I have reached the end of the first semester and I thought it would be great to comment a bit about the modules that I took.
I had 4 modules that were mandatory Foundations of Management, Business Performance and Strategy, Marketing and Marketing Management and Introduction to Accounting. All of them seemed to be very different by the names; however, the more I learnt about them, the more I could make connections about different topics and how they interrelate. I really liked that general sensation about these modules. I feel ready to discuss relevant theories and influential figures in the world of management.
A good method to memorise ideas and facts is to talk about them. Act as if you were explaining a topic to someone, or if you have someone interested in the topic, talk about it with them. In this way, you will consolidate your knowledge by expressing it but also if you talk with someone you might engage in debates and possibly a very interesting conversation! This happened to me when I was relaxing one day, online gaming with my friends and we were talking about gaming streamers and how my friend Augusto wanted to become one as a hobby but also with the goal of earning some extra money.
He already built a gaming PC, bought a new chair and a fairly decent headset. So, the first thing we thought was “where should I stream?”, there are different platforms like YouTube, Twitch or Facebook. Then I remembered my Marketing lecture on Porter’s 5 forces for competitive advantage, and how there are different entry barriers one of them being the threat of entry of demand-side benefits of scale, meaning that my friend, being a new entrant, would have to take advantage of a platform where more demand can be reached with less competition. Twitch is specialised in streamers, but it is still a kind of niche platform, mostly for gamers with a solid base of followers. So, if Augusto wants to be known, first he must target YouTube or Facebook. My friend lives in Peru and doing some marketing research (based on our experiences), we concluded that people in Peru use Facebook more often than they use YouTube, especially if it is to discover new things. Plus, the system of stars as a currency for streamers in Facebook represents an operational advantage if my friend starts to monetise his streams.
Finally, we got to the most important aspect: “Who will watch me and why?” in order to do this we quickly used the Segmenting, Targeting and Positioning (STP) process commonly used in marketing. The segment started out as people around our age that enjoy playing videogames, and since my friend mostly plays Warzone, the target audience would be people that enjoy playing Call of Duty Warzone competitively. Now, according to Porter, there are two ways to gain a competitive advantage when positioning a service or product, by either differentiation or cost leadership. Cost leadership is not an option in this situation, so differentiation was the only generic strategy available. Augusto said he is good at the game, but he is not constantly a top player, so being a “pro gamer” was still in development. What else could differentiate? We thought about other streamers who are not particularly professionals but what differentiated them was their personality. Basically, being a comedian whilst playing gets you attention from a lot of people. Also, we realised that most Peruvian gamers are professional players, but none of them have a funny personality. There we found the perfect space for my friend to position his gaming channel. The new target audience would be Peruvian gamers our age, and the competitive advantage would be based on good gamer plays and a funny extroverted personality.
So yeah, in 30 minutes I talked with my mates about almost an entire lecture. This helped me a lot to revise for exams whilst relaxing! https://hbr.org/1979/03/how-competitive-forces-shape-strategyHere’s the link to the work I mentioned from Porter.
