Tinder research

 TINDER
Why do we do it?
and then We shame it?
 
  This day in age we all use tinder when we are single. Literally every single person I know is on Tinder, but every person is embarrassed to tell people they met someone on it. Online dating is easier for people to express their emotions and it honestly is the new way of dating.

Design Sprint

Design Sprint
Steps for Design Sprint
1. Understand
2.Diverge
3. Decide
4. Prototype
5.Test

I really enjoyed the design sprint concept. I am not very creative so it really put me in a weird position that I was uncomfortable with, but I ended up learning so much. My group came up with a service instead of a product. I believe in Dig Deep and the fact that I feel like we could help multiple young adults. Our service needs the finals touches and ideas, however I think it could been done.

Overprotective

Overprotective Parents


Parents are incredibly protective over their kids. I honestly did not realize how overprotective parents are now versus when I was growing up because my parents were pretty overprotective as it was. My parents would not let me stay home alone until I was fourteen and I was not allowed to stay home alone overnight until I was sixteen. I was an athlete all the way through high school so there was not a lot of time for me to be alone. Also kids these days have to do so many activities. They are expected to do every single sport and every extracurricular activities that are possible. They also are expected to do so much more in school now then ever. So, I understand the fact that parents are more protective, but also know that it may be due to a different lifestyle.

Are rabbits pets or meat

Rabbits?
 

Are rabbits pets or are they food? I really feel that rabbits are both. They are very healthy especially for dogs and other domestic pets. I personally love all animals, but I understand how the world works and I know that people not eating animals is going to be a long time off. It is part of the food chain and that is how it works.
I also love pets and animals and I feel that if someone wants to also own one of these cute furry creatures then they should go ahead and enjoy their cute little faces.

Green Companies

Green companies are making our entire planet better. As Business student we are constantly learning how to ethically help the environment and how to make sure that we have corporate responsibility to each community in the world.
Look at all of these tips below from http://www.worldwatch.org/resources/go_green_save_green
to learn how to be more resourceful.

1. Save energy to save money.
   
   Purchase State of the World 2010:
   Transforming Cultures to learn more
   about the shift from consumerism
   to sustainability
   • Set your thermostat a few degrees lower in the winter and a few degrees higher in the summer to save on heating and cooling costs.
   • Install compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) when your older incandescent bulbs burn out.
   • Unplug appliances when you're not using them. 
2. Save water to save money.
   • Take shorter showers to reduce water use. This will lower your water and heating bills too.
   • Install a low-flow showerhead. They don't cost much, and the water and energy savings can quickly pay back your investment.
   • 
     
3. Less gas = more money (and better health!).
   
   P
   • Lobby your local government to increase spending on sidewalks and bike lanes. With little cost, these improvements can pay huge dividends in bettering your health and reducing traffic.
4. Eat smart.
   • If you eat meat, add one meatless meal a week. Meat costs a lot at the store-and it's even more expensive when you consider the related environmental and health costs.
5. Skip the bottled water.
   
    
   • Use a water filter to purify tap water instead of buying bottled water. Not only is bottled water expensive, but itgenerates large amounts of container waste.
   • 
     
6. Think before you buy.

Domestic Masculinity

Domestic Masculinity

I am a young women in my early twenties, who is pursuing a career in business. I obviously think that men and women are equal and should be treated as such. I quiver at the thought of being a house wife and taking care of kids my entire adulthood. However, if a women wants to be at home in the kitchen then it is ok as long as she chooses this path in life. I do not believe that a man should dominate the household at all. I also do not believe that because that stereotype that men need to make the money and women take care of the household is ridiculous and is obviously not modern day. Some people are still stuck in this belief and that is often unfortunate because men and women alike miss out on amazing opportunities.

Paradoxical Choices

THE PARADOX OF CHOICE

The paradox of choice book went into depth about why less is more with customers and why so many choices make other consumers so anxious.

As show in these graphs sometimes choices can make someone way more anxious. As most of us would think choices would make a choice easier, but it actually makes us more regretful about the choices that we made. 

There is purchase anxiety and often buyers remorse. 

1. Dont Avoid IT

2. Pay Attention to Triggers

3. Create a budget plan

4. Get help or Assistance

Retail Therapy

Retail Therapy

I understand the effects of shopping. I sometimes actually do it myself. It feels better to get new things, especially materialistic belongings. The feeling of getting something new that will be bring along maybe a new experience. 

Obviously the reason we materialistic things make us feel better is because our entire world is based solely on what you have. It is the sign of wealth, and the whole world continues to try to get rich so we can buy even more materialistic things. Why do we do this? Why don't we treat others who have wonderful personalities better than someone who has lots of money?

Procrastination

These are some of my favorite memes about procrastination. Why do we constantly procrastinate? 

Everyone has procrastinated at one time or other and we seem to continue to do this to ourselves.

What is the reason for this? Is it because we would rather be lazy or is it because our other hobbies are much more interesting than the tasks at hand? This is an extreme issue for  college students but also for everyone. 

How do we avoid procrastination?

1. Stop thinking, start doing

2. Dont blow a task out of proportion

3. Take the first step

4. Start with the hardest task of the day

5. Make a decision. any decision

6. Face your fear

7. Finish it

http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2009/04/23/how-to-stop-procrastinating-7-timeless-tips/

BuzzFeed

Buzzfeed does a really good job of entertaining multiple audiences. They have a quiz for almost all types of people and personalities. I often enjoy taking the quizzes on Facebook that connect me with my friends on Facebook. People often love to be connected to the people they really care about. People's relationships are one of the most important factors in everyday life and Buzzfeed understands that. Buzzfeed also has so many juicy headlines even though sometimes the headline has nothing to do with article. Buzzfeed knows what the juicy details people want to read about and suggests articles that will quench their thirst. For example, their are several examples of headlines below. They paste these headlines and try to get deep into they fears of many people.

Some Kid Found Troian Bellisario's Phone And Is Using It To Snapchat From Coachella

Watch One Woman Get Transformed Into Five Game Of Thrones Characters

This Is What Happens When A Couple Gets Handcuffed To Each Other For A Day

Kanye West Interrupted A Friend's Wedding To Say "Imma Let You Finish"

17 Really Random Things You Will Actually Want

Alcohol and College Students

College Students=Alcohol

Alcohol is often associated with college students.

Why is this so? 

Why is college always associated with partying and drinking. It seems like the only reason that we constantly associate drinking with college students is because that is how it has always been. Does anyone ever think that maybe if we stopped associating the two constantly that there would be a more beneficial and positive stereotype connected with college students? For example maybe studying, hard work, and success. These stereotypes have caused college students to forget why they are in school. 

Obviously beer companies as well as many other companies specifically market to college students including certain nudges and heuristics including color and shape as shown below. 

Apple - iphone

This is the simple version of an old iphone. Why do we continuously buy this specific smart phone. There are certainly other options that are equally as good and equally as good of quality and equally as good of quality. Is the iphone more attractive than the other phones? Is the iphone that much better than other companies? What are the reasons for the Iphone being so popular?? Why do we constantly wait for the next iphone to come out when really none of them are better than the next.

The Iphone is the best smartphone because of how it is marketed. Google has large sales because of how they sell the Iphone. How does Google market better than other companies?

Google uses constant nudges towards picking their product and also certain heuristics to catch each individual consumer. It is true that some people avoid Apple specifically because it is mainstream, but those people generally dislike anything that is. Apple is one of the best marketing companies in the world and they market better than most, in turn they are extremely successful as a result. 

ZMET

ZMET

(Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique)

 I learned a lot from the ZMET. I enjoyed working with my  partner Shelby to explore the many differences that we do have. I mostly enjoyed learning about someone that was the complete opposite of me in almost evert way. I never knew you could learn so much about someone with only a few pictures from a magazine. The constant question asking and digging of the project was the most fun part and I also learned a lot from this part. I interviewed first and the first topic we both noticed was that we took the prompts in different ways as well as the project of picking out images. I actually chose more images that I thought of as all 22 year olds might be thinking of instead might be thinking of instead of just personal pictures. I picked a few wedding magazine photos and a few family magazines to describe life after college. I am not planning on getting married anytime soon and I am not planning on having children anytime soon either, but some of my friends and people who are graduating are getting engaged and so I included those images in my collage. I also picked images that suited me for example several stylish suites and mostly images showing the working women after school.
       Qualitative data is very important because we understand what each customer internally wants and why what how instead of just the what. It is extremely important to understand why people are doing and buying what they are. I was surprised mostly through the entire experience, especially with how much information I found out about Shelby and the other group members just from magazines.
      The most meaningful part of this assignment was grasping what everyone's goals and dreams were after school. We also basically created a huge marketing advantage for many companies. If a company was interested in what college kids will be buying and wanting after school and they were in our class period I feel they would know relatively where to go with their marketing and would be vastly ahead of the game. Most marketing companies probably do exercises just like this so that they can acquire this amount of information on adults our age. 

Nudges

How to make students study with helpful Nudges!

Students all over the world need help to study! We as a group have tried to help them study and nudge students to make the right decisions.

Our ideas had to do with nudging students to say B's get degrees which promotes higher grades and helps students to understand that putting their full foot forward is better than just passing by.

We also came up with the idea to put the gpa on our diplomas for future careers.

Nudges are hints towards a certain choice. A nudge allows for a person to see a certain choice more clearly, but still allows for a decision and choice by that person.

Simple Definition of Nudge

• : to touch or push (someone or something) gently
• : to push (someone) gently with your elbow in order to get that person's attention
• : to encourage (someone) to do something

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nudge

Heuristics

One of the most disturbing heuristics in my opinion is the color heuristic that has to compare with the different colors used to market towards boys or girls. From a young age we are taught that girls like pink and boys like blue. It is intelligent obviously to use this as a marketing tool because it works with our society. However, it is unfortunate that a boy that likes pink is teased because that is too girly.

This is often how restaurants and bar market to women. Men that order this drink are ridiculed for drink "bitch beer" or a fluffy drink.

This is how society most often market to men, even when it is often that especially younger women choose this as their choice.

Montana State University

This week we were asked to create a link that we think multiple people would click on. We used a caption that had nothing to do with what the article was actually about, however, it will make our  demographic of 17-18 year olds that are looking for a university click on our link. Our headline was "The Best College with Weed, Sports, and Outdoors". We knew that no matter how good our articles were to sell MSU it did not  matter if no one clickedon our website. 

These are the more important factors that grab teenagers of our time. When trying to market a university you need to be completely aware of your target market and we found that this headline would be the most successful and clickable headline. 

"The rationale behind our strategy is being straight forward and peaking a 17-18 year old interest with familiar buzz words. By being straight forward and displaying Weed, Sports, and Outdoors we are reaching to our target market more effectively than displaying how many degrees MSU offers, how MSU is regarded as a great institution for research,  or graduation rates"(Wes Taylor, Group member)

Predictably Irrational

This book really opened my eyes to the reasons that consumers buy what they buy. It blew my mind when I actually realized my own decisions that I make. I was especially interested in the vacation example that Ariely talked about. The fact that choices of Paris with free breakfast Rome with free breakfast and Rome without free breakfast, most people would chose Rome with free breakfast instead of Paris because it is easier to decided between to Rome choices even though Paris might be the better option. People constantly are upset about the choices that they make. People are constantly having buyer's remorse over what they have chosen which leads to jealousy between humans. There are several ways to combat this. My favorite way of doing this is to just relax and be happy with the decision. Predictably Irrational really made me think about not only the way consumers purchase, but also the decisions that I make.

I enjoyed the wine psychology video on youtube. I completely agree that people think that foods and wine served in a more proper way taste better or are more expensive and dignified. I love that they experimented with cheap two dollar wine and then and expensive wine and gave people the cheap two dollar wine in a nicer glass than the better quality wine and they said that the two dollar wine tasted better. Our perceptions of foods and drinks are highly influenced by what they are presented with. Predictable irrational and Wansink both talked about how even one word on a label or of a product can totally change our perception of the product. This is why companies need to know which words and pictures are a delight to their base customers or words and pictures that turn their customers off. For example, when Coca Cola tried to change their sodas to colorless because it would allow for no carcinogens in the soda, which would make the soda way healthier; customers hated it and coca cola's sales and income went down very fast. They changed the color backed to brown and their sales when right back u, even though the coke was still full of unhealthy ingredients. This really shows how consumers used their senses to choose their products.

One of the several pictures that we drew and erased several times. 

We learned a lot during our perceptual map project this week. Our group had snacks which was very difficult because there are so many different brands and also so many more ways to describe snacks and different people consider different foods snacks. We got a lot of feedback from our peers and they suggested some snacks that are crunchy and healthy at the same time. We even found out about the apple industry making specific apples so that they were not soft anymore because the consumers wanted something crunchy and healthy which turns out to be difficult to do.

Why How What

CLAIRE On Magazines

What How Why

I actually really enjoyed the class we had on Tuesday. I am a management major so sometimes being more creative with magazines and what not is a lot harder than I think it will be.I resonated a lot with this model above. I understand that in the future you must understand why your company does what they do in order to be quite successful. It is also important to know that each and every employee knows why they are making reports  and doing their everyday work 

These are the general ideas of the magazines.
In class we described all different types of ads. Including ads that did not belong in each magazine's scope of their specific target market. We are not 100% always sure why there are these random ads. Maybe it is because they just throw them in each different magazine, but we discussed multiple possibilities. I found it easy to build a profile from each different magazine, but it was quite different from some of my classmates perspectives. I also found it difficult to listen to some classmates perspectives because I felt some could be more sexist than actual helpful with the magazine profile. Understanding the reasons that these magazines do what they do is important. Just like in the Ted Talk each writer and each individual employee or writer at each magazine has to completely embody themselves in why the magazine has the values and beliefs that they do in order to help motivating the employees to continue with the production of the magazine.Obviously, each magazine has a specific target market and there are specific reasons for why the magazines use the certain images, ads and words. People are constantly buying belongings they do not need because of the way each magazine, store and commercial markets their products to every individual want.