Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Design Thinking

My dear coworker and friend, Shanna Luke, introduced me to the design thinking process about three or four years ago. She was so enthusiastic about the process, which stimulated my curiosity. Once I learned the design thinking, I can see its benefits and potentials in teaching and learning. I read couple books and watched videos in order to understand more about the process. Shanna and I continued our discussions regarding design thinking. Then, we started revised my class starting with entrepreneurship and apparel product development. While Shanna has left the university, I still continue on my quest incorporating design thinking into my classroom. I usually go through the design thinking process when I design or redesign curricula or class assignments. In my opinion, the process helps me to think outside the box, dream big, and goes wild for class ideas.


I truly believe that the design think process; therefore, I introduce the process to students in several classes when appropriate. Since you are the lucky ones, you have now learned about the process. Below are the prompt questions for your design thinking experience:

o   How did the workshops by Ms. Sayger affect your understanding of Design Thinking process (define, research, brainstorm, prototype, choose, and learn)?
o   Identify your favorite step(s) in Design Thinking process and explain why.
o   Identify any step(s) in Design Thinking process that are still unclear for you.
o   Give at least 1 example how you can incorporate the Design Thinking process when you utilize social media in merchandising area.
Provide a plan on how you can incorporate the Design Thinking process when you work on the class final project.

Sunday, September 28, 2014

Chapter 10: Social Media Metrics



Wow, this is my blog entry regarding chapter, the last chapter of the textbook. Finally, I can see the light at the tunnel. While this chapter is easy to read, I found that it’s quite difficult to write about it since the content is much related to Chapter 9. Though it’s hard to write about it in a blog entry, I think the information of this chapter is very important for students to understand the importance of the use of social media in marketing and merchandising.

To be honest, I am not familiar with the “Engagement Food Chain” and “Social Media Campaign Timeline” concept. Thus, I am glad to learn something news. I agree with the authors wholeheartedly that in regard to metrics it is crucial that we know what we want to measure and plan it nicely, otherwise, garbage in garbage out. It isn’t hard to do research but it’s hard to do good research since it requires a lot of planning. 

For this chapter blog entry, you are required to:

  • Summarize main ideas of the chapter.
  • Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the chapter.
  • Discuss 5 terminologies that you never heard of before.
  • Define what a metric is in your own words.
  • Identify a student organization, sorority, or fraternity that uses social media to promote its activities and membership opportunities. Briefly review the social media zones in use by the organization and define three SMART objectives for the organization’s use of social media.
  • Using the SMART objectives developing in the previous question, identify two metrics appropriate to measure the success of each objective.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Chapter 9: Social Media for Consumer Insights

Chapter 9 focuses on social media research and emphasizes on an importance of research and target audience. The chapter further explains both qualitative and quantitative approaches to social media research. As a researcher, I found that this chapter is refreshing. The authors provide useful information and important terminologies related to marketing research. After reading this chapter, I found myself planning on my next research. I also would like to utilize providers of social media monitoring and analytics services. I can’t wait discussing my research ideas with my fellow researchers. I am excited with new opportunity in my research agenda.

While I found that this chapter is easy to understand, I wonder how you feel about this chapter. I curious whether or not you have any questions or need further explanation while reading this chapter. Please feel free to share in your blog. Also please share the following information in your blog entry:

  • Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the chapter.
  • Discuss 5 terminologies that you never heard of before.
  • Visit Social Mention website and run an analysis on a brand of interest to you. Do you agree with the analysis? Read the information provided from Social Mention on the sites from which it pulls data. Should you be concerned about coverage or sampling error in the analysis revealed? Why?
  • Identify five videos on YouTube that include mentions of single brand. The video should include at least one corporate piece but the others may be user-generated. View the videos and read the accompanying comments; then conduct a content analysis of the material you find. What insights are you able to glean?


Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Chapter 8: Social Commerce

Personally, I don’t really like physical shopping much because it makes me tired. I don’t like dealing with too many people or trying on many clothes. Therefore, I do prefer online shopping more since I can compare price and ship wherever I want. Also, many websites offers free shipping and return. However, recently, I had a bad experience with Amazon.com. I bought cell phone cases and they were shipped to my old address. Regardless what I tried to tell the seller, they just didn’t response and brushed off saying it was my fault that I provided a wrong address, which I hadn’t lived there for 9 years.  In addition, I tried to contact UPS and USPS to change the address. Needless to say, my effort went in vein causing me more stress and vowed not to use their service in the future (unless I have to). As a result, I had to reorder my cell phone cases. I have learned that some businesses do not want a repeat customer or a good word-of-mouth. Through this bad experience, I realized that not every business knows how to conduct an online business. All they want is a transaction. I guess they think America has huge population, so losing one or hundreds will not affect their businesses. So, I waited for one pay back I had which is customer review. Guess what, that request never come.  I went online trying to find the way to give them my review. Again, my effort was not successful.  Well, I think they knew what my review would be like. Anyway, because of one bad experience, I have become more concise when buy online.  Also, I will remember to tell my students about my experience in years to come.

Most of the time, people who have bad experience tend to give review or feedback more than those who have good experience. As the social commerce progress, I expect that people will review, rate, refer, and share they experience more. I wonder whether you have any good or bad experience with online shopping. Do you give any review when shop online?

Let get back to work, below are questions for your blog for Chapter 8:

  • Please summarize main ideas of the chapter.
  • Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the chapter.
  • Have you ever shop through the ads on social media? Why? Why not?
  • While online shopping offers many benefits, do you prefer to shop online or physical shopping? Why?
  • Which is more influential to you between reviews from experts or reviews form customers? Explain.
  • Review the list of social shopping applications presented in the chapter and visit some of the sites that use these applications. Social shopping applications provide functionality for customers such as enhanced organization, price comparisons, risk reduction, and access to product information, but they also make the shopping experience more fun. Tag the list of applications based on the benefit the application provides – utility or fun. Which aspect of social shopping is most important to shoppers, in your opinion?


Saturday, September 13, 2014

Chapter 7 Social Entertainment

As stated previously in my introduction blog entry that I like to play game, I am a causal gamer. According to my career, I don’t think I will become a hardcore game since it requires time and effort. I own PlayStation 3, Nintendo’s Wii, and Nintendo DS. While I own all these game platforms, I prefer to play game in my iPad. The primary use of my PSP is movies and shows through Netflix and Amazon Prime. I use Nintendo DS for my brain game and my Wii for exercise.

Personally, I prefer to play board game. I like strategy games the most. I don’t mind playing role-playing games. After you read Chapter 7, I hope you realize that game is quite addicted. With the advent of technology and Internet, social games have become a powerful marketing and merchandising tool.

I wonder whether you have played any game. If you have played a lot of social games, have you ever notice any marketing elements that have incorporated into the game design such as display ads, static ads, and product placement.  Therefore, for this chapter, you can choose one of the three following choices.

I.  Social Game:
1.     Choose a game to play either online, game platform, social media, or through mobile device. You can find your own game or pick one of the following games:
a.     Simulation games:
                                               i.     Farmville - http://zynga.com/game/farmville-two
                                              ii.     Castleville- https://company.zynga.com/games/castleville
b.     Action game: 
                                               i.     Tanki Online- http://www.miniclip.com/games/tanki-online/en/#t-c-a-C
c.      Role-playing game:
                                               i.     Sinjid - http://armorgames.com/play/13549/sinjid
d.     Strategy game:
                                               i.     Kingdom Rush - http://kingdomrush.com/play/
                                              ii.     Kingdom Rush Frontiers- http://armorgames.com/play/15717/kingdom-rush-frontiers

2.     Play for couple levels. As you interact with the game, keep a journal of your experience. In particular, note the advertising and branded components and your reactions to them. How does your experience affect your attitude toward the brands?

II. Choose three people you know who play social games. Interview them about the time they spend online play social games. Have they responded to branded offers? Then, write a blog entry on their brand experience in social games and their resulting perceptions of the brand.


III. Visit unification.com or argn.com to see what ARGs are playing now. Explore one of the current games.  Write a blog entry about the analysis of the game similar to Byte to Bucks in pages 159-161, and whether or not the game is associated with a brand (or it is a dark play ARG, with the brand yet to be identified. Also, make a list of non-entertainment brands that could use an ARG to tell their story and immerse their brand fans.