Student Name: Chong Dick Shion

Student ID: 7e4a3176/18036446

Group:
Reflective Journal No. 01 Date: 26th August 2017

______________________________________________________________________________________________
Lecture Topic: Marketing
Presenter: Dr. Samuel Adeyinka-Ojo
Organization: Faculty of Business
1.0 Overview
Today talks was conducted by Dr. Samuel, who is a very knowledgeable lecture in Curtin University Malaysia,
Dr. Samuel have a PhD in Hospitality and Tourism from Taylors University Malaysia; Master of Business
Administration in Ladoke Akintola University of Technology in Nigeria; Bachelor of Science Accounting in University
of Uyo, Nigeria.

Beside the long history of Dr. Samuel education path-way, he also worked in several fields throughout his
career life, one or two most few most remarkable jobs were the Head of Faculty in Infant Jesus Academy Asaba, Nigeria;
Administrative Assistant to the Associate Dean in Taylors University and Research Assistant in Taylors University
Malaysia. Moreover, Dr. Samuel himself is also a researcher who had published massive of article papers and books
chapter. In order to list out all achievement by Dr. Samuel, clearly five pages is not sufficient.

Dr. Samuel delivered a very powerful lecture today regarding the topic of Marketing, which I had never
approached once in my life. It has been a while since the last time I felt inspired through a presentation or a conference,
this weeks topic regarding Marketing not only drawn my attention but at the same time also gave motivations in my
future goals, because never nor I ever realize that me as a future engineer will ever require a particular skill of marketing.
Throughout the talks he delivered some of the ideas he was contradict to me personally which I have to point out some
disagreement with the statement or ideas form my own perspective, which we will discuss along in this reflective
journal.

2.0 Marketing is everything, everything is marketing

Dr. Samuel began his talk with the slogan Marketing is everything, everything is marketing, which was
quoted by Regis McKenna in 1991 when he predicted the arrival of a whole new era in the industry (Day 1992). Where
the marketing specialist will eventually become rarer and slowly disappear while the importance of general marketing
function will incline generally, becoming the key of a company to success. Whereas for a company that already hired
a team of internal orientation for the production or market research, the marketing department will then be forced to
take the leading seat to increase the businesses in the firm (Slater and Narver 1994). This is absolutely real and can be
easily observed everywhere in the world today, from the interview section to the experiments sharing session where
you can easily found over the internet. It is important for a person to have multi skills in order to gain attention in this
7.5 billion society, especially if you have a marketing skill in your resume. No doubt, every company available today
needs a marketer, in order to bring their company to a distinctive level, according to an online research by more than a
1000 online job posting, candidates with marketing skill is the most hired and most wanted one.(Tilus 2013). Reason
behind a marketing skill can be so important is because without the team of marketing, functional group like accounting,
production, human resource and other in a company cannot function and it will not be needed, as the selling products
will have no demand in the market, this will the lead the company to the road of collapsing (Drucker 1958).

Continued from what Dr. Samuel started with Marketing is everything, everything is marketing. Today,
marketing not only just everything, it is also everywhere. Because it is a way for business to keep moving. It is no longer
says to be only a new ad campaign or just this months promotions, it must be all pervasive, it is a requirement for
everyones job description in a firm, far more important it is a systematic process to build relationship with the clients,
because the goal of marketing is all about making relationship with the client (Simant 2014). Because as what Dr.
Samuel mentioned, one of the definition of marketing is that the management process of it is absolutely responsible for
the identifying, anticipating and satisfying the customer needs profitably. Moreover, the role of marketing is relatively
important as it also deals with the demand of the clients and an organization (Abu and Kamarulzaman 2009).

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3.0 Maximize in Marketing
As discussed above, the importance of marketing is undeniable, and how powerful it is to impact the profits of
a company. Hence, doubtless practicing excellent marketing bring massive of benefits as what repeating mentioned by
Dr. Samuel in his talk. One of the most important is to maximize four important key which are the consumption,
customer satisfaction, choice and quality of life.
In order to maximize the consumption, the marketers are required to obtain skill or ideal of being able to initiate
and stimulate the consumption need of the client, that bring the graph to an exponential incline. Maximize the
consumption has been highly promoted with the slogan of Who says you cannot have it all; The costliest perfume in
the world is the best; or Greed is good in the movie of Wall street (Barnes 2001).
While to maximize consumer satisfaction, it is relatively difficult to measure because no one has ever invented
a scale to identify the total satisfaction for certain marketing activity. Moreover, the satisfaction of a consumer often
offset by the evils, for example the pollution and environmental harms. Thirdly, the satisfaction received by the
consumer such as status good always depends on the fact that fewer people enjoying these goods (Barnes 2001). From
my own research, there are several strategies to increase the satisfaction of clients receive when purchasing products,
which are (1) Treating your client as they are your boss (2) Constantly measure satisfaction of clients (3) Create
customer loyalty to maximize client satisfaction (4) Prevent making customer retention mistakes for example
ignoring customer feedback, and taking customer feedback personally (5) Constantly set expectations of client earlier
(6) Develop the skill of survey your client correctly (7) Make full use of email as the channel to maximize customer
satisfaction (8) Utilize social media to track customer satisfaction, and lastly (9) Always make a statement instead
of lies, understanding the importances of the customer satisfaction (Beard 2013).
The third fact is about maximizing the choice for the consumers, because by maximizing the product variety
and clients choice, the client will be having higher opportunity of finding goods that suit them more, which results in
maximizing consumer satisfaction (Barnes 2001). An article I read about comparing the choices of food in the States
and Venice, which ended up clients favoring Venice more, based on just simple reason. In the States, people have lesser
choice if they are workaholic who only have lunch at 4pm, during the time most of the restaurant had already closed
down, choices are narrowed down to probably just McDonalds, but in Venice people are always allows to choose how
much to eat/when to eat/or whether to sit down at any circumstances and time frame (Clark 2011). Hence, I came out
with my own ideology which when two similar restaurants were compare side by side, with similar location, identical
price range but A with 10 variety of food and B with only 1 type of food, which one will you pick? No doubt most of
us will favoring restaurant A more. Thats the same ideology of maximizing customer choice, that will favor maximum
profits and client satisfactions. But unfortunately, maximizing the choice for consumer came with a cost as well, (1)
firstly the price of goods and the services will increase due to the increasing of production and inventory costs, and
we all understand that increase the cost, reduce the consumer. (2) Secondly, by increasing the consumer choice will
increase the clients searching and effort because they will need more time to study and evaluate the number of
products available. (3) Lastly the challenge of increasing the customer choice does not means increasing the
consumers real choice and needs. A fundamental example as following can be made, there are hundreds of different
brands of beer sold around the globe, but all came with similar identical taste. Hence when a similar product come with
many brand with no distinctive differences, customer actually felt no choice at all, and will then results in confusion
and frustration stated by David (Barnes 2001) .
Lastly is maximizing the quality of life based on the perspective of marketing as stated by Kotler (Kotler 1979).
Quality of life can be defined differently from varies perspective, and it is a highly subjective measurement for happiness
which came with numbers of financial decision ('What Is Quality of Life'). Maximize the consumer quality of life is
rather the most important point of all, it should also included the environmental costs into this category says Professor
Radwan (Radwan 2015).
 Student Name: Chong Dick Shion
Student ID: 7e4a3176/18036446
Group:
Reflective Journal No. 01 Date: 26th August 2017

4.0 The marketing mixes

The marketing mix is a term created by Neil Borden that refined by E. Jerome McCarthy who then reduced
them into only four Ps, which are the (1) Product strategies (2) Price strategies (3) Place strategies and lastly the (4)
Promotion strategies (Keh, Nguyen and Ng 2007). The marketing mix was created with a purpose that a company can
be differentiate from its competitor in the market, it is also the fundamentals elements that used to promote and capture
a brand, and its unique significant selling point (Branded 2016).
Breaking down the four elements from the 4Ps term, we will have product/service strategies first, where we
have question ourselves several times in order to truly understand the real idea of it. For example, (1) what does clients
need from the product (what does the features needed to be fulfilled to satisfy our clients, and what we have missed
out) (2) What does it have to look like (What will our customer experience with current design, and can it be
improvise). Last but not least, (3) How can it be differentiated from our competitors in the market, (why will the
consumers make up their mind to buy yours instead of others when the price range are identical ) (Tools 2016).
The second concern in the marketing mix 4Ps is the strategies of price, this is considered as one of the most
important aspect from my perspective, as I always look at the price way before any purchasing, and if the prices were
too expensive than it deserves I will immediately return them to the shelve. Hence when it come to the seller perspective,
understanding the price is one of the key to be succeed in marketing strategy, because the price will have immediate
effect of how it sells. When it comes to marketing an object with the concerns of price, it is relatively complicated as
first we have to make sure the price covers the actual cost. Then we have to consider the product from the views of
customer, is the customer value positive or negative, it is having only little value in their perspective or higher. Because
it is necessary not to underpriced or overpriced by the value of the product (Martin 2014).
The next element is the place/placement strategy of the product, this is rather simple for them than other aspects,
for this strategy we are only required to understand the method and how will the goods provide to the customer, how is
the distribution going to be, which channel is more suitable (Martin 2014). A simple example as this, the Apple company
will not set its main marketing location in Syria, why? Because number (1) the results shown by the United Nations,
the on-going civil war in the country has brought 80% of its nation into poverty, and most of the economic has been
collapsing (Dwibhashyam 2016). Secondly, a brand-new iPhone is not what they need, they need a safe environment
to live it, they need a proper meal, they need a winter clothes when the winter arrive. Hence, even though Apple throw
massive of dollar into commercial advertising in every channel, the iPhone will not have excellent selling growth and
results in Syria, because it is not they need.
Lastly is about the promotion strategy in marketing product, I decided to place this element at the last because
I think it is can use as a conclusion for all the elements discussed above. All marketing communication strategies and
techniques categorized under the promotion headline (Martin 2014). Marketing communication mentioned included
television advertisements, radio commercials, any printed media and internet based advertisement (Mix 2015).
Promotion main focus is not on discount like what we all knew, it is rather how a seller will communicate its product
to its client. Moreover, it also concerns about public relation, advertising and the message you want to let your client
understand (Toggl 2015). It is relatively important to understanding the information that audience really concern about
during making a promotion. For example, if we are advertising a box of mix today, the information needed for audience
are what is the content different in our milk than our competitor that will benefits them, where can them get the milk
and more. Instead of showing irrelevant information that most audience do not focus on, like the headline of milk are
not suitable for lactose intolerance consumer.
I did some research on the common 4Ps and realized that the existence of 7Ps with extra process, physical
environmental and people elements that gave relatively important role as the initial 4Ps we studied and introduced by
Dr Samuel. But overall from my perspective, hundreds of Ps are not enough to describe the real marketing world for

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targeting clients interests. Because at the end it still depends on the marketing mix plan, how do we invent a plan that
will bring overall balance between profits, excellent consumer satisfaction, brand recognition and as well the product
availability.

5.0 Achieving a Marketing Orientation

This is the part where it drew most of my attention in the class when Dr. Samuel talk about it, in order to achieve
a marketing orientation, we have to obtain sufficient information regarding our customer, competitors and the markets
by working on intensive market research. By examine all these aspects we will understand more about innovation as
what Dr. Samuel mentioned.

If a company do not continue innovate it will be slowly be rejected by the current market, like a white blood
cells expelling the bacterial in our biological system, unless the bacterial/virus learned how to evolve. For example,
Nokia, who used to dominate the 49.4% in 2007 than plummeted to just 3% in the beginning of 2013 because it refused
to innovate like other smart phone companies does (Lee 2013). And of course Myspace who was born in 2003 that
worth $580 million dollars and died very quickly in 2006 to worthless when Facebook launched in between, because of
the refusing in the idea of innovation (Lee 2011).

Not to mentioned what Dr. Samuel cited as well, the Kodak company who refused to innovate and now fell
apart and collapsed. I have very strong disagreement with this statement of him, well I completely agree that Kodak do
not looks as they used to be before anymore when they refused to believe that all film photograph will shift to digital
by 2010 even when all the report circulate among the senior executive in the year of 1979 (Schachter 2012). But the
research by Dr. Samuel to not up to date, because film photography is making a stunning comeback in the recent years.
For example (1) The sales of film grew 5% worldwide between the year of 2013 to 2015 (Iqbal 2016) ; (2) Modern
film photographer that focuses on portrait and wedding photography are looking for differentiating their work by
shooting in film stated by Times (Laurent 2017). Today to hire a fine-art photographer like Jose Villa that shoot a
wedding entirely by film are far more expensive than any digital photographer in the market, because of its quality and
extraordinary results (Grey 2013). High demand of film rolls 135mm, 120mm, polaroid and short supplier also caused
the rapid raised of values, for example the price of a Kodak Tri-X in 1957 was 85 cents dollars, and today is almost
4.99 dollars according to the photography forum (Mauderer 2014). It is contradicting isnt it if Kodak is dying, how can
the growth inclined 5 percent annually with the films that are almost six times expensive compared to the last decade.

Conclusions
The talk given by Dr. Samuel was very interesting to me, as he explained things that I had never expose in my
life. I never thought of marketing can be everything and everywhere, never realize it is such important even I am just
an engineer. Especially when Dr. Samuel mentioned about the market mix and how important it is to be innovative in
a company. He talked about companies that collapsed and fell apart due to lack of innovation, it is scary that some of
the company in the list just disappeared without anyone knowing. Dr. Samuel also made me realize there are so many
aspect and ways in order to be success in being the business, and marketing is not just like what we see from the surface.
 Student Name: Chong Dick Shion
Student ID: 7e4a3176/18036446
Group:
Reflective Journal No. 01 Date: 26th August 2017

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