The Online Experience to School

          

           Classes I take at San Francisco State will prepare me for my future career in Marketing.  Having transferred from College of Marin a semester ago, I have only completed fifteen units at State.  But the courses I have taken have been specific to my discourse.  A couple courses I’ve taken are International Business, Marketing, and Information Systems.  All these are required business courses that really introduced me to what exactly business is and how it affects the globe. 

            The odd thing is, with these classes being so important to my major, they were all online courses.  I never actually stepped into a classroom when I took these classes.  There are both advantages and disadvantages to a set up like this.  An advantage is that I don’t actually have to get myself to campus for a lecture.  This way I could schedule work with out having to worry about getting to a class.  Another advantage is I never had to print anything out and turn in a hard copy to the professors.  This saved paper, time and ink, which ultimately saved me a little money.  Chancellor of the University System of Maryland, William E. Kirwan, said that online courses cut costs by 25% and give students more personal attention.(Source) In my personal experience, I didn’t receive any more personal attention in online classes than I did during in-person courses.  I found that being away from campus made me more distant from the college.  

            Disadvantages I found to online courses is, as previously mentioned, the feeling of disconnection to the university.  I was only on campus one day a week that semester and commuting at the time so I never really felt part of the university.  Also from a more ethical point of view, if the costs to actually teach the class are lower, and we are trying to cut costs, then why does our tuition continue to rise?  My own expectation is that if a student participates in a cost cutting class, then their tuition should reflect that cost cut.  According to a financial aid guide, the annual cost of tuition increases about eight percent, which means it doubles about every nine years.(Source)  I believe that if students take the risk of an online course then their tuition should be lowered to reflect the lower costs on behalf of the university.

            Despite the courses being online, I did learn about business that makes the world turn.  International Business taught me about the downstream and upstream stages of the value added chain really affect the product’s quality as well as its price.  This will help me understand how different areas of the world have different expertise that makes their product more valuable than others.  Marketing is especially important because it is my major.  Marketing gave me a complete overview of what it takes to get a product to the market and how to make that product appeal to a certain market.  This is really important to making money and to stay in business.  Information Systems taught me about how to manage a business using a computer.  This class was really specific in its use of excel to manage business finances.  This is important for a company to have up-to-date reports of their finances so that they know if they need to make cuts, or whether they can expand.    All of these courses are connected because they all have to do with aspects of business.

            Overall in my experience with online courses, I would say it was a good one.  I passed all the classes and I got an overview of the business life.  I would not discourage others from going the online route because although there is that disconnect from the university that I felt, it does free up my schedule to do what I want and I get to complete the work on my own time.  And although I felt less teacher attention, I still learned what I needed and I will use it for the entirety of my career.

Reading is Caring

            Reading and writing are two very crucial aspects of business.  Being able to clearly state what needs to be addressed is a skill that is never undervalued.  Reading and being able to comprehend the jargon is necessary to conducting business.  The businessman I interviewed, Peter Santora, has to read and write many things daily.  Being a salesman, Mr. Santora has to read emails constantly.  But during his busy day, he usually finds time at the beginning and end of every day.  He has to read catalogs and magazines to keep up with the products he’s selling.   To go along with the catalogs, he also has the order sheets that his customers place.  All of this reading leads to him knowing the industry and making a profit, along with keeping up with personal relationships with clients. 

            Reading emails is important to placing orders and returns.  This is really the main thing he reads.  Emails are defined as a method of exchanging digital from one author to one or more recipients.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email)  Being able to write email “blasts” to many clients makes it easier to reach a lot of people instantaneously.  When I write emails I try to make them short but clear, and I always consider my audience. 

            Catalogs and magazines display the products that a company is offering.  Peter needs to read these because he needs to know what he is actually selling, which products he has in stock, which ones are new, and which ones are on sale.  Knowing the product line is one of the main jobs of being a salesman. 

            The order forms are necessary to read as a man in sales.  This is the actual point where he puts in the order.  If he gets it wrong, then he lets down his customers and is then forced to do more work to fix it.  I would think that this is where much of his time is spent, making sure that the orders is correct. Along with orders, returns also occur for various reasons.  He treats these like regular order forms when processing the requests.  “Being accurate and timely makes doing the order forms easier,” said Mr. Santora.  I agree with this in all aspects of business.  This creates a better image for yourself and the companies you represent. 

The Golf Wizard

            My own goal for my career is to be in sports marketing.  There are many genres to this field such as advertising and sales.  While I like the side of advertising, sales is also a huge makeup of marketing in general.  They are very similar to each other and I feel it would be good for me to see both sides and to learn about both.  Therefore, I interviewed an independent sales representative.  What is a sales representative you might ask? Well a sales rep goes to the different locations representing their supplier and sells them whatever they need. 

The man I interviewed, Peter Santora, sells for three golf apparel companies: Cutter & Buck, Imperial Headwear, and Sterling Cut Glass.  He goes around to all the different golf courses and pro shops in Northern California for them to place orders with those companies.  Independent sales reps are different because they choose whom they sell for and whom they don’t.  There is a circuit of courses and shops that he sells to and makes regular stops.  This keeps up the relationship and personal attention to the customers.  Mr. Santora said, “they won’t forget about you if you meet them face to face.”  This is a good motto because it is true.  I remember people better if I meet them than if I read about them online.  For my own career, keeping an open line of communication through in person meetings and online will be crucial in being successful.

Peter graduated from University of San Francisco with a Bachelors degree in business.  He started his career in sales the fall of 1981.  The day starts the same way is ends, looking at emails and phone for those first and last orders and returns of the day.  He always does this because he needs to stay ahead because he doesn’t want to loose out on orders.  One of the biggest problems is time management.  Keeping up with the orders and returns that happen overnight can put him behind for the day and he might not get to all the face-to-face meetings he had scheduled.  I can see this being very important because I wouldn’t want to sell something that I don’t have. 

Another problem he faces daily is inventory.  When customers want something that’s not in stock then he looses out on a sale.  The good example he gave me was if the Giants win and keep going in the postseason, then everyone is going to want the latest equipment with Giants logos.  Only so much can be produced and sometimes can’t keep up with demand.  He called these kinds of sales “time sensitive.”  I would think all sales people have these sorts of problems.  Keeping up with orders and knowing what’s in stock are important to being a good salesman.  Being prompt with putting in the orders to get it to the clients as fast as possible is also what makes a trustworthy salesman.  I want to be trustworthy in my own line of work so being prompt is just a good all around goal for anyone.

Overcoming these challenges can be remedied with the use of technology.  Online sales make it easier to place orders for customers.  More golf companies are going to online sales.  According to Mr. Santora, “Golf tends to lag behind when it comes to technology.”  More and more his customers are going to the Internet.  Using this to his advantage, email technology can send out “blasts” of catalogs to customers reaching many people in a short amount of time from far away.  As much as online sales are taking over the industry, it is still a personal industry.  Customers still want to see the product and hold it before they buy it.  Golf sales, in general, are still very much a face-to-face industry.  Sales aren’t going down but going up due to the Internet.  I think everyone these days are trying to find that piece of tech that will make doing business easier and more efficient.  Email, and online sales is just a portion of the potential that the Internet provides. 

After this interview I realized that sales is a very difficult thing to be really good at.  Learning all the products and clientele would take a lot of experience.  Having been in the industry for over thirty years, Mr. Santora knows his products and how to appeal to certain customers.  I hope that one day I can get to the point where I have a true beat on the sports industry.  I take away from this interview a better sense of what happens on the daily basis for a man in marketing. 

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Advertising in Sport Marketing

          My dream job would be to work in sports marketing for a team in the Bay Area.  With the limited amount of positions available in a certain area, I should keep my options open.  Similar to Mark Burns, a marketing blogger, when I think about sports business professionals, not an athlete, the thought of becoming the General Manager of my favorite franchise comes to mind.  The world of sports goes much deeper than the teams’ front office personnel or top-tier sports agency firm. Burns listed some potential jobs as a sports marketer; vice president for marketing, director of marketing, director of special events and promotions, director of new business development, and tournament operations manager.  Not to mention all the other positions not in the marketing field.  For example the administration, media, facilities and events, finance, public relations, and travel are all aspects necessary to a franchise.  So there are more opportunities to get involved with sports than I previously imagined. 

            If I were to ever get a job with a sports franchise, I would treat that team like I would a brand.  A brand has an influence over its loyal customers.  In my own experience, when I see 49er logo on a can of Bud Light, I think of going to a football game and getting drunk.  The marketers find out how and why people are attached to the sport and exploit it for profit, I don’t view that as a bad thing in this case.  According to the Matthew Buchanan, this is winning customers through sponsorships to achieve short term, or even long term relationships.  A brand should be able to create layers of communication that trigger al the senses of the consumer.  I want to make people remember, and really want the product I sell.  Through ways such as sponsorships, franchises can appeal more directly to a target market.  This is similar to something I would like to do.  Come up with clever, funny ways to appeal to fans, and gain new fans, through advertising. 

            Another example of this advertising through sponsorships is the Chicago Fire, a soccer team, teaming up with Quaker Oats.  They put the best player on the box of cereal along with his stats and then put it in stores expecting sales to rise.  This also gives the team more publicity.  Also with the partnership between the Fire and Quaker Oats, now they both have an obligation to each other to maintain in good graces with the public.  If Quaker Oats gets bad publicity, then the Fire could get some of that backlash.  So there are some risks to undertaking sponsorships. 

            After writing this post, I came to a closer realization of what I want to be as marketer.  I want to be involved in the advertising department of a sports franchise.  Whether that is actually doing the think tank and focus groups work, or just crunching stats to get the best market research.  Advertising is the genre of marketing where I would like to take my career.

Links:

http://www.sportsnetworker.com/                

http://shayboyd.wordpress.com/2012/05/24/how-sport-sponsorship-drives-brand-proposition/

http://joefavorito.com/2012/10/01/where-theres-fire-theres-a-good-promotion/                  

Genre of a Blog

Blogging is a growing theme amongst the online community.  People gravitate toward it for many reasons.  Perhaps to reflect of personal experiences, talk about the sports hub, and share anything from business to health.  It is its own genre.  Social networking is something different than all other types of writing because this takes place in an open forum where any one can read and comment on what you say.  No other forum allows such interaction from so far away and so instantaneously.  It is also the only kind of writing that absolutely requires a computer with the Internet.  Users have even developed their own personal way to write uniquely describing their thoughts.  The uniqueness of blogging, and all other forms of online social media, is what makes it a new genre.

Genres organize products into categories to make things easier to find.  In terms of a blog, I see no difference.  Blogs have themes just like any other work of art.  Whether that’s business themed, science, philosophy, or history, everything has at least one spot where it is similar to other works.  When we can organize efficiently, which genres allow us to do, it makes it easier to acquire related writings.  If there is a raw interest in the genre, as readers we are aware and already connected to the reading.  For example if I’m looking around online for a blog about fishing, when I type fishing into Google, I wouldn’t expect related searches to be articles on the zombie apocalypse.  Caroline Miller, a fellow blogger, wrote that when a type of discourse is given a certain name by a community, then it is functioning is a genre.  This really classifies what is a genre.  This discourse also has jargon only people with knowledge would completely understand.  So not only does it help readers find what their looking for, but also what they might be trying to avoid.

            Since I am a business major, I’m going to look at genre from a business perspective.  When I walk into a grocery store and start looking for what I want, I look at the top of the isles to see what is down each isle.  If I want some bread, I look for the bread isle and down that isle I might find some peanut butter and jams to go along with it.  To me that’s what a genre is, that sign on top of the isle to let you know what is down there, and you’ll find some other related items along the way.  Social networker, Daniel Chandler, says that genre serves to increase efficiency and communication. In the business world, that is completely true.  Being able to get what you want faster is a quality most consumers find useful.  In a world where everything is about now and immediate information, genre sure does make it easier to sift through what is irrelevant.  All of this is to, as another online writer Cornelius Puschmann, puts it, to maximize profit.  If customers have a good experience, they are more likely to return. 

            Computers make finding all of this information as easy as a click on the mouse.  We wouldn’t even be talking about this if computers didn’t exist.  The mass amounts of information are organized into genres.  All of the sites we view on the Internet are tracked.  This data can be used to make advertising more specific to the genre of sites you visit.  Companies use genre by finding similar hobbies and advertising them to you in hope of making a purchase.  It all comes down to money and genres can help make more of it.

            Blogging is a complete genre on its own with sub-genres with in the blogging community compiled into categories so to set up the audience.  With out it, readers might be confused while reading and won’t know what to expect.  Business, sports, health, cooking, boating are all types genre that a blog could be about.  It is clear to see that I believe genre is needed to keep order.  Without some way to organize, there would be chaos. 

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/blogging_as_social_action_a_genre_analysis_of_the_weblog.html

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/intgenre/intgenre2.html

http://books.google.com/books?id=fMLR07uRGcEC&pg=PA86&lpg=PA86&dq=genre+consumers+blog&source=bl&ots=WlvbRBqcSB&sig=2pJTO13huI8HOYRHMhmm_5gOcB4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=kGJlUODSGYKoigKU8oGYDA&ved=0CEMQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=genre%20consumers%20blog&f=false

My First Blog Post

Hello everyone!  My name is Doug Warwick originally from northern California.  I am a senior at San Francisco State planning to major in Marketing currently living in the city.  Over the past three years I have worked for United Markets, a local grocery store in Main County, but I recently left to focus on my academics.  I enjoy going to movies, playing and watching sports, cooking, playing board games, and being with my friends and family.  My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving because it is a day to eat and stuff your face.  My favorite sports teams are all Bay Area teams: the Warriors, 49ers, Giants, and Sharks. 

When I graduate with a Marketing degree, I want to get into sports marketing.  My dream would be to work for a sports franchise, mainly the Giants or 49ers in their marketing departments.  I would be good at sports marketing because I am a sports fan so I know what a sports fan is looking for when they are sitting down watching a game.  You could say that sports is my genre of choice.  Somewhere in the Bay Area would be great but I wouldn't mind going other places.  Working for a franchise, such as the Giants, I get to help project an image to the community about what the team stands for off the field. But these jobs are extremely difficult to get so always have a back up plan.

My second choice, and one that seems pretty fun, would be to work at an advertising agency.  Finding ways to appeal to different markets and selling products to people all over the globe, or even just locally, would be a fun job.  Having worked in a grocery store, I saw just a portion of how much advertising it took to keep relevant among competitors.  News paper ads every Sunday with the weekly specials and a blurb from the regular customers on how they love the great customer service.  Not to mention all the fundraisers for local schools, and other nonprofits, and other charitable donations that takes place.  All of this leads up to an image that a community can stand behind and support.