Hi reader!
Thank you for taking the time to check out my research blog! My name is Lauren Rasmussen, and I'm currently a senior at BASIS Scottsdale. This year I am beyond excited to begin researching ethics in the dermatology product labeling industry!
From shampoos to fruit strips to face wash, chemistry always provides an opportunity to develop better products. I love learning about molecular details and marketing genius behind why innovative chemical products succeed. Over my past couple years at BASIS I have been able to engage and grow my love for chemistry by working with Dr. Scaling, my chemistry teacher, and getting to stop by after school to helping prep labs, tutoring other students, and various other tasks.
The more time I dedicated to advertising school spirit sales and events with Leadership (BASIS's student government), working the front desk at my local water park, and creating fundraising campaigns to participate on mission trips, I realized another passion: marketing!
I am eager to combine both my passions for chemistry and marketing while learning alongside my on site mentors! I will be working with Dermaforce, an innovative skincare company in Phoenix. Interning mainly in their marketing area, I'll be learning what it takes to be a successful startup company with groundbreaking products emerging in the dermatology industry.
In addition to Dermaforce, I'll be interning with Kerwin Yamanaka at Imiloa Skin Care Creations. Mr. Yamanaka runs his own chemical lab for dermatology products, and I'm super excited to learn all types of applied chemistry with him. I'm sure every day will be a learning experience! And we'll be working together to create a new type of dermatology product. I cannot believe this opportunity and I cannot wait to choose what to make! Both these experiences should help me begin to explore my future majors: marketing and chemistry. Combining these two is going to be so super!
Outside of school, I love staying active and eating healthy, finding healthy, inventive recipies. I also enjoy mentoring seventh grade girls at my church, Christ's Church of the Valley, journaling, as well as doing random DIYs!
On the right side of my page, you'll find pictures from my favorite hike of the week paired with a fun fruit fact!
I'm so excited to start my internships and begin blogging to get to share all of this with you guys! I can't wait to begin on my adventure, and bring you guys along as well! Thank you for reading my first post and there are so many more soon to come! Talk with you all soon!
Hello Lauren!
ReplyDeleteFascinating and wonderful post! I certainly find your fruit facts ap-PEEL-ing.
On your project, I liked how you combined both of your personal interests together and found an eye-catching topic. Do you have any ideas on what your conclusion may be? Or do you think there may be any challenges to expect along the way? If so, what?
Also, do you believe that your previous experience in activities and mission trips will help or shape your project? In what way?
I'm glad to be following the blog and will be looking forward to your future posts!
Hey Cedric! Haha thank you! I'm super grape-ful you checked out my blog!
DeleteRight now I am completely uncertain to what my conclusion will be. I'm not sure if labels really make a monetary influence on people's purchasing habits or if they are just reassuring to consumers, so I am looking forward to finding my conclusion! There will definitely be some hurdles to jump over like creating new products and using software to create product representations - one with labeling and one without specific labels - to see if labels like 'all natural' or 'sulfate-free' influence purchasing prices.
I think my previous experiences in activities and mission trips may not specifically shape my project, but the tools they've given me to be more independent has certainly helped me go more confidently into the workplace and interviews!
Thank you so much for commenting and I'm looking forward to following your blog as well!
Hi Lauren, I think you interning at two different sites focusing on either the chemistry or marketing is a great idea. However what exactly will you be doing at each of these? Will you be helping create the chemicals or making the advertising? I look forward to seeing where this project takes you.
ReplyDeleteHi Evan!
DeleteThank you! Yes, at Dermarche I will be helping them with different marketing tasks, and learning the keys to market successful products, using various tactics. This will aid my project in seeing a multitude of ways to market and how companies have opportunities to be more or less ethical in their approaches.
With the independent lab, I will be helping create dermatological products, and I will also be creating my own product! But I am not quite sure what this new product will be yet. I should know by next week though so stay tuned for that!
Apart from both these sites, I will be creating advertising for my product both with labels and without labeling to market and see if specific labels influence consumer behavior.
Thank you for checking out my blog!
Hi Lauren! Your passion for chemistry and marketing really shine through in this post. It's awesome that you were able to find a project that covers your two interests so well. At Dermarche labs it seems you will be focusing on marketing and at Imiloa Skin Care Creations it seems you will be focusing on the chemistry aspect of dermatology. Are you going to link your findings at both these sites or are they going to be separate conclusions? I'm curious to find out more about how these two aspects of dermatology are related and I look forward to reading more of your posts.
ReplyDeleteHi Justin! Thank you! I am super excited that I get to combine my passions with these internships!
DeleteTogether, both these experiences will help me learn how to market and how to create my own product so that I can bring both together and market my own product to see if specific labeling like 'sulfate-free' or 'all natural' influences consumer purchasing behaviors.
I'm looking forward to seeing how people will respond to my products and product marketing to see if labeling actually does influence purchasing behavior! Does that answer your question? For more info, you could also see my response to Evan's question too!
Thank you for following my blog!
Hey Lauren! I think it is awesome that you will be able to connect your two passions of chemistry and marketing. It is super cool that you have found a company that has given you the chance to learn a lot from professionals that work for a successful company and know what they are doing. On the chemistry side of things, I am very curious to know exactly what you will be doing and how you will play a part in developing new products. Will you be working in a lab? Will you be inputting data from various experiments? I want to know!
ReplyDeleteHey Jack! Thank you! I'm super excited that I can combine my interests as well!
DeleteI will be working in a lab on Tuesdays and Thursdays creating various types of dermatological products. I am hoping to try and learn as much as I can from my on-site mentor Kerwin at the lab. He has a plethora of knowledge which allows him to formulate great compounds.
I'm not sure if we will be running various experiments at the lab, but I will let you know in future blog posts if I am because that would be super awesome!
Thank you for checking out my blog! Also, side note, I love your profile picture!
Hi Lauren! It's amazing that you found a way to combine both of your interests for the future, chemistry and marketing! I'm curious as to how you plan to blend your findings in both fields. Will you be using the marketing skills from the Dermarche lab to market the product you develop in the Imiloa Skin Care Creations lab? I also am interested in how you are combining your personal health interests like hiking and healthy eating with your senior project plan. Are you planning on using your past experiences with skin care projects to influence your research at each institution? I think it would be a great way to show the importance of your research by showing how it has impacted your life even before this project. I'm so excited to follow your project journey!
ReplyDeleteHey Bobby! Thank you! I'm super hopeful that this will give me a bit of help knowing if I am passionate about putting both chemistry and marketing into practice for the future!
DeleteI will be using marketing skills to help market the product I create at the Imiloa Skin Care Lab, and I can't wait to put my new marketing knowledge into practice! Haha thank you! I hope the hiking and healthy fruits can bring an extra touch of fun to my blog. :D
Honestly, I have never really looked deeply into the chemistry behind products that I use on my skin, I usually just use them and see how my skin reacts; so this is all new to me! But I think the importance will definitely come in how different marketing tactics are used and finding if specific labels will affect consumers' purchasing habits. But I would love to show the importance of different chemicals used in the product I create, so thank you for that idea! I will definitely use that in future blog posts!
Thank you so much for checking out my blog and commenting! I hope you want to continue following my research, seeing where it will take me!
Hi Lauren!
ReplyDeleteI love that you decided to pursue both of your passions and combine them into one project! I look forward to learning more about your topic, as an avid user of dermatology projects myself, and I especially hope to learn about the differences of ingredients in products that claim to have different effects. As you continue your journey, I have a few questions for you. Do you expect the outcome of your experiment to shock you, in terms of the ethics behind dermatology products, or do you believe that the products truly carry out their intended purpose? Additionally, how do you think that the your research about the chemistry in dermatology and marketing will help you to create your own effective product, and how do you expect your product to be different from the ones that you will be researching? I look forward to learnimg more about your project as you continue your research and internships!
Esha Sheth
Hi Esha!
DeleteThank you! Wow that's super great to hear! I have already begun going through different types of ingredients that will appear in my next blog post so stay tuned. :)
I definitely think the products carry their intended purpose, it's just when allergies come into place, or when consumers want the whole truth not just partial truth. I hope the findings are not shocking, but we will see!
The chemistry within these products is what can make or break a successful product, so through researching a bunch of key ingredients and seeing what Mr. Yamanaka uses in the products he creates, I hope to create a wonderful product. My product will be something I can say I'm proud of, and although the ingredients may not be super different (most products contain similar ingredients), I want to market it using very truthful labeling.
We will see what product I end up making, and I'm just as eager as you to research and find it out! Thank you for following my blog!
Hey Lauren! It's so inspiring that your project combines both of your passions, even though they're from different fields! I look forward to seeing your marketing skills advance the product you create. I think it'll be really interesting to learn about the ethics, particularly, of marketing- which is what my question is. Your blog post doesn't discuss ethics much, and I was wondering where you'll be incorporating the more moral aspects of marketing into your project as companies balance telling the truth and selling more product? Also, do you think your marketing research will help you create your dermatology product, despite its more chemical focus? Thank you and I can't wait to see where this project takes you!
ReplyDeleteHi Nitya! Thank you for checking out my blog!
DeleteI'm so glad you're interested in the ethics behind my project too! The ethical components will come into place when I am researching the different standards required for specific labeling, and also when I survey a general populous and see if the labels actually impact consumer purchasing behaviors. Hopefully it is not a balance of telling the truth and selling more product, but we will find out soon.
My work in marketing research will definitely help me create my dermatology product since I'm already researching what has been successful and I plan to look into what dermatology products and ingredients are hot right now to create a great product!
Thank you for commenting and I can't wait to get to the ethical stage and begin answering some more of your questions!
Hey Lauren, I found your topic interesting as a whole, but more specifically the part about the ethics of the marketing techniques you find. Nitya above asked about how you will be applying the line between truth and sales you find to your own product, but I was wondering if you would use the information you gather on the ethics of product marketing to a further extent. As in, would you try to spread the word more through social media to inform people about the more immoral aspects of marketing? Or will you simply use your findings to ensure your product and future products are marketed ethically despite the sale potential that accompanies false advertising? Also, how do you plan to find out what constitutes false or immoral advertising versus stretching the truth, or do you consider them one and the same, as unethical advertisement?
ReplyDeleteHey Annalise! Thank you for checking out my blog!
DeleteYes, I would love to spread my findings on social media, and hopefully you guys will be impassioned enough if I get interesting findings to spread it on your social media too to get more information out to consumers. Otherwise, there would not be as much of a social impact through my project, and there would be pretty low impact.
And to answer how I will draw the line about immoral advertising, I'm planning to look at more of the hard facts and see if labels that claim 100% of the product is 'natural' or whatever the labels claim, then all 100% should hold true. But if not, then there will definitely be some ethical bias that I will have to look more into.
Hey Lauren!
ReplyDeleteWith a mom who works as a marketing director at a plastic surgeon and aesthetician's office, I am very interested to learn more about your topic. I think it will be very interesting to learn not only how a product is sold and marketed, but also how it is made. Will you be exploring the psychology behind which labels and displays of products are more appealing to consumers? Also, what type of new dermatology product will you be working on with Mr. Yamanaka? Thank you and I'm looking forward to hearing more!
Hi Olivia!
DeleteWow that is really awesome! I'm so happy you checked out my blog! The psychology will come when I find if people will buy the product I create with different habits if it has certain labels on it. I'm sure there will be interesting results!
I am not yet sure what product I will be creating with Mr. Yamanaka, but I will be working to help create a bunch of different formulations with him as that is his job and I cannot wait to see what products I get to help make!
Thank you for following my blog and I can't wait to hear from you again!
Hi Lauren! I am very excited to learn more about your project. It is very interesting how you included your interests of both marketing and chemistry. One of my questions revolves around marketing. The question is about as others have said before, what is considered moral and immoral in the marketing field. I am also interested about, as Olivia said before, the new dermatology product that you are working on. I am also interested in what marketing is best for promoting a new product. Thank you and I am excited in learning more about your project!
ReplyDeleteHi Christina! Thank you for checking out my blog!
DeleteYeah! I'll be looking more at the ethics later in my project after I have created my product, but when questions arise, I am planning on reaching out to professors at the university level who specialize on ethics. I also should have my concept for my product by next week so stay tuned!
You are totally interested in all the right stuff for my blog! Keep looking out for my blogs and I'm sure you'll love it! Thank you for commenting and supporting my blog!
Hi Lauren! I am so excited to follow your progress through your journey of chemistry and marketing! As someone who loves chemistry, it will be interesting to see the ethics relating to including chemistry in the marketing industry. I am also impressed that you are not only working with Dermache Labs, but with Imiloa Skin Care Creations, too! I hope to learn a lot from your experience, as I am also very interested in the marketing for products. I wish you the best of luck on your project!
ReplyDeleteHi Divya! Thank you!
DeleteYay! I'm super stoked you love chemistry! I have loved chemistry since Freshman year and it's so cool when you can see its applications in the real world so I hope you can see some of those through my project!
Thank you! I can't wait to keep you updated on my progress through the process! Stay tuned and thank you so much for your support! If you have any questions don't hesitate to reach out!
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ReplyDeleteHi Lauren!
ReplyDeleteIt is great that you found a place to intern that combines both of your main interests. Being able to find an area where you can apply the subject you are most passionate about must be exciting! What dermatology product do you and Mr. Yamanaka plan on creating? In addition, what do you think is the best marketing strategy in terms of advertising skin care products? I look forward to reading more about your experiences. Good luck!
Zafeerah Sheikh
Hi Zafeerah!
DeleteThank you! I'm super grateful that I can combine my passions for both chemistry and marketing too! Right now, I'm not certain on what product we will be creating, but I am hoping by next week I will have a clear concept once I do some more research and after I get to work in the lab with Mr. Yamanaka for a couple days!
Thank you for your support!