comes to the marketing of a product or service. Through the practice marketing simulation, and other assignments like the blog and commercial, marketing was the key to success. Failing to market either of these assignments correctly, probably resulted in a poor grade. In the marketing simulation, my group experienced the hardships of marketing and had difficulty deciding when to market, how to market, and who to market with. When to market was important because if you continue to advertise late into the product life cycle, it will negatively affect net profit due to the overspending on advertisements. How to market was another important factor because if you want your product to be viewed in a certain way, than you have to advertise the product specifically to your company's standards, while also appealing to your target market. Finally, who to market with may be less significant, but is still relevant to marketing success. Although we were unable to play around with this aspect as much, it is pretty much apparent what needs to be done as far as who to market with. Cross promotion is mainly what I'm referring to; if you promote your product with a completely different one, it will most likely benefit both sides of the marketing campaign.

In addition to advertising, it is always important to address the marketing mix early in a product's life cycle. When a product or service is in the introduction stage, it is necessary to do this because you need to show people what your product or service is, and what it entails because most people want to know a few things, how much the product is, where it could be purchased, or if there are any upcoming sales. Heavy advertising in the introduction stage can create brand awareness. Brand awareness is crucial in marketing because it can sometimes lead to brand loyalty, and when a consumer is completely loyal to a brand, it is primarily what separates a really successful company from a mediocre one.

The most important part of marketing, on top of all of the things previously discussed, is making adjustments in advertising a product. Most companies are not successful after they release their first advertisement. But failure is a good thing, because you can learn from your mistakes. An advertisement can fail from two things, it may not get the amount of views you want, or it may not appeal to your desired target market. If either of these things are lacking in an advertisement, then adjustments must be made. Although in some cases, advertisements may appeal to your target market, and receive an exceptional amount of views, but sales may still remain at a constant rate. Through some experience in the marketing simulation, I found out that advertising sometimes takes longer to work than you may expect. Most of the time, an advertisement may take longer to be successful because people are still unaware of the product. The only time advertising should be held back is after the growth stage in the product life cycle. 

Blog 7: Spring Conditions in December?

This weekend was an interesting one in the fact that Stowe, probably along with other east coast mountains, experienced something that doesn't usually occur in December; and this would be the spring-like conditions. Some may put El Niño to blame, and this is most likely a correct assumption. Saturday especially, the sun was blazing down like a beach day in mid-July, and the snow quality was definitely one for the books. With the slushiness and warmth of April, it is difficult to say whether the season will take a turn for the worse, or for the better. Although with the extreme weather conditions of this weekend, it would be absurd to say that the temperatures will get warmer.

I recently brought up this concern in one of my previous posts about snowmaking and how El Niño may play a role in this freakish phenomenon. What I'm trying to say here is that mountains will absolutely have to spend more money on snowmaking. With little flakes here and there, it simply is not enough to keep mountains open until their projected closing dates. Unless mother nature flips this unnatural occurrence, I'm afraid that mountains all over may lose ridiculous amounts of money. I know that skiing conditions won't effect skiers like myself because I'll be on the mountain regardless, but the rest of the skiing population who find skiing to be more of a physical workout, may skip out on their planned vacations. I'm mainly referring to the older generations when I say this because I highly doubt that people like my 75 year old grandfather will be tearing it up all winter on those sheets of ice they call trails; or vice versa, when the ice hits 50 degree temperatures and turns into slush.

For some mountains, like Stowe, snowmaking isn't a problem because they can make up for it with their $20 burgers and $120 day passes. But other mountains like Smuggler's Notch, may suffer from this warm stretch of weather because as some of you may already know, Smuggs doesn't like to rely on machines for their snow coverage, nor do they groom their trails. So with warm weather rolling in, and rainy days every week, Smuggs may suffer financially from this bizarre weather pattern.

This is not only a concern in the east coast, but places out west as well. Let's use Mt. Hood for an example, this summer basically had zero coverage, which is rare for a mountain that offers year round skiing. Windells, a ski camp that relies on Mt. Hood for their business, was severely slacking this past summer. With a very limited supply of some of the smallest jumps I've ever seen the camp have, to the odd zig zag setup they had, the quality of the Windells park was probably at an all-time low. A few years ago, in 2013 to be more specific, Windells had quite the setup with some pretty descent sized booters in the lane. Making jumps of that caliber this past summer was not an option with the lack of snow. Windells may have to change some of their marketing tactics if they still want skiers from across the country to visit their awesome camp.