Week 7 Reading Reflection

1) What was the biggest surprise for you in the reading? In other words, what did you read that stood out the most as different from your expectations? 

I was quite surprised that geography and other societal factors actually do not hold that well in terms of marketing. I have noticed that, unfortunately, people still seem to be relatively segregated. I have lived in the Northern, Southern and Mid-Western United States and it doesn't matter where you go. For some reason like live with like and have similar friends with similar interests (I would suppose because most people do not like change and the unknown - as it is only instinct to not venture to an unknown place because if you were a caveman, venturing to an unknown place by yourself would almost surely mean death). So, it would make sense to me that geography would have some weight as to a buyers habits. So, that was quite surprising that it is not. However, upon further analysis, it makes more sense that a buyers habits would depend on, well, his habits when he/she buys things (as correlation equals, well, correlation).

I was also surprised that the strategy for advertising (reflecting the general population, itself) has changed. You would think that advertising would remain the same, but - as the article indicates - spending habits and wars and many other factors have changed how and what people buy.


2) Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you.


I wasn't quite sure what the author meant by "psychographics," first of all. I assume he was referring to segmentation for advertising, but he just all of a sudden used the term and it seemed to be referring to the segmentations, but I wasn't quite sure.
 

3) If you were able to ask two questions to the author, what would you ask? Why?

I would ask the author if he thinks that the marketing approach will change in the future (near or far) and would we be able to come up with a representational model for this to try and predict it (perhaps based on different aspects about the conditions of the economy, social situations, wars, etc).

 
4) Was there anything you think the author was wrong about? Where do you disagree with what she or he said? How?

I don't know if I really have the knowledge to argue with the author. Based on my experiences, I think that geography has more to do with advertising and predicting someone's purchases for this key reason: if you live in a town and you are, let's say, 7 or 8 years old and your friend gets a cool new toy, then you are going to want that toy as well. Regardless of your age, if your peers get a certain thing that is deemed by all of your peers to be very cool or useful, then you are more likely to buy that. Additionally, these items' "coolness" or appeal would almost certainly depend on age (except, perhaps, say phones or computers - which almost every age demographic seems very interested in having).

Free Money

For this assignment I decided to go to Turlington Plaza since there is a lot of pedestrian traffic and the gym. I decided to approach mostly men because I thought it would be weird to approach women offering money, and in order to "get the conversation going" I just offered them free money and sort of fanned out the dollar bill. Only two of the 5 people I offered the dollar to accepted the money and only one person on camera accepted the dollar.

Here are the videos of two of the interactions.

Elevator Pitch No. 2

1) The pitch

Technology continues to advance and computers are soaring ahead in terms of hardware. However, this does not mean that software that we use almost every day should remain stagnant. Of course much software is probably pretty close to being optimized for the platforms it runs on; however, it seems that web browsers could be faster (and potentially more secure) than they currently are and people seem to agree with this. Therefore, I have decided to attempt to create a web browser that can interpret a new type of web content that - of course - would take up significantly less space. This, in turn, means that the amount of data you need to transmit over the internet connection would be drastically minimized. Other optimizations would make this the fastest web browser yet. Additionally security would remain a large factor in the production of the browser. Security, I think, is taken for granted in modern web browsers, so this browser would obviously have to be very secure so people wouldn't be able to access files or glean any information through a victims web browser. The final product, I am sure, would be a sophisticated and fast web browser, and I am sure it is possible.

2) A reflection on the feedback you received from your last pitch

Unfortunately I didn't do the last pitch; however the feedback that I received from the interviews I did seemed fairly conclusive. Most people think that web browsers could be faster than they are from a user perspective. I also think that they could be faster from both a user perspective and a developer perspective - mainly for these two reasons: (1) I have experienced trouble with bloated and large web browsers and (2) the way the content is structured (HTML/CSS/JavaScript/etc) uses at least three languages (usually to represent content) and the symbols in the web content are so repetitive and take up a lot of space. All of the feedback I got seemed like a pretty accurate reflection of the general attitude - e.g. web browsers could be faster than they are (we all agree on this; ok, maybe not all of us, but probably most of us).


3) What did you change, based on the feedback?

Since the feedback reflected how I initially thought people felt, I don't feel like I need to change much. People didn't seem as concerned about the security of a web browser (compared to the speed), but I think it is sort of taken for granted. So, if I could make a web browser that is much faster than Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox and Opera and all of the other ones and made the security as good or better than the current ones, then I think that people would switch over from the current system of representing web content (e.g. the 3 or more languages of HTML/CSS/JavaScript/etc) in about a decade.