First, students will be provided with a marketing report that allows for preparing basic executive level data insights. Second, they will be required to pick a company and ONE of its products or services. This assignment will help prepare students for the development of their marketing plan, which is a course-long assignment.. Throughout the six weeks, students will be creating a marketing plan (refer to Marketing Plan and Outline document) so they will want to choose a company (publicly-traded) and one of its products or services for which data are readily available Such data should include but not be limited to: current marketing strategy and tactics, . associated demographic, psychographic, behavioral, and/or geographical data for the company’s or brand management’s targeting efforts, distribution methods, communication methods, messages, and venues, pricing strategies, actual and competitive pricing, product description and benefits, etc.
.
Assignment Steps
Part 1:
Analyze the Week 1 Business Growth Overview dataset. provided by the University via a link in this week’s Assignment This is a marketing report generated by an analyst for the Senior Vice President (SVP) of Marketing at a large corporation. The analyst is new and has provided summary data on clients but no insights or commentary for the SVP to consider. When analyzing this document, students should pay attention to marketing principles and concepts included in the first week’s readings, coupled with additional relevant research, and pay attention to the client categories and business strategies into which those clients have been classified in the dataset.
.
Construct a minimum 525-word memorandum for the SVP providing insights and commentary. The memorandum should include your analysis of the following:
This document should be part of the APA-formatted report, with this section being in the form of a memo. Remember to include references and to cite the location of data pull edfrom the EXCEL spreadsheet.
Part 2 – This is the basis for each student’s course-long enhanced marketing plan:
Select a global or multi-regional (does business in more than one country) company (preferably one that is publicly-traded so that financial and other statistical information are readily available) and ONLY one of its products or services that will serve as the basis for YOUR marketing plan to be developed over the six weeks of this course. Select and specify the domestic (home-based) country and one international country (not a region) for your product/service. One of these countries must be the US and the other country must be a country that is different from the US (NOT Canada, the UK, or Australia). These two markets will be kept for the entire six weeks and marketing elements/principles covered in each week’s assignment must include information and decisions for each of these two markets.
Each week’s assignment (individual and team) helps students learn relevant concepts, conduct necessary research, and make marketing decisions that will be related to this marketing plan. Your goal through this marketing plan is to improve upon the strategies and tactics currently in use for the product or service you select.
Note carefully, simply sticking with what is currently done will not show any learning, creativity, or ability to apply marketing concepts and principles to a real-world situation. You must, each week, discuss and show what is currently done, explain the shortcomings of the approach(es), and make informed decisions/recommendations that should ensure greater success for the product or service selected. Imagine that you are the brand manager for the company and product you select and that your next year’s contract is dependent on your revised marketing plan and your ability to defend your decisions.
Each student should obtain two years of annual reports as well as two years of 10K reports (They provide a comprehensive overview of the company’s business and financial condition and include audited financial statements. These are only available for publicly-traded companies.) for the company selected. Once you have selected your product or service, you must define the size and type of your selected company that provides the product or service (available from annual reports). This need not be elaborate but must include total number of employees, production volume, distribution methods, revenues and profits, and so forth. Record this information in a summary document as outlined below.
Company and product selection critical parts of this project. You must ensure your proposed company can implement the marketing methods discussed in your text, Marketing Management. Since you need to improve upon current marketing efforts, please DO NOT select a company that is considered an exemplary marketer (Apple, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nike, Budweiser, GEICO, FedEx, IBM, Samsung, or Southwest Airlines). Hint: find a publicly-traded company and one of its products or services for which there has been a serious decline in business, and/or a scandal or product/business failure of some sort. That will guarantee media and business analyst coverage from which you will learn a great deal.
Prepare a minimum 175-word summary document and send it to your instructor as a record of your selection. The summary document should include the following:
Format your assignment consistent with APA guidelines. If you have not become familiar with them yet, be sure to do so immediately as every paper will require this format. There are numerous resources available in the University Library for you to enhance your APA capabilities including, for example, what graduate level students are expected to know and use.
