Week 2 - The Widget Factory

Week of January 29, 2009


I am not a tool.


In class, we had a lengthy discussion on whether students are their teacher's customers. The conclusion we arrived at is that students are a resource/product of the university and the professor is the tool/machinery. In an article from the National Association of Scholars, the role of students in the educational system is discussed. Peter Wood says that students are just students. The relationship of students to teachers is one that cannot and should not be morphed to fit a metaphorical mold. He supports his argument by referencing Socrates "The Clouds." Generally, he feels that the attitude customers take is that they are in control of the situation. This is a bad situation for the teacher. However, it is important that students exercise judgment over their professors.

In our discussion, students were compared to pieces of steel to be molded. We are customers of the university, but not the teacher. The argument supporting this idea is that only a small portion of tuition dollars goes to the professors. However, you would think that any monetary amount would qualify it as a market exchange. So, if students are resources...the teacher must be a tool. Or rather the method the university takes to add value to the resource. Who are the customers then? Society. Especially for state institutions that get a lot of funding from taxes.
http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?Doc_Id=320

Target Markets

A target market is a focused effort of a company to marekt their product to specific individuals, ignoring all others. As the economic situation worsens, many marketers are finding that creativity is even affected by budget constraints. So, marketers have to put on their accounting hats and do some cost-benefit analysis of different marketing channels. The Wall Street Journal article titled "More Web Ads Improve Their Aim" addresses the concept that more and more people are absorbing advertisments through the internet. Yahoo is one company that provides added value for this marketing method. The performance-based media they use also provides a means of tracking the effectiveness of the internet advertisements, giving them a lot of value for the shrinking advertising dollar.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123379182761749823.html

Value Proposition

Companies with a differentiation marketing strategy seek loyal customers that are willing to pay a premium for a product. Communicating value to potential customers, in order to convince them your product is worth it, can be costly. In fact, new small-time entrants to some markets are resorting to give-a-ways. Experts say doing this could send the message that your product is cheap, rather than showing its immeasurable value. Others, like Vaillant, have gone to free installation with no up front costs to gleam more customers. None of these innovative methods have proved to work yet.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123378641759849447.html