Researching Marketing Questions

First (Part A), students are provided with an EXCEL dataset to be analyzed for basic executive-level busness and marketing insights. Second (Part B),
students are required to pick an international/multi-regional company
that operates in the US and at least one foreign country with a
distinctly different culture and language base, ONE and only one of its
products or services, and the second country besides the US. 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, pricing strategies, actual and competitive
pricing, product description and benefits, etc.

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Assignment Steps

Part A:

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 findings or
marketing-related insights or recommendations 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 analysis of the following:

• Major areas of increase and decrease in revenues by type(s) of clients and business strategies
• Trends that are evident in terms of revenue generation for specific clients, type(s) of clients and business strategies
• Insights that would help formulate marketing strategies to either foster or continue growth or reverse declines
• Insights and recommendations should be based on text readings and
  expert marketing resources, especially peer-reviewed journal articles
  and case histories and not on personal hypotheses or guessing.

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 pulled from the EXCEL spreadsheet. Since
page or paragraph numbers are not available for this document, please
use column and row designations for the data (Ex: B, 18) instead. Be
sure to show the data in the discussion so that the reader understands
exactly which figures are being considered.

Part B -This is the basis for each student’s course-long enhanced marketing plan.

Select a for-profit,
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. Each
week’s individual assignment enables students to work on one or more
specific sections of this plan. Team assignments should provide the
background on specific topics that each student will build from for
their own plan.

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(concepts/principles) and decisions/recommendations for both 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, or GEICO). 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:

• Name of Company
• Location of Company Headquarters
• General description of company (number of employees, revenue, type of ownership, web page, etc.)
• Name of Product or Service selected
• General description of product or service
• Rationale for selecting this company and its product or service (in
  other words, why do you think that you believe that the marketing
  efforts may be improved upon).

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.