Principles of Marketing
Part 1 – What is Strategic Marketing?
Learning Outcomes
Creating Value for Customers:
Student can demonstrate an understanding of the concept of value creation.
The Role of the Customer in the Company’s Strategic Planning.
Student can assess the company’s commit to serving customer needs as evidenced in a company’s mission statement.
SWOT analysis:
Student can conduct a simple SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) of a product or service offering and draw inferences from an analysis of the results.
Competitive Analysis:
Student can conduct a simple competitive analysis based on criteria important to the customers of the product or service.
Directions
You are to develop a new brand-name competitive product (Good or service). The same product/service YOU develop will be used in all of the writing assignments.
You can conduct your research through the Internet and UMGC’s virtual library. Do not limit yourself to searching solely on the product or service name. Look up the industry it is in and search on that industry as well. Look up the direct competitors to determine how their products are being marketed. You can analyze their marketing efforts and activities in order to determine how YOU will market your new brand-name product. Check industry journals and the trade press.
Ask your family, friends, coworkers and others what they think about the product and each of the competitors. You will want to visit a retailer to compare the products on the shelves or visit all of the websites. Keep all your research as you will need it for future writing assignments.
Prepare your assignment beginning with a title page with your name and the brand name of your product or service.
Then answer each of the following eight questions (four in part 1 and four in part 2) in order and number the beginning of your response to each question. Although you do not need to repeat the question, each section should have a heading. The paper should contain approximately 5 to 8+ pages of analysis for the responses to the eight questions.
Creating Value for Customers.
Consider the customers you believe will use your product or service and the definition of \marketing offered in the course content. As we begin our study of marketing, what are your preliminary thoughts as to how you think the company creates value for its customers based on the concepts in this week’s readings. Included a definitive value statement for your brand-name product in your answer.
Role of the Customer in the Company’s Strategic Plan. The readings indicate that the best marketing begins with the customer and that commitment to the customer begins with including the customer in the company’s mission statement. Develop your company’s mission statement.
SWOT analysis.
Identify at least one element of each of the SWOT categories (a strength, a weakness, an opportunity, and a threat). Explain your choice using a citation if needed. Then identify possible implications for each of the four elements.
Create a Table in which these elements are posted. For example, if a strength is a a strong national brand name, the implication is that the company may be able to launch other related products under the positive umbrella of the same brand name. Conversely, if a major weakness is the company is carrying a lot of debt, the implication is that the company not not be able to achieve significant growth, but may have to consider retrenchment strategies.
Competitive Analysis.
Identify at least two of your major competitors or those two products that are trying to sell essentially identical products to the same type of consumer. Then, identify at least three criteria that are important to those consumers when they are making their decision as to which of the three competing offers to buy.
Make a little chart with the three criteria along the left-hand side and the competitor products (including your own product) across the top. Rank each of the products on a scale from 1= low to 5= high on each performs on each of the three criteria. Add down each column.
Which product ranked highest overall based on the sum of the columns. Then, look at the highest score in each of the criteria boxes. Which products ranked the highest on each of the three criteria? Was it the same product, was it three different products? What do these results tell you about the competitive environment of your product category.
Which product is the leader? Which product is the follower, challenger and nicher if those categories apply? Attach your chart as an exhibit.
Part 2 – Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty, Management and Empowerment
Learning Outcomes
Customer empowerment.
Identify how their chosen brand-name product or service offering uses social networks to communicate and empower customers to be part of the marketing process.
Customer satisfaction.
Identify how customers will communicate their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with your chosen brand-name product (good or service) offering.
Customer Relationship Management.
Explain customer lifetime value and how a customer relationship management program can have a role in attracting and retaining most valuable customers.
Customer privacy.
Edentify the product or service offerings privacy policy and analyze its effectiveness in protecting their customer’s information.
Last Completed Projects
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