Post #1: Welcome

Welcome,

My name is Timothy (Tim) Nagy, a junior at Saint Michael's College, and this blog is going to track my journey through BU 215, a course in Marketing. I'll make sure to add more about me throughout my posts, and here's a link to my LinkedIn account if you really need to know more now, but I want to jump right in and tell you what I hope to communicate throughout this blog. My main mission is to tell you "How and Why to Capture Value," and hence the title. However, before I can do that, I'm going to engage in the process of critical reflection so that I can show you the concepts that I encounter in class, assess their validity based on 'real-life' experiences, and then identify how they have altered my perspective on marketing. My perspective has already changed after one week, so I am excited to keep changing and hopefully start changing your perspective as well.

The first change that I have had regards my view of myself. After reading BrandingPays: The Five Step System to Reinvent Your Personal Brand, by Karen Kang, assigned over winter break, I began to think of myself as a product of sorts, complete with many different features, a certain style, and, most importantly, something to offer. The BrandingPays system is a way of marketing oneself, and that system has already helped me one week into the semester.

As I continue though this course, this new view is going to be with me the whole time because, as I plan to pursue graduate school, I will be focused on marketing myself and not products or services. One term that we have already come across in class is target market. I will simply define it as the groups or regions of people that will benefit most from your product, service, or, of course, your self. One 'real-life' experience that I can think of is Subaru. While they have dealerships across the United States, Subaru's target market is clearly New England because, due to the driving conditions, particularly in the winter months, their cars meet the area's needs. If they tried to sell their cars in Texas, it probably would not go so well. Therefore, it is important to identify who you should market to. In my case, the target market is the graduate schools that will benefit most from me. So, I will need to identify programs, potential faculty mentors, and degree offerings. What is your target market? As always, that can be for your product, service, or self.

One more term I want to add is marketing itself. Marketing is defined as the process by which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships in order to capture value from customers in return. And so, traditionally, capturing value from customers is really the main objective of marketing. Capturing value from customers is getting to the point where customers become loyal to a certain product or service, and they begin to market the product for you through their loyalty in their everyday interactions. Essentially, when you have captured value, your products and services begin selling themselves. There are fourteen more weeks for me to figure out how to master this art, but for now I think the 'why' is clear. The next post will be in roughly a week. In the meantime, I hope you can identify what you have to offer and who you think needs it most, then we'll keep plugging away at the 'how'. Enjoy the week. -Tim