The end of Spring 2009 qtr

Ok I’m officially done with spring quarter. Wooo Hooo I’m free!! For once it feels really good not to worry about school. All the weight slowly dissipated by the time exam paper was submitted. Now I have time to relax and focus on something else other than school. Don’t get me wrong, I love my learning experience at Fisher. The knowledge has challenged me to look into the world with a different set of perspective. However, I have to say that taking up MBA on a part time basis along with other responsibilities are challenging. All of the responsibilities are equally demanding, thus they weight down on me on a daily basis. Well… All I can say is that it is a fun and priceless experience. So, without further a due let me have the privilege to recap what I have learned for the past 3 months. I took 2 interesting classes in the spring 2009: Managerial Negotiation and Marketing. Negotiation class taught me how to deal with people in a constructive interest seeking manner to yield a win-win situation. While marketing class taught me to find means to reach costumers with your differentiated product.

Negotiation class is an interesting class because I find it very applicable in my daily interaction with people at work and personal setting. At first, I thought the class was all about best practices in bargaining since we started the class with the so called distributive negotiation, a negotiation concept that focus on one issue and all-or-nothing outcome mentality. I have only known negotiation through purchasing experience at mangga dua shopping center , or watching a notorious bargainer, my mom, purchasing goods at mangga dua. They were all distributive and aimed at claiming the whole pie for yourself at all cost. The class apparently set the distributive negotiation concept as the antithesis of the class and expounded integrative negotiation in a greater depth. Integrative negotiation focuses on gathering information about the other party’s interest and accommodating them base on your interest. The process may appear simple but in reality it isn’t so because human’s biases, selfishness, deceit, and dishonesty get in the way of reaching a satisfying negotiation outcome.

I can actually sum up my other class into one word “Differentiation”. Marketing is in essence the study of techniques to be different thus considered valuable and become desired by costumers. In marketing, analysis and data gathering is very important. A company can’t just place their product in any distribution channels and expect to have a sound sales. Product placement needs to be strategic and accessible to reach the costumer of choice. In marketing world, marketers believe that no one costumer is the same. They are segregated in varying segments with its profile and characteristics. Any type of products or services that we have to offer need to come as solution to the customers. I guess this why people are saying “you’re paying for convenience”. Think about it, there is dozens of product to solve a given solution. Ex: How many types of television in the market today? How many type of DVR are there in the market? These product/ solutions will continually being pushed to you through advertisements. This is the reason that you will see lots of advertisement from the time you wake up, drive to work, and sleep. These advertisements will keep competing to send you message in hope of gaining your business.

Well there you go my simple and brief recap of spring 2009 quarter.