Room Creativity

(1) How do you plan to address the room creativity expectation?

• If I can get permission to bring in a few of the medical supplies that are in the office, then I'm hoping that I could bring those in as a sample and spread across the room. I could also display various brochures and posters from my independent component 2 around the room.

(2) What activity ideas do you have for answer 1 or 2?
Answer 1 [Making sure that all of the consumers in the firm knows the marketing message]

• Give a mission statement to every other group, and give them a few minutes to study the material. Have them go the next group and see if they can relay the mission statement in a really short amount of time. See which groups communicated the message the best after having the missions statements passed around the room once

Answer 2 [Getting to know your client in order to make them feel more comfortable with you]:

• Interview- split the room into two halves, one person in each group will be the client/ patient. Give the Client a scrip and list of facts, then have the group engage in conversation with the person to learn the correct facts about the client that will help them predict what type of devices to sell to the client.

Answer 2

EQ: What is most important when marketing medical supplies?
Answer 2: Get to know your client and target audience by freely communicating with them.

Evidence:

• In target marketing, one of the many ways to conduct market research is to conduct surveys. For medical suppliers, this is easier because there is already a specific target audience.
• While getting to know your target audience, you learn about the roles that they play in other people's lives, and can offer something that will help them feel as normal as possible as they complete that role.
• The most important thing is that, despite the many social situations they are thrown into, the main focus should always be on the clients' wants. 

Source:

• Science Fair
• (24) "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Social Psychology" by Joni Johnston
• (19c)  "Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning: Building the Right Relationships with the Right Customers."

The Product

My product from the senior project is that I have gained a new found respect for both the medical and business field. Previously, I had no interest in either field before beginning this project. I could have cared less about hospitals and medical equipment, since I never found the relevance it had to my life, nor did I have an interest in business, because of its close relation to politics- something I could never see myself being involved with. Through this project, I found that I learn something about business through marketing without it seeming political, and I now have a better understanding about the distribution of medical supplies. I am now more aware of my sleeping habits, since I have learned that I have a risk of having sleep apnea. I am also aware of the fact that the basic skills behind marketing are skills that I've had for a while, but have not been able to fine tune until now.

Fourth Interview Questions

Interviewee: Mrs. Bonus, CEO of AEON Medical Equipment and Supplies Inc.

1. Why did you take on this job and this business?
2. Did anyone introduce you or help you out when you were first getting into this business? How did they do so?
3. Do you train other marketers, or do any sort of training? What do you teach them about?
4. How do you establish these relationships between other doctors, suppliers, and manufacturers?
5. Has there been any situations in which there relationships have benefited both the company and the client?
6. Why do you set up the prices that the way that they are, other than MAP resons?
7. What happens if there was a client that came by and couldn't pay for anything (for whatever reason possible.)
8. How do you determine which manufacturers to do business with?
9. How do you pick, from a variety of products that serve the same purpose, which one to receive from the manufacturer?
10. When is it appropriate to involve the family members of your client in the purchase?
11. Do you train your employees in regards as to how to treat you clients? What do you instruct them to do?
12. What is the most important role of a medical equipment and supply company?
13. Do you really need to have a marketing background to be able to market medical supplies? What kind of background or knowledge should you have when marketing medical supplies?
14. What kind of skills should a person in your field have in order to do an effective job?
15. When do you feel as if you've done your job properly?
16. Have there been any marketing tactics or strategies that you've tried, but they didn't work out?
17. Do you have a different way of marketing mobility supplies versus mobility supplies?
18. What do you think is most important when marketing medical supplies?
19. How much of a responsibility do you feel you have for your clients?
20. What is your goal when marketing medical supplies?

Independent Component 2 Plan Approval

CONTENT:
(1) Write a description of what you plan on doing for your independent study component.
(2) Describe in detail how you think your plan will meet the 30 hours work requirement.
(3) How does your independent study component relate to your EQ?

1. For my second independent study component, I will be analyzing the different ways sales people in the medical supplies business market their products: either from manufacturer to supplier, or supplier to doctor/hospital. I will be analyzing the materials used for these presentations and see what makes it an effective tool for them to market their product, as well as determine whether or not there can be something done to improve it.
2. Each meeting lasts about 45 minutes, and then I will take about 15 minutes asking questions and analyzing the presentation and materials given. I have already witnessed two of them, and will only need to watch at least 28 more. If I'm not at the office that day, and if someone comes by and they leave behind materials, then I will take half an hour to ask about the person and analyze the materials left behind. This should all be completed by the end of April.
3. What I am studying for this independent component is what happens when marketers/sales people market their medical supplies. In order to get word of their product out there, sales reps and marketers visit the places that they sell their product to and try to sell their product and make their consumers aware of their presence. This component will give me a chance to witness first-hand what happens when medical suplies are being marketed, and will hopefully give me a possible, more direct answer to my EQ.

Independent Component 1

Literal:
a) I, Stefanie Paz, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents thirty hours of work.
b) I enrolled in an "Introduction to MicroEconomics" class taught by Prof. Amrik Dua at Cal Poly Pomona, every Tuesday and Thursday, from 1-3PM. I have also completed all assignments and all (except one) extra credit assignment for the class, and all three test dates and the final for the class.
Calendar:


Assignments 1 and 2

Assignments 3 (original misplaced, scored 13/15) and 4

Extra Credit Assignments 1, 2 and 3

(Notebook used for class will be in senior project binder)

Interpretive:
Each two-hour class is spent reviewing and discussing the concepts of MicroEconomics- the basis of Economics. There are also homework assignments to be completed outside of the classroom, and I've taken an extra hour studying for a test or final. The twenty sessions alone represent approximately forty hours, and the twelve study sessions that  I'm recording have taken approximately fourteen hours, leading to a total of fifty-four hours.

Applied:
This class introduced me to the basic structure of economics, and helped me understand some of the logic behind profitable businesses. The knowledge that I've gained from this class has given me this answer for my Essential Question: What is most important when marketing medical supplies is understanding the market in that which the supplies are being sold.
In addition to following MAP policies set by the manufacturers, suppliers have to figure out if there is a demand of their product is in order to set their prices accordingly and attract business (law of demand). Since medical supplies are elastic goods, any price change will greatly affect the demand for the good. Based on what I have learned in the class, medical suppliers are what keep the distributors from becoming large monopolies.
Economics is the study of how people satisfy their wants by using their limited means to obtain whatever can give them the most satisfaction. Microeconomics is the branch of economics that focuses on the individual's financial choices. It also is one of the introductory classes for economics, as it is usually recommended that Microeconomics be taken before Macroeconomics (another economic introductory class that focuses on how countries and big groups make financial decisions). Because effective marketing targets a specific audience or type of individual, it is even more important for the supplier to understand the market that their consumer has become a part of and appeal to their needs.

Presentation 2 Rough Draft

Rough Draft for my 20-Minute Presentation on February 15, 2012.