Project: Developing and Implementing a Marketing Plan
FOLLOW EACH STEP EXACTLY as outlined below
Expected Deliverables:
Complete Marketing Plan Template (Attached) – 2 pages
Prepare a Situation Analysis Report (4 pages of research finding)
Conduct an Environmental Scan (10 pages)
Step 1: Review Information on Business-to-Business (B2B) Marketing below
Jillian Best catches you in the hallway:
“Listen, before I send you the case file on our new client, I want to make sure you have a thorough understanding of the business-to-business relationships that will be at the core of the marketing plan you will be contributing to. Look for an email from me this afternoon.”
INBOX: 1 New Message
Subject: Case Primer for Marketing Plan
From
To: You
As you have learned through your work with MCS clients, marketing is one of the most important functional areas in business. As you get oriented with the realities of business-to-business (B2B) marketing, I’d like you to do some more reading on two main elements: (1) business buying behavior, and (2) strategic alliances.
Business buying behavior relates to how business customers and their suppliers explore different avenues to manage relationships and enhance efficiency and effectiveness. Fostering the right relationship with businesses is crucial for any holistic marketing plan. B2B relationships are affected by supply, complexity of supply, availability of alternatives, and supply-market dynamism.
In addition, our new client may consider forming strategic alliances to expand its US operations. The twenty-first century has seen an increased use of long-term global strategic alliances among both producers and distribution companies. Organizations form these alliances in an effort to secure commercial advantage and eliminate waste from their distribution channels. They can be crucial to success.
Please review the information linked above before going any further. This is a big client and a tremendous opportunity for MCS. Let me know if any questions arise as you get oriented with your team.
Best,
Step 2: Understand the Components of a Marketing Plan and Research Guidelines. Complete the marketing plan template attached. Use resources from Business and Management and Marketing Research Guides attached.
The team’s marketing knowledge and data acquisition skills are crucial to the success of this project. Your team will collect and analyze the information necessary to develop a marketing plan for expanding the company’s operations within the United States.
Your final marketing plan will ultimately include a situation analysis, analyses of the client’s market, strategy, and financing, and an outline describing the measures to implement the plan. Use this marketing plan template (attached) to help you create your marketing plan.
Take Note
To carry out this assignment, your marketing team needs to understand the client’s customers, how to acquire market knowledge (through primary and secondary research), and how to turn that knowledge into offerings that are needed and wanted by a group of customers. You must also be able to invent market offerings that not only create value for the customer, but also create profitability for the client in a socially responsible and ethical way.
As you will recall from the previous projects, there are two types of market research: primary and secondary research. Both types of research are necessary when creating a marketing plan.
As you conduct research for your marketing plan, use the UMGC Library’s Research Guides, specifically (1) Business and Management and (2) Marketing. Consult these two research guides and find articles that will help you complete your assignments. It is easier if you conduct a separate search for each section of your marketing plan. Also, use databases, such as Hoover’s and ABI/INFORM to research the client company and its industry.
Now that you understand the components of a marketing plan, continue to the next step, where your team will learn more details about your client and its industry.
Step 3: Read attached Company Case File (Canadian Solar Inc.) Prepare a Situation Analysis Report (4 pages) – Follow these instructions closely to prepare the report. Please include value proposition, and include the clients mission and vision statement.
INBOX: 1 New Message
Subject: Company Case File & Questions to Consider
From:
To: Team
Hi again. I wanted to provide you with the company case file and some pertinent questions for you to consider while you work on your B2B marketing plan.
As part of the preparation necessary to complete your business-to-business marketing plan, you and your team will need to do in-depth research on your client’s company, including its operations, global reach, and range of offerings.
By the end of Week 8, I need you to produce a situation analysis report explaining your team’s findings on the company. Be
sure to include a value proposition, essentially the promise that is made to the customer, explaining the reason a customer purchases a product or uses a service (i.e., the value that a company delivers to its customers).
Start by reading the attached case file and be sure to consider the following questions while you do additional research:
Where is the company headquartered?
What are the company’s major products and/or services?
What is the company’s annual revenue in dollars, and what is its annual production in units?
Does the company own its own facilities or does it subcontract manufacturing to others?
Who are the company’s major suppliers of raw materials or parts, and where are they located?
What is the distribution of the company’s workforce by country?
How does the company differentiate its offering in its highly competitive markets?
Does the company have exclusive marketing or distribution agreements or partnerships?
Who are the company’s major global and US customers?
What benefits does the company offer to its customers?
Who are the company’s major global and US competitors?
When developing your situation analysis, you should also understand the importance of vision and mission statements and then research the company’s own vision and mission statements.
Write a four-page document detailing the main findings of your research about your client, including its mission and vision statement.
Submit your document to your team’s study group.
Step 4: Conduct an Environmental Scan (10 pages). Please read below and follow exactly to produce the deliverable for both steps 3 & 4.
As a member of the business development team for this project, you use quantitative and qualitative market information to make important decisions and set the direction of the marketing plan. As you continue to work on your situation analysis report, your team will use the following tools to conduct an environmental scan, the foundation on which a solid marketing plan is built.
Tools for Environmental Scan
Company-Specific Analysis (internal)
SWOT analysis—A SWOT analysis is a planning and brainstorming tool that helps a company evaluate its projects and formulate its business plans. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You will use this tool to identify and analyze the company’s internal strengths and weaknesses as well as its external opportunities and threats. The results of this analysis may help the company improve its business or forecast how a new product or service will perform (Harmon, 2016).
Industry, Market, and Customer Analysis (external)
PESTEL analysis—A PESTEL analysis (sometimes called PEST analysis) enables the company to identify, analyze, and monitor the political, economic, social, technological, legal (including regulatory), and environmental factors that may affect its operations (Frue, 2017).
Porter’s five forces analysis—Porter’s five forces analysis is a framework that can help the company understand the competitive forces at play in its industry. These forces may influence how economic value is divided among the company’s competitors in the industry (Porter, 2008).
References
Frue, K. (2017). Why do PEST analysis for your business? Retrieved from http://pestleanalysis.com/
Harmon, A. (2016). SWOT analysis. Salem Press Encyclopedia [online]. Retrieved from Research Starters, Ipswich, MA.
Porter, M. E. (2008). The five competitive forces that shape strategy. Harvard Business Review, 86(1), 78–93.
Research your industry and its market trends in the United States and identify market opportunities, threats, and the company’s major global competition. Then conduct the SWOT, PESTEL, and Porter’s five forces analyses on your client’s company. These tools should allow you to analyze the company’s internal environment, customers, and macro-environment (external environment), and to answer the following questions in your situation analysis report:
Which elements have the biggest impact on the company’s success?
What factors affect the company’s customers (other businesses)?
Deliverable: Your final situation analysis by the end of Week 8 should include a four-page overview of your research findings and a ten-page review of your environmental scan. The completed situation analysis report should be 14 pages, excluding cover page, the reference list, and appendices. Any tables, graphs, and figures should be included as appendices. Your report should have one-inch margins and be double spaced in 12-point Times New Roman font. The report should be organized using headings and subheadings to improve its readability.
Support your work with scholarly sources and reliable nonscholarly sources such as Reuters, Bloomberg, Yahoo! Finance, Barrons.com, Morningstar.com, Money, Forbes, Fortune, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review, as well as the UMGC Library databases such as Hoover’s and ABI/INFORM. All sources need to be cited using APA formatting, both within the text and in the reference list.
