heterotopia

This the final post for the spring contains a mixture of different topics. The topics aren’t related, or well, they are related in the sense that they have all been talked or asked about at one point or another during the course. Hope you’ll enjoy it.

Pricing
It struck me that I had some loose ends to tie up after the group activity on pricing, branding and value. I think we all noticed that price, brand name and the framing (or wrapping) of a product had strong implications on our perceptions of a particular product…

This is of course quite common sense and in marketing this is called the four P’s: Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

Proactivity
A central element in improving your English is, as I’ve said before, to actively come up with ideas on things you want to know and then get busy learning about those things. I want to reiterate the importance of being active on your own, since it is an important part of the course assessment.

Some of you have asked for reading tips and there are hundreds of books I’d like to recommend. If you want to read about business you could read No logo by Naomi Klein or why not the book The Goal that you have already read in Swedish? My personal tips just off the top of my head are:

• Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (journalism about the fast-food industry)
• The Collector, John Fowles (psychological thriller written by one of the masters of the English language)
• One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey (One of my favourite books, a modern classic and a great movie)

Podcasts
I have also talked about podcasts that are concerned with English. I use the software iTunes to download podcasts. Some of my favourites are:

• Grammar girl
• National public radio, Talk of the Nation
• BBC, Grammar challenge

Paragraph writing
Some of you have been getting feedback on the structure in your cover letter (where I’ve shown how you should rearrange sentences to improve the text). To help you even further I have found a very nice tutorial on the Internet which will guide you through the writing of a text, helping you to develop good structure and nice paragraphs. Please try it out. You can find it here.

Word formation
During our classes we’ve come across many different words and I have sometimes tried to show how a word can change from one part of speech to another; for instance, the verb procure can be changed into the noun procurement. This is called word formation and it is a common feature of most languages. Below you will find links to some exercises on this.

Exercise 1
Exercise 2
Exercise 3
Exercise 4
Exercise 5

Hand in learning portfolios as they are. You will get some feedback on the work in progress on May 20th.

Feedback on learning portfolios. Mixed texts and exercises. Ideas for autumn.

Discussion of texts in small groups

A key area of business communication is of course marketing. It is critical for the success of a business that it is able to engage customers and take market shares from competitors. To successfully do this a company needs to come up with a marketing strategy.

A marketing strategy is designed in the weeks and months before a product is launched. The strategy should include an analysis of the marketplace, i.e. defining the main competitors and their products (if any); it should define sales goals, as well as set the marketing budget and define which channels that should be used in order to reach prospective buyers. A strategy should also contain a market analysis, i.e. an analysis of legal and economic factors that can influence the launch and any other external factors of importance (PEST).

Customer interest can be achieved through various means – depending on the size and scope of the market launch the company can choose from: TV commercials, newspaper ads, direct marketing campaigns (either by mail, telemarketing, or e-mail), product placement, events and charities, etc.

Most companies today use the Internet as a marketplace. The Internet has a higher degree of interaction than traditional marketing. This is both a strength and a weakness; in the old days you could rely on one-way communication and ensure that a single message came across; nowadays the consumer can (and is often invited to) be a part of the marketing process, thus creating what’s called customer engagement. Examples of this is blogging like: Glamourprinsessan or various marketing games, developed by companies like Raketspel and Muskedunder.

Backlash
Marketing has always been under critical scrutiny from journalists and lawmakers. It is often criticized for its represenation of women, its impact on sexual ideals, its influence on eating habits, and it is sometimes blamed for violence in children.

In 2000 Naomi Klein published the most talked about book on marketing of this decade. In this book she describes how commercials and product marketing invade every sector of public and private life, and how more or less everything is transformed into commodities – even schools and hospitals. She also describes indecent business practices like sweatshops and workplace novelties like short-term employment through outsourcing.

Dear student,

For reasons beyond my control the mail server at Arlandagymnasiet is down. This means that I cannot access your CVs and cover letters. A further consequence of this is that I won’t have enough time to correct them and have them returned to you with feedback for Tuesday. Although it is not my fault, I am sorry for this.

Yours sincerely,

Daniel Wernegren