Week 7 Reading Reflection

Something that really stood out to me in the reading was the section describing consumer habits in the 1960s. During the 60s, it was very surprising to me to learn that consumer habits were basically going in reverse. For example, people with less education were becoming more affluent and therefore demanding better goods. Then, due to lack of creativity in marketing, advertising became boring and monotonous. This dramatically changed in the 70s, which was interesting to me because I don't really know much about the history of advertising.

Something that did confuse me about the reading, though, was why consumer patterns changed so dramatically in the 60s. This doesn't make much sense to me.

Two questions I would ask the author would be 1) Why did consumer patterns change in the 60s and 2) What marketing tactic such as color, music, etc. have the greatest success with consumers?

There wasn't really anything in the reading that I disagreed with. Though I do not have a strong background in marketing, I can definitely understand the logic behind certain marketing tactics in business. A business has to pay special attention to consumer patterns so that they know what is working and what isn't. There is a lot of psychology involved in marketing a product. One has to take into account the tendencies of people's mind and what grabs their attention the best. This article explained very well the process in which businesses study the mind of the consumer and how they can persuade them to buy their product or service in the best way.

Elevator Pitch No. 2

A couple of the main critiques people had about my last pitch was that I was messing with my hair too much and I kept reading off of my notes. I was told that this is distracting, and I definitely agree. I guess I didn't realize it because playing with my hair is a nervous habit and I thought I wasn't being too obvious about reading my notes. However, after I looked back at it I realized it was very distracting from what I was trying to say. This time, I made a conscious effort to not play with my hair and I completely memorized my script.

Another suggestion I received that I thought was a very good point was that there should be a contact line just in case the 5-step process doesn't work in calming the user down. I thought this was a wonderful idea so I adapted it and put it in my service as well as my sales pitch.

Over all, my feedback was very good about my concept and what I am trying to do with my product. Thanks to everyone who gave me such great suggestions! I think everyone can relate in some way to feeling ridiculously stressed, and this app could be expanded to so many more people. I'm hoping to make a difference in the world in some way, and maybe MyCalm will allow me to do that.