Individual Reflective Report

References: AGUILAR, F. (1967) Scanning the Business Environment. New York: Macmillan. BAINES, P. FILL, C. and PAGE, K. (2011) Marketing, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press Inc. GLUECK, W. (1980) Business Policy and Strategic Management. New York: McGraw-Hill. GRINYER, P. and NORBURN, D. (1975) Planning for existing markets: Perceptions of Executives and Financial Performance. Journal of Royal Statistical Society, 138, pp.70 – 97. SUBRAMANIAN, R. FERNANDES, N. And HARPER, E. (1993). Environmental scanning in US companies: their nature and their relationship to performance. Management International Review, 33 (3), pp. 271-286 5 6. Appendix - Learning Diary A weekly diary of my learning’s and thoughts regarding the course, and how it what I have learnt has made me reflect. 6.1. Week 1 From the outset it was clear to me that this course was not like courses I had done before. Very little time was wasted in explaining basic information such as, when lecture are, what marks are awarded for, etc, which usually fills the entire session for most Computer Science course units. Instead we moved straight on to learning some basic theories we would be using throughout the semester, in particular the PESTEL acronym, and Porters 5 forces, both of which I had heard of before, but had a varied understanding of each one. It was emphasised that from the outset we would be applying these basic theories to real business situation. Again this was something I liked, as previous encounters of the theories had been simply in a text book. During the lecture we discussed the business we were all currently involved in, The University of Manchester. Throughout the lecture we were encouraged to interact and ask questions when needed, which I liked. The input of other students really did help me to understand the content of the lecture but also, some points made introduced to me completely new ideas, of which I had never even thought about. 6.2. Week 2 This session was a case study session. We were split into small groups and asked to research the UK’s online poker market. Doing this introduced me to new things, I had never heard of mintel before, and found the information actually to be quite interesting, which in all honesty, surprised me a little. We then all returned to the lecture theatre to discuss our findings and analyse whether or not it would be feasible for a new business to penetrate the market. The discussion was helpful, yes I learnt about the UK poker market but, the discussion and ideas put forward did make me reflect on past mistakes, as well as future endeavours. In particular it made me think in a lot more about information literacy, as a group we had gathered a vast amount of information, but was all that information really relevant to the case study, no! Time management and trying to juggling academic, social, and work life has always been difficult for me. Although this is not directly link to that of information literacy, but the principles from it can be used and applied to my time management. Is something I am doing actually worth doing, is it going to add anything to myself, or do I even enjoy it that much. The case study has helped me, in an indirect way, to evaluate pretty much everything I do, and whether I actually need to do it before! 6.3. Week 3 This lecture I really enjoyed and really engaged with the topics covered. It was ideal timing personally for me as it tied in perfectly with a project I am just starting, the project requires me to critically analysis the marketing strategy of a company, for which I choose virgin media, mainly due to its strong brand name and heavily celebrate endorsed advertising. In my marketing unit a lot of theory is covered, it has surprised me just how many elements are actually involved in the marketing mix, having previous thought it was essentially just advertising the product! This session I felt I was able to use the dense theory learnt in my marketing unit and actually apply it to a real world example, just as I will be doing in my report. The lecture touched on adding value to the company, again something I initially thought was an obvious and simply concept. The lecture has made me think different about how I perceive a lot of things! As with both of the topics above I had made a pre judgement regarding them without actually truly understand what they were, quite obviously this can be transferred into many aspects of my personal life. 6 6.4 Week 4 This session we continued to learn about environmental scanning, and delved into more details about adding value to an organisation, in particularly we looked at Porter’s value chain, as well looking at the SWOT acronym. The SWOT analysis I had covered before in quite a lot of detail, and the lecture didn’t really make me think any differently about the way in which it is applied to organisation. However the value chain did introduced me into how much detail is actually involved in adding value to your company. I plan to use this knowledge to form the main basis of my report for the second case study on innocent smoothies, as my current understanding of the company is that they are the market leader mainly because of their brand and their emphasis on adding value. A lot of other manufacturer offer smoothies, what makes innocent so special? 6.5 Week 5 Unfortunately I was unable to make this session as I had a hospital appointment regarding my ankles, which was annoying as it was a case study session. I tried to complete the case study on my own; I took what I had learnt from he previous one and tried to apply it to this one. The information I gathered I made sure was relevant to the case study. The main things I took from the study were although the product is essentially, sometimes the brand can out way the value derived by the product. Applying to people you can see that although some individuals appear to be more qualified, it’s not necessarily them who get the job, as it not just the product, it’s the whole package employers are after. This information will hopefully be invaluable to me as I’m currently going through the job application process. 7