Wendy's Market Research

I have reached the end of my coursework at BU - it's alittle bittersweet for me. I've enjoyed the educational experience and the mental challenge. However, I won't be missing the weekends and long nights. It will be nice to be able to see my son again and have dinners with him. I look forward to it.

This particular presentation is interesting because it doesn't seem like alot of research went into it, when in fact there are tons - 3 pages of resources to be exact. Marketing research was more than just googling up information - I went through databases as well as academic literature to find and retrieve competitor information, market share data and trends. The case provided results from an online survey, we used SPSS to redact data - using frequency counts, correlation, ANOVA, regression, factor analysis and cluster analysis. The charts attached were created with information retrieved via analysis. This was a real interesting class, one of my favorites. I'll never think about a survey the same again and will forever question the bits of information we are all occassionally given from 'studies'.

Alittle sanity check

My heart broke reading about this little boy, Ty Campbell. After suffering a rare type of cancer, he passed away shortly after his 5th birthday! I thought this would nice to share and for us to read on those days we feel like we can't take our children and life is hard.  We can be humbled by the fact that there are people out there who have lost their children and wish to have one more hard day. 

Christmas is in the air

It's hard mustering up the energy to decorate a tree. Perhaps all the boxes of ornaments, unwrapping them,  hanging lights, throwing on the skirt and then vacuumming all the mess!    Xavier was jumping off the walls, and as I was telling him to calm down, I realized I used to get excited like him.  Why is it that as we get older, it's more difficult to get into the "holiday spirit"?

We've added a few new traditions like a fresh tree instead of an artificial one. We went to Terrain in town, they had a cozy fire pit with wood stump seats and wool blankets to stay warm, popcorn and roasted marshmallows. It was hard shrugging off the stress of work, school and life to stop and enjoy the moment and take in my sons excitement about it being his favorite time of the year. I have fond memories of sorting and organizing the branches to our tree with my sister and mom, hanging the ornaments and putting the presepio (nativity scene) under the tree.  

As we were hanging the ornaments with Xavier, he was talking about which ones were his favorite, all of them of course. He couldn't wait to keep on hanging them - I remember being like that.  It's hard for Xavier to resist the ornaments and not play with them. He managed to break two, Handy Manny and a Buzz Light  Year - thank goodness for krazy glue.       

The biggest attraction is the Thomas Train under the tree.  Between Xavier and Cosmo, we are always amazed it survives the season, let's see what happens in the next few weeks.  Until then, Xavier will be under the tree every night, making sure all the globes and ornaments that play music are all on with the train going round and round.

Here's to another Christmas and hoping that the holiday spirit touches you.

Ford Fiesta Movement

The following video was published by myself and my fellow BU colleague, Erik Barfield, we discuss Ford's use of Social and Viral Media in 2009 as part of our E-Commerce class on Social Media.

I'm sure that most of my BU colleagues would agree, this assignment was filled with challenges, but for me was an enriching experience - outside of learning about the use of social media in e-commerce.  I was exposed to voice recording on power point, then timing it (poor Erik was probably tired of my voice, he worked on the sequence last night - he's probably saying thank goodness for text messaging) and then there was figuring out ways to post it to You Tube.  We are proud of presentation and hope you enjoy it! 

We'd love to hear from you and look forward to discussions.  Paula

Our first snow storm in 2012 - three to six inches expected.  It's pale in comparison to some areas of the US.  I'm sure that the snow always brings back some memory for most of us.  I go back to our first winter in CT in 2007.  That season, our mailbox was knocked down by the snowplow a couple of times, run over and then vandalized by pranksters (it was a big thing in town, they went through an entire neighborhood).  The mailbox had certainly seen better days. It got to a point where the post was nailed with 2x4's on each side and the door was missing.  In the spring we got a new one and moved it to the other side of the driveway - we haven't had problems since (cross my fingers) with the exception of prankster kids who tried to take the door off the new one.  I guess that's what kids in the burbs do these day, smash mailboxes.  

Blogging is kind of fun

I've spent most of my evening playing with the colors and format of this blog. Let me know what you think! Thank you.

Memories

I don't what it is but, lately I've been thinking about my mother inlaw. I just came across this picture of her when I was looking for pictures for my other page on the blog. I miss her, she passed on a few years ago. She was an amazing cook! Unfortunately, I never learned her cooking tricks so that I could share them with Xavier or on days my husband needs alittle bit of TLC. She's sitting next to me on the left. Her two cousins are next to her and her nephew is on my other side. This was taken in 2004.