Saturday, December 3, 2011

Final Thought

Eight weeks, feel like just began to have some understanding of marketing, and then the course comes to the end. Tomorrow is the day of the presentation of our products. All the groups are going to show the process of analysis and how are they going to market their products. Lakshmy and I, we chose anti-aging skincare product for men. We finished our research, paper, and powerpoint. We will have an excellent presentation tomorrow morning. We think it will be excellent due to all the efforts we did.  We feel pretty excited and we are sure all the fellows and Paul will enjoy our presentation! It will be fun!!

For this two months course, I feel excited (after I got the mark for the case study, haha), also a little bit regret. Exciting thing is in this two months, I have a whole concept of marketing, far different from my previous thought. Also, I feel sorry cause I think I didn't do my best. I could do better. Anyway, tomorrow is not an end, but a beginning.

I think marketing and strategy are intimately linked. The textbook we are using talks have a big portion of strategy. Also, the cases we analyzed in strategy class    mostly include the marketing process. I have owned a small business in China before I come here. I was making good profit, but every plan I made was following my feeling. I mean it was not following the methods from textbook. As I’m taking the PMBA program, I began to use the knowledge to measure the business I had. And started thinking about whether it would be some opportunities to start a new business here. 

As known, VIU is becoming more and more popular. A few weeks ago I have read a newsletter that VIU sighed a new contract with a Chinese university. It estimated more than 2,500 students will come to B.C. institutions over five years. This is a big number. I’m thinking that by the end of next year I will finish my MBA program, can I start a new business here? If the investment is allowed, what kind of business should I look for? The first thing came to my mind is Chinese restaurant. In Nanaimo, it is really difficult to find real Chinese food. If I want, I have to go to Richmond. That’s too far and the money spent is too much. Nanaimo has some Chinese restaurant, probably five, but they are more like Canadian food. All most Chinese students choose to go to Vietnamese restaurant and Thai restaurant. These are the food we can find the most close to Chinese food. Vietnamese restaurant and the Thai restaurant in the north Nanaimo are very popular. Especially, the Vietnamese restaurant HongLan, either lunch or dinner, customers need to wait for a while cause it’s so busy. I found that half of the customers are Asian and mostly VIU students. Southern China consumes more rice, while as northern China consumes more noodles. But we all love noodles, especially as breakfast. We have it everyday. If I want to open a restaurant specializing in noodles, I have to do fully research.

Strategy analysis is the first one came to my mind. SWOT, PESTEL, and Porter’s Five Forces. If there is a chance, then it is followed by marketing method to analyze the products. How to market the restaurant? Although this Pre program is just eight weeks, I have learned a lot.