Week 8 EOC: Excel Charts

I am using a older form of Excel, but I plan on upgrading soon. It was interesting to observe the different charts available. the question really is deciding which of the charts is going to be the best one for your survey question.

Homework Week 7

My hypothesis is based on my employment at a store called Lush. This is a bath, body, haircare and skincare based store. We are located in the Mandalay Bay Shoppes, so we get many tourists that we service. Our store is international, with locations in the UK, Germany, South Korea, Italy, Hong Kong, Canada, and many other places. But there are plenty of countries we have yet to branch out to. The tourists traveling love to shop in our store, and often times don't have a Lush store location nearby that they are able to visit. Also, this is often a customer's first visit ever actual Lush brick-and-mortar store. Many times, it is difficult for them while shopping to pick out our larger sizes because TSA does not allow more than 3.5 oz. of liquid to be carried onto a plane. It often times discourages the sales associates from being able to sell them the size of shampoo or shower gel they would prefer.

My hypothesis is: if Lush offered a smartphone based online ordering and delivery system, than we would sell larger sizes of products to customers traveling and flying by plane.

The scale measurement for the survey will be a yes or no based questionnaire, with a few questions determining their needs. The percentage average will be calculated based on the answers. This is a nominal scale, which represents the most elementary level of measurement. A nominal scale assigns a value to an object for identification or classification purposes. The value can be a number, but does not have to be a number, because no quantities are being represented. In this sense, a nominal scale is truly a qualitative scale. Nominal scales are extremely useful even though some may consider them elementary.

I plan on conducting the survey by standing outside of the Lush store I work at. First, I will begin by asking someone leaving the store if they are visiting from out of town. If they say yes, I will ask them if they flew into town or drove. If they flew, I will offer them the survey. The questions will ask them if they made a purchase. It will ask them if they bought for themselves, or as a gift, or both. I will ask if they would have bought larger sizes if there was a way to ship it through the mail. I will ask if they feel safe placing an order through the mail.

This information will be analyzed, and I will be able to have a fairly clear picture of weather I think Lush as a company would be able to sell bigger sizes and become more profitable from this in-store mail order system.

Week 7 EOC: Final Project Pitch

I am not sure exactly sure what business I want to survey for, or what issue I will be trying to solve. I have a few ideas, for example, I was thinking about doing my final on the Mandalay Shops in Mandalay Bay. There have been two stores that recently closed there, and on of their largest stores (Urban Outfitters) has moved to the Fashion Show Mall. It seems as if there is an issue with the stores, but the three restaurants there are always busy, but as far as the stores are concerned, they are either they are successful, or no one really shops in them. There is no middle ground.

I figure I may create a survey centered around a hypothesis about what type of stores would generate more traffic, or maybe what different attractions they can have (free bands play, a dance area) to drum up more foot traffic. I have to put more time into the thought process.

As far as how I want to present it, I guess I pant to make something dynamic looking, but fun, in order to draw the eye. I will try to find the right decorations and additions to the construction of it to make it pop.

I was also toying with the idea of using my place of employment as the basis for a marketing analysis, but it would be difficult. Mainly because my store is a chain, and they usually have to get things like this approved by corporate. Even in this is not the case, my store is very unique. Because of the nature of it, coming up with a problem to solve dealing with sales is not easy. Mainly because Lush is a very well-thought-out concept, and most issues they address and are always attempting to improve on the business. The only thing I can think of at the moment is the fact that we are a store visited by tourists. I often get asked if we ship from the store internationally. Many people don't want to buy lots of bath, body, skincare and haircare products if they have to take it on a plane with them. Beacause TSA now limits the ammount of carry-on liquid you are allowed to have, most have to check it in their luggage. Everyone knows that many containers and bottels will leak if put into checked luggage, so people are nervous to buy our larger sizes and/or naked products.
I thought surveying tourists to see if offering a shipping option or offering to order the products

Fragrance Project: Analysis of the project in the Real World

The real world application of the concepts for my fragrance seems to be fairly close to what I conceptualized. My concept for the fragrance was a more sensual and deep fragrance.  The name would be Tuca, and the scent would invoke feelings and scents of mystery, sensuality, incense and lust. My plan to market this product is in line with what I would like to do for my boutique, mainly targeted at the customer that would shop at my clothing store. What better way to compliment a boutique shopping experience than a boutique fragrance?

The questions I came up with for the survey were to see if the average person would react positively to my fragrance, and what the general population would want. Mind you, this is not really my target market, so it would explain the mixed responses I got from the survey results. After analyzing it, it would seem that of the 10 women surveyed, most women prefer floral scents. But that is fairly common. There are elements of floral to my fragrance, so I do touch on that element. Women typically will spend $50 to $80 for a fragrance, but there were two women surveyed that said they would spend over that amount. Most of the women responded saying that wearing a fragrance makes them feel better about themselves, and that it attracts people to them. As far a purchasing the fragrance, it is usually for a man. This is because women are more particular about what fragrance they wear, and it is a more inmate experience for them.

 Based off of research done at my place of employment, women seem to like three base types of scents. They like a sensual musk, a vanilla, or a fresh scent (clean linen or citrus). It seems like personality mixed with influence from others will be the deciding factor in which one they end up choosing. On average, women need to test a multitude of scents before deciding the right one for them. According to survey results, bottle color or style did not really affect purchase as much as I initially thought, although I don’t think that it hurts to have an interesting bottle. You have to know your customer, and know if this is something that she would find important.

As far as my scent is concerned, I want to package it in a fairly interesting type of bottle, something that looks as if it would be right at home sitting on a shelf of witch’s positions. I want the bottle to have a look of being hand pored and bottled, possibly with a “faux cork” look to the topper. I want it to be packaged inside of a rustic looking box, with straw style filler. The bottle should have the “potion” look to it, making it look very exciting. But the bottle should be in purples and have a small silver chain with a gem and charms hanging, still giving it a pretty and feminine touch. It would be displayed in a rustic and interesting manner within the store, drawing in the customer to smell and experienced it. Staff would be trained on how to talk about it, as well as upselling it at the cashwrap during end of purchase.

Week 5 EOC: The Web's New Gold Mine: Your Secrets

Technology and data are all the rage. It's everything, life itself to some. Many businesses rely on it, schools, law enforcement, even our government relies on it. With a culture evolving of "sharing," there is a lot of personal data being passed around. Many people feel comfortable sharing intimate details of their life on the internet. There are a few holdouts that still wont, but most do. They do this because they feel a strange sense of security, because if it is posted on a site like Facebook, or emailed, texted, or browsed in the comfort of their own home, that it is safe. Somehow more secure. Employers will even go to the extent to hire a research firm to identify employees who have serious issues in their personal lives as evidenced by messages posted on their social networking sites or who are shirking on-the-job based on the amount of time they spend logged in to different Web sites. But data mining is proving that even browsing in the comfort of your own home that business, Facebook, Google and the government all have the legal right to collect and store information about you through your web usage. Supposedly, the information is anonymous, but the question remains: Is this ok?

When the data is being collected and only used for terrorrisim, I do not mind. Quite honestly, what does it matter? People worry about the government keeping "dick pics" and sexting texts, but why does the government care about your dick pic? Plain and simple, they don't. Like in the"Last Week Tonight" segment, the issue lies when the data is transfered overseas. The only personal information I am concerned about is information that can be used by theives.

Now, when it concerned for-profit companies,that is a different story. I believe it is invasive for them to monitor you personal activities for financial gain. If you are going to take my information, at the very least, I would like to be informed of when it is being monitored or taken. Unfortunatly, It seems as if this trend is not slowing down. Accoring to an EE Times article, "That trend will only accelerate in the current age of mobile devices and in the emerging age of the Internet of Things. If you look closely at the apps running on your mobile smartphone device, odds are good that what you think is running locally is actually being executed elsewhere on servers in the cloud. Similarly, in the Internet of Things, MCU-based devices are so severely constrained in terms of power and local resources, they will be dependent on external data and software resources for an array of ongoing, back-and-forth network transactions: device to device, device to cloud, and cloud to cloud."

I think if the files are used to improve our lives, then all the better. But when it is being used just to solicit advertising, that is when it bothers me a bit. All this tracking has gotten out of hand. In a Daily News article, Facebook admits to tracking people who don't even use the site!
"Facebook recently admitted that its social plugins added tracking cookies to some people's computers, even if they didn't have a profile with the social site. Richard Allan, Facebook's vice president of policy in Europe, says the tracking is due to a bug that is currently being fixed."

It doesnt just end with your computer. They are even tracking your browsing via cell phone. Verizon apprarently has a "super cookie" it uses to collect data from its customers. In a Fierce Wireless article, it states "The FCC is investigating whether Verizon Wireless' program that inserted an undetectable and undetectable tracking ID into its subscribers' mobile Internet browsing activity violates consumer privacy laws.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler sent a letter to Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) about the matter on March 23, and the letter was made public yesterday. In the letter, Wheeler notes that carriers have access to very sensitive personal information about their customers, including call details, billing data, location information and information on customers' mobile devices.... The practice, which AT&T Mobility had engaged in but stopped last fall, sparked a backlash over fears that the program could be used by the carriers or advertisers to build up a profile of a users' mobile Web usage. The program was dubbed a "super cookie" because it is more powerful than a regular Web tracking cookie that users can delete. The programs were first disclosed in October 2014 and in November AT&T stopped adding it to its users' mobile browsers."