Learning Experience in Marketing - Areas of Strength and Weakness - Essay Example

In every learning experience, a student experiences some challenges but despite the ups and downs, there was knowledge gained from engaging in the course work. As such, this reflection describes my situation in this course because although it has been a challenging encounter, I admit coming out having gained the much-needed knowledge in business management, especially marketing. In this regard, there are some learning encounters that I find necessary to reflect on thus, most of my personal reflection is dedicated to providing a description of what went well and some of the elements of the experience that proved challenging. In my description of the course experience, I have categorically highlighted the tasks engaged in and how they contributed to my knowledge as well as the understanding of the entire course work. On the other hand, while providing the description, my reflection has been dedicated to explaining how the tasks went, both the downside and the ups of the experiences. Besides, a section is dedicated specifically to reflecting on my experiences with the course while on the other hand, I have analysed the needed knowledge gap or what I feel I should have learnt better. Moreover, in the reflection section indicates how I envisage using the learned knowledge in future as well as what ought to have been done differently from the entire learning experience. Finally, the reflection sums up with a recap of what I have covered or learnt.

Concerning my experience in the entire course, there is much to note and evaluate in terms of the extent to which such experiences have been useful for my quest for knowledge and understanding of marketing. One of the experiences that I have had is essay writing and in this regard, it has exposed me to some of the different elements of essay writing (Wingate, 2012). For instance, through the essay-writing course, like the one on corporate social responsibility, the focus was on assessing my skills on how to do research, analyse data and engage in critical thinking to provide an impressive work to the instructor. More so, the focus or emphasis on essay writing has been to teach students some of the important elements to look for in a well-written essay since the instructor was stressing on grammar, style, creativity, and critical thinking. Therefore, in my case, I have engaged a lot in critical thinking, learning how well to organize my grammar and mainly, being concerned with providing or producing quality works that meet the expectations of the instructor. Another important aspect of my learning in this course is that there has been much exposure to using theoretical models in making informed decisions, especially the part of the assignment concerned with marketing mix. In this regard, I can state that the entire course has exposed and as such, trained me on using theoretical models in making informed decisions or rather, applying them in real business contexts.

Nonetheless, part of my experiences in the course has been on exploring some of the elements necessary for making a good presentation, both for the classwork and preparing assignment presentation to the tutor. The presentation part might have been full with many challenges, but according to the ratings I received from the instructor, I can agree that I have been successful with my learning endeavours. Much of the learning experience has also been dedicated to the being focused or emphasizing on how to use the referencing styles, in particular with the Harvard style that was a necessity for all assignments. Therefore, by evaluating my experiences, I can easily confirm that the learning outcome has been aligned with the objectives since in the course outline; the tutor indicated some of the learning outcomes for students. For instance, there was a provision on essay writing which I have fulfilled, classwork presentation that was part of my learning experience as well as getting to know some of the theoretical models of marketing that I have also fulfilled. Thus, from my evaluation, I rank this learning experience as above average.

During the preparation of the corporate social responsibility essay, much of the work or experiences learnt were not only on the writing skills but also on the content of the essay, which is CSR as an important component of marketing in the contemporary business environment (Nwagbara and Reid, 2013). During this essay, I learnt that CSR is an approach that focuses on how organisations should be held accountable for their actions since their activities have a direct impact the environment as well as the communities, which they operate. In fact, through corporate social responsibility essay, I have learnt a lot, concerning how organisations take courses of actions and engage in activities that are beneficial to the society as well as safeguarding the environment (Nwagbara and Reid, 2013). Moreover, the presentation of the essay exposed me learning how to write an essay, especially taking into consideration the different parts of an essay including what to include in the introductory part, how to organise the body of an essay and the best way to draw up a conclusion after writing the entire work (Wingate, 2012). However, the essay also presented me with some serious challenge, since from the comment of the tutor, there was the need to improve on my analysis and critical thinking; there was a recommendation for me to be more detailed with the approach on analysis as well as being critical to the essay presentation. On the other hand, there was a major problem with my referencing skills since it was the first time I was being introduced to Harvard referencing. Some of the problems with referencing that I have encountered with the essay pertains to how to cite, in particular for the direct quotes, the organisation of the bibliography list besides other detailed information about when or how to use the surnames.

Moreover, I learnt much on this course concerning marketing mix, especially since I prepared a presentation for the class. Particularly, the marketing mix assignment introduced me to using or applying marketing skills into real life situations. During the presentation, I began by exploring the traditional 4Ps of the marketing mix including price, promotion, place, and product (Khan, 2014). In this case, I come out of the course having learnt some of the important when preparing a good marketing mix for a particular marketing campaign where for instance, there must be plans for including the promotional activities, the price to be charged, the place for selling and a detailed description of the product (Khan, 2014). During the presentation of the marketing mix, it involved business simulation or applying the knowledge into real life situation. Therefore, I can conclude that for much of my experience with the presentation of the marketing mix, a lot has been gained concerning how to use theory in practical context or real life situation. Moreover, the presentation on the marketing mix did expand to include the current or updated 7Ps of marketing, including the physical aspect of the product or its features, the people aspect or the particular target audience as well as positioning of the product (Khan, 2014). For the people aspect of as a new element of a marketing mix, I have learnt that a marketing campaign should specify the people being targeted by the particular product because such is necessary for availing goods and services aligned with the needs as the expectations of the target audience. On the other hand, the marketing mix presentation, on 7Ps, has taught me that a marketing campaign should be complemented with detailed information on how the brand should be positioned within the target market (Khan, 2014).

However, there were some challenges, if not so, with my presentation skills, both for the classwork and examination. For instance, I have a major problem with my voice, thus, in some cases, I was not audible, and the instructor had to ask me many times to repeat some of the aspects or elements of my presentation. The problem with presentation can be attributed to my small voice that sometimes is not heard when in large and open rooms. On the contrary, my presentation skills have been unique throughout the course in some way because I was applauded in some occasions for the impressive organisation of the contents for presentation.

In my case, there is a small gap with essay writing skills; I would like to put more effort on learning how to become more critical and analytical with my future essays. To achieve this goal, it will be necessary to read widely and consult different sources on how to write good essays, improve my grammar skills, especially in style and creativity. From now on, my main concern is to read widely because I believe that good writing skill is achieved at the expense of spending much time reading. On the other hand, the writing skills will not be improved without putting everything into practice and in my case, most of the free time will be spent writing to improve on this area of a knowledge gap. Moreover, to improve my knowledge of analysis and critical thinking, it will be imperative to focus more on handling technical problems or essays that require a lot of application and not just doing simple research where information is easily available.

In addition, part of the knowledge that I hope to improve on in the future is practising on referencing style, especially the Harvard style that has been giving me many problems. In this regard, I have already made up plans for consulting online writing forums for teaching people how to use technical referencing styles like Harvard, but I will also visit the university library to try and explore how best to use this style that has troubled me throughout the course.

Concerning knowledge on marketing, as the focus of this course, I envisage improving my understanding of how CSR can be integrated marketing because from the course, the tutor has maximised the attention on the importance to brand a company as being CSR-oriented. Therefore, the knowledge gap that I seek to full in the future is how corporate social responsibility can be integrated into marketing, especially how the marketing objectives can be defined or aligned with the principles of social responsibility (Nwagbara and Reid, 2013). On the other hand, I look forward to improving my knowledge on how companies can become socially responsible, the particular social responsibility programs or projects that they have to invest in as well as the community services meant to earn them more points as being socially responsible. Moreover, the knowledge of marketing mix and its utilisation in real life contexts or situations is not yet fully exploited thus I am obligated to search for extra knowledge on how to implement or executive a marketing mix in the most appropriate manner. For instance, I wish to further my knowledge on some of the promotional activities that can create more awareness for a company operating in the digital era or digital business environment as well as the best marketing platforms to employ in this post-2015 era that was described as being technologically intensive (Khan, 2014).

The learning experience can be considered or argued to have been a different one from my expectations. For instance, I imagined that for the most part of the class, the emphasis would have been on important issues concerning marketing but the introduction of social responsibility was a new twist that I least anticipated. On the other hand, in the beginning, I thought that there were few practical encounters like the class representations whereby students were exposed to be preparing presentation slides. Again, I went through a different experience because this is one of the parts that the instructor had given much attention since it was aimed at testing the extent to which students were able to grasp ideas and put them into practice by making presentations. In addition, it was a different experience with essay writing because despite being a marketing class, the teacher emphasised on the need to have a good command of grammar because communication is a crucial part of marketing.

There is least that I would have done differently but definitely, from my experience with the course, my presentation would have been much better if I would go back to the initial stages of the course. For example, I would have changed my presentation skills to focus more on attracting the attention of the audience since the instructor advised me to check on how I keep the audience captivated with my presentation. On the other hand, I would have done everything differently concerning the use of Harvard referencing style because what I believed to be the best way of using the style turned out to be contrary to the recommended use of the style. Moreover, I would have put more efforts on understanding marketing mix, especially with the new approaches like the 7Ps marketing mix which is much broader and inclusive of the important aspects or elements of making marketing campaign a success.

I will use the learnt knowledge in future through many ways. For instance, concerning marketing mix, there is opportunity to plan for my business because the knowledge of this model will help me in designing the most appropriate marketing mix for products, especially the newly launched goods and services. There is also the valuable knowledge on CSR and marketing and for this case, I plan to use this knowledge in branding my future company as being socially responsible. Through CSR knowledge, I will market my business as being environmentally friendly, focussing on social welfare as well as lending philanthropy towards community development programs and projects as some of the pillars of social responsibility.

In summary, I can confirm that the learning experience has been with mixed results because I excelled in some areas while also got the opportunity to identify my areas of weakness. For instance, my class presentations were the defining moments of the course experience although I come out having known how best to prepare a good representation. Particularly, I come out of the course having learned a lot concerning marketing, in particular with the knowledge of the 4Ps marketing mix as well as the expanded 7Ps model. Moreover, the experience has introduced me to a new aspect of marketing, corporate social responsibility, and how companies should market themselves as being socially responsible since such is part of branding as one of the marketing functions. Therefore, I look forward to improving on my major areas of weakness, including the referencing styles, presentation, writing skills especially analysis and critical reflection.