And We're Graduating :(

Prior to entering this class, I wasn’t sure what to expect. As with all business classes, one thing I knew to expect was a group project. As with all group projects I thought we may be given a client and come up with a marketing strategy for the company. However, this wasn’t the case for Consumer Insights as we were able to do something a little more fun. We were given the task of creating a product for a researched segment.

There were many things to be learned from this project. I’d say the biggest takeaway I had was the process of taking insights and developing a product. It seems that most products are created without the insights of customers ever being examined therefore leading to poorly developed and researched products which end up flopping. This project led us down the right path, however it wasn’t the path we took. I found myself immediately doing the stupid thing of thinking of products primarily based on assumptions of our segment. However, this was immediately shot down by Mr. Walls as he overheard us talking about product development at our first group work session. This was how we learned to continue down the established path for our product development. It was also a great lesson learned in that at the end we had to show how our insights connected to our product. This made our final product prototype be a product that our consumers may want.

I think the second most important thing I learned was learning to work in a group. While every other business class requires group work, it seems that this class forced the group to get along more than usual. I believe this is because we all have creative minds and wanted to create the best product possible. In other classes there are strict guidelines to follow which take away from the creativity of many students. However this project gave freedom to students which in turn created conflict within the group. The project therefore was a great lesson in compromise. We all had good ideas, and we all wanted to see them followed through. However because it was a group, we were forced to compromise. I really didn’t enjoy this part of the project, but in reflection it was a good lesson to learn in both group work and humility.

In my initial introduction to my group I was a bit worried. We all came together, and I didn’t know anybody from the get go. Another problem was that many of us were graduating seniors and therefore the amount of effort being put in by each member would be reduced because of senioritis as well as people being preoccupied with job searches and grad school applications. Then as we began to get into the heart of the project, I saw immediate conflict with some of the members because of my personality. This is usually a cause for problem because I have a strong personality in which I joke a lot to relieve tension. However, some students are hard workers that don’t have time for a jokester such as me. It was great to learn how to handle other personalities though. As it was also nice to learn about insights along the way. I feel that working with the group didn’t contribute much to my learning the material as much as other factors did. I felt that the teaching was great, as well as the background knowledge gained from other classes. It seemed that while this is an elective, it tied in a lot of what I’ve learned in every other marketing class and will most likely contribute to my future career endeavors. I also feel what I learned is really helping as I come along with developing my paper.