I just moved to Salt Lake City in Utah with my family. We are excited and looking for a nice Italian restaurant to have dinner. Our preferences are for a beautiful restaurant to dine in, with a welcoming but elegant environment to enjoy delicious food and celebrate the new change of surroundings. We are planning to split the bill, and didn’t mind if the place was a little expensive as we hoped to get a higher level experience. 

Since we don’t know the area or people to help us find a good place, we have decided to start searching places on Google. I clicked on one of the first links that I saw after typing “Italian restaurants.” The first option that captivated our attention is Valter’s Osteria because it has the best ratings on the website and it seemed it could provide us with a cozy but fancy atmosphere. However, a few people in the reviews were complaining about it being over priced. We’re looking for something fancy and would be willing to pay a little more than what we usually would for a regular dinner, as long as we are satisfied with the experience at the best price, of course. So we are going to save that one as a good option and keep searching for a few more restaurants. The next one is Settebello Pizzeria. We quickly realized that this wasn’t a good option for us because, not only people claimed it to be overpriced in the reviews, but also they didn’t have many food options and we weren’t very fond of the appearance of the establishment. As I noticed that the options in the list were not as accurate with our preferences, I finally proceeded to search “Italian restaurants to dine in,” and it looked like I found the options that were more popular, with good ratings and aligning with the type of place we were looking for. After scrolling down we saw some incredible choices we liked, but ended up choosing Caffe Molise immediately. This place showed the best quality food, at a reasonable price, that you wouldn’t get to taste in the daily and the pictures of the place showed such a warm, eccentric and luxurious environment we couldn’t resist to disregard the other options. 

After the decision-making process, I realized that it is easier to find what you are looking for if you have well defined requirements of what you want and need. Once you have a clear idea of what is important and what are only preferences, making comparisons and taking into account the reviews of other people that have experienced the service, as well as the pictures and ratings of the place, can help you decide more accurately without risking your chances. In this particular case, my preferences were for an aesthetically pleasing and fancy food restaurant to dine in with family. I wasn’t caring as much for the price, but it did influence my decision, since I was looking for quality experience and, as we probably know, expensive is not always worth the price.

Aumi Arias- Assignment C

Toys R Us used to be the most influential company of toys in America just a couple of decades ago. Since the moment it was founded in 1957, throughout the following years this brand showed a promising and stable future being the number one nightmare for its competitors. It seemed that there was no other path for their future than to expand and grow. Nevertheless, the company saw the end of its glory days because, among other factors, it failed to pursue new tactics to maintain its value in the outgrowing market of toys companies and ended up filing bankruptcy in 2017.

I’m going to be ranking some of the main marketing environment components that I consider were significant in the downfall of Toys R Us.

1)Demographic Factors: The company failed to execute the necessary changes to keep the brand as appealing for the new generation of kids who are more captivated by electronics, video games and social media. When a company fails to listen and provide their target population with the things that they’re interested in, the demand on the brand will naturally decay. For this reason, I believe that their main mistake was not listening to their customers’ needs.

2)Social Factors: As a toys’ brand the public that it used to target was kids. This company has existed since 1957, back then the interests of this group were totally different to the kids today, however this didn’t necessarily mean that it would be harder for them to reach their demographic. The way that companies influence the population has changed overall with the technology era. This brand lost the opportunity to evolve into creating a deeper and effective presence through technology as a means to promote themselves.

3)Political and Legal Factors: The company’s intentions to expand their horizons to the online market was a good strategy in theory. They stipulated a partnership with Amazon in which they would pay for exclusively. However, Amazon did not respect the deal and started selling toys from ToysRUs competitors. After terminating the deal and winning the lawsuit to Amazon, ToysRUs had to start their online presence from scratch, but by that moment it was too late to make any difference.

4)Competitive Factors: Despite the increasingly changing times, ToysRUs stated pretty much the same from its beginnings to the end. It was a very big company, for which huge changes and innovation were impossible to achieve at a fast pace. Unfortunately, the emerging competitors such as Walmart and Target were able to provide an experience that satisfied their consumers’ needs. There was nothing unique that would separate ToysRUs from many other innovative brands.

5)Economic Factors: After their past failures this company became an unsustainable business. They were in an urgent need of rebranding in order to keep up with their competitors. Unfortunately, by the time that they realized this, they couldn’t do anything as they were facing a huge debt.