MBA5841 Strategic Marketing
Unit 1 Assignment
Case Study
Instructions
The increased popularity of Cholula hot sauce has been aided, in part, by a successful social media and word-of-mouth program. Cholula has managed to effectively compete and grow its market share and profitability in the already crowded U.S. hot sauce market. Determining how that has been accomplished is the basis for this unit’s assignment.
Analyze the Best Global Practice case study, “Cholula: America’s Hottest Sauce,” on pages 76 and 77 in the textbook.
Complete the tasks below, which are associated with the case study in the textbook.
Answer question 1 using Porter’s approach as a framework for your response.
Answer question 2, and support your answer by incorporating information from the resources located in the “Sources” section on page 77 in the textbook.
Respond to each question in essay format; each answer should be a minimum of 250 words. This assignment should be approximately two pages in length.
Use APA formatting when writing your responses. All sources used, including the textbook, must be referenced, and quoted or paraphrased material must have accompanying in-text citations.
MBA5841 Strategic Marketing
Unit 2 Assignment
Article Review
Instructions
Read and analyze the following article, which can be accessed by clicking the link below.
Breur, T. (2006). The importance of focus for generating customer value. Journal of Financial Services Marketing, 11(1), 64–71. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.libraryresources.columbiasouthern.edu/abicomplete/docview/195285738/3DD8404D9B984970PQ/1?accountid=33337
Write a summary of the article to include the purpose of the article, how research was conducted (if any), the results, and other pertinent information from the article. Additionally, respond to the questions below.
Aggregate company performance numbers are not always the best way to measure performance. What are the most useful performance criteria to determine how a company is doing along its strategic marketing process?
How does the author describe how a firm measures profitability at the individual customer level?
Why is this method for measuring customer value important?
Even though this article is written about the financial services industry, how might these principles be used in another industry?
Your response should be a minimum of two to three pages in length, and answers to the questions above should be formatted in essay format. Use APA style when writing your review. Cite any direct quotes or paraphrases from the article, and include any references used in your review on a reference page.
MBA5841 Strategic Marketing
Unit 3 Assignment
Project
Instructions
Marketing Plan Project: Phase 1
It is important for marketers to create a marketing plan to provide focus for their brand, product, or company. A detailed plan prepares a business to launch innovative new products that are designed to increase sales to current customers and to reach potential customers within their target market segments.
The marketing plan is designed to be subsumed under the broader company-wide strategic plan. The marketing plan documents how the organization's strategic objectives are to be achieved through specific marketing strategies and tactics. The customer is the focus and starting point of the marketing plan. The marketing plan is an efficient communications tool that is linked to the plans of other organizational departments.
This Unit III Project assignment represents the first in a series of project assignments that will enable you to build a marketing plan for a product or product line of a company of your choosing. The final product is to be delivered in Unit VII.
The marketing plan consists of the sections listed below.
Executive Summary
Situation Analysis
Market Summary
SWOT Analysis (i.e., analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats)
Competition
Product Offerings
Distribution
Marketing Strategy
Objectives
Target Markets
Positioning
Strategies
Marketing Mix
Marketing Research
Financials
Controls
Implementation
Marketing Organization
Over the course of the next several units, you will create a marketing plan using research from the CSU Online Library (e.g., Mergent Online database, ABI/INFORM Collection database). Each project assignment will enable you to complete a portion of the marketing plan, and the completed marketing plan will be submitted in Unit VII.
For this unit’s assignment, you will choose and research one of the following companies for your marketing plan:
JPMorgan Chase,
AT&T,
Walmart,
ExxonMobil or
Proctor & Gamble.
After choosing one of the aforementioned companies, you will research, analyze, and create the marketing plan sections described below for your company of choice.
Situation Analysis: Using the sections below, analyze the competitive market, the company’s targeted market segments, and how your company’s capabilities stack up to the competition.
Market Summary: Describe, in detail, the target market segments by determining their segment size, segment needs, segment growth, and segment trends. Using more detail to describe these market segments will prove to be beneficial as a basis for the marketing strategies and tactical programs presented later in your marketing plan.
SWOT Analysis: Include the sections described below.
Strengths: In this section, list and describe your company’s internal physical and financial capabilities that can enable it to reach its stated objectives.
Weaknesses: In this section, list the internal elements that may prevent or slow your company's ability to achieve its stated objectives.
Opportunities: In this section, list the external and potentially profitable areas in which your company may find an interest in which to target, engage, and perform.
Threats: In this section, list the external and potentially unfavorable trials that can negatively affect your company’s business model and competitiveness.
Competition: List your company’s main competitors, and describe what positions they occupy in the market in which your company wishes to compete. Also, this section is where you should provide a summary of the competitors’ strategies.
Product Offerings: Review the company’s products or product lines, and identify their main features.
Distribution: Describe and provide an overview of each of your company’s product distribution channels.
Your assignment will be a minimum of three pages in length. Ensure that you introduce the company you have chosen, and identify each section with a heading in your assignment. You should reference at least three sources to support this section of your marketing plan. As aforementioned, your sources should be from the CSU Online Library, but you may also include outside sources as well. All sources used, including the textbook, must be referenced and follow APA formatting, and quoted or paraphrased material must have accompanying in-text citations.
MBA5841 Strategic Marketing
Unit 4 Assignment
Instructions
Marketing Plan Project: Phase 2
You are continuing to develop your marketing plan project for final delivery in Unit VII. In this portion of the project, you will be addressing the marketing strategy for the company you chose in Unit III to develop its marketing plan.
This section represents the heart of the marketing plan. Here, this portion enables the marketer to create the necessary strategies for implementation. It also enables the marketer to provide the objective basis for these strategies. The format also enables the marketer to objectively describe, in detail, each section in order to give the marketer’s intended planning audience the ability to judge the soundness of the proposed strategies. It is important to be as specific and detailed as possible. It will help in judging the plan’s effectiveness and use of required resources in the next section.
In this assignment, you will research, analyze, and create the marketing plan sections described below.
Marketing Strategy: Using the sections below, describe your selected company’s marketing strategy in sufficient and objective detail.
Objectives: Describe, in detail, the specific elements that make up the marketing strategy. This enables management to create and implement strategies that can be measured and corrected. If challenges arise, then corrective strategies can be objectively created and promptly implemented.
Target Markets: List the segmented target markets that align with your selected company’s products. This is important as all marketing strategies begin with the following: segmentation, targeting, and positioning.
Positioning: Identify your selected company’s positioning attributes. These would be a brand description and its benefits. In addition, you will need to describe your brand’s points of difference and points of parity.
Strategies: Describe your strategies for the following categories: product strategy, pricing strategy, distribution strategy, and marketing communications strategy. Together, these strategies identify decisions about product mix and brands (product strategy), setting product prices and/or adjusting prices to competitor pricing (pricing strategy), assessment of existing and potential channel value effectiveness (distribution strategy), and a communication plan to all target market audiences and channel members (marketing communications).
Marketing Mix: Describe the implemented programs and/or tactics that would support the product, pricing, distribution, and marketing communications strategies.
Since this is the stage in which other departments can become involved, demonstrate the coordination needed for the best strategies implementation.
Marketing Research: Describe how marketing research supports the basis of your created strategies and implementation plans. Show how the objective insights gathered from marketing research add customer value for your selected company’s products.
Your assignment will be a minimum of three pages in length. Ensure that you identify each section with a heading in your assignment. You should reference at least three sources to support this section of your marketing plan. Your sources should be from the CSU Online Library, but you may also include outside sources as well. All sources used, including the textbook, must be referenced and follow APA formatting, and quoted or paraphrased material must have accompanying in-text citations.
MBA5841 Strategic Marketing
Unit 5 Assignment
Marketing Plan Project: Phase 3
You are continuing to develop your marketing plan project for final delivery in Unit VII. In this portion of the project, you will be addressing the financials, forecasting, budgeting, scheduling, and operations processes for the company you chose in Unit III to develop its marketing plan.
If the section added in Unit IV represented the heart of the marketing plan, then the section you will add in this unit represents the guidance on how you will use the available environmental and strategic resources to implement and control the marketing plan. Now is the time to be specific about how many products you will sell and at what price. You will need to determine the costs associated with those products. Next, you will need to judge if the product costs are reasonable and in line with industry cost averages. Finally, you are to analyze and determine whether your profits are reasonable in comparison with industry averages.
In this assignment, you will research, analyze, and create the marketing plan sections described below.
Financials: Create the appropriate forecasts and detailed budgets for the completed sections so far. These detailed forecasts and budgets enable the firm and associated departments involved to see how resources and marketing expenditures will be allocated to each of the activities within the marketing section. In addition, this will also impact the company’s scheduling and operations.
Products can only produce revenue once they and their marketing campaigns are rolled out. Not everything should begin on the beginning of the company’s fiscal year.
Your assignment will be a minimum of three pages in length. Ensure that you identify this section with a heading in your assignment. You should include a chart showing your budget expenditures, and this can be created using Excel. There are numerous videos online to assist you in creating and developing budget expenditures using Excel. You may contact the Math Center for assistance, if needed. Once you have entered the budget expenditures into Excel, you can copy the data from Excel and paste the information into your Word document under the Financials section of your marketing plan.
You should reference at least three sources to support this section of your marketing plan. Your sources should be from the CSU Online Library, but you may also include outside sources as well. All sources used, including the textbook, must be referenced and follow APA formatting, and quoted or paraphrased material must have accompanying in-text citations.
MBA5841 Strategic Marketing
Unit 6 Assignment
Marketing Plan Project: Phase 4
You are continuing to develop your marketing plan project for final delivery in Unit VII. In this portion of the project, you will be addressing the controls, implementation, and marketing organizational processes for the company you chose in Unit III to develop its marketing plan.
In this assignment, you will research, analyze, and create the marketing plan sections described below.
Controls: Create the appropriate management measures that will help the company evaluate the expected results or show the unexpected performance deficiencies that will need corrective action.
Implementation: Demonstrate how your implementation phase will be monitored with the selected controls that are expected to ensure the plan’s success.
Marketing Organization: Finally, demonstrate how you have organized your firm’s marketing organization (by function, geographic location, product, customer) to reach the set marketing goals. Show how the rest of the company’s departments also participate in the planning phase.
Your assignment will be a minimum of three pages in length. Ensure that you identify each section with a heading in your assignment.
You should reference at least three sources to support this section of your marketing plan. Your sources should be from the CSU Online Library, but you may also include outside sources as well. All sources used, including the textbook, must be referenced and follow APA formatting, and quoted or paraphrased material must have accompanying in-text citations.
MBA5841 Strategic Marketing
Unit 7 Assignment
Marketing Plan Project: Final
Throughout the four phases of this marketing plan project, you have created the important, detailed marketing plan sections necessary to enable your selected company to prepare the business to launch innovative new products that are designed to increase sales to current customers and to reach potential, new customers within their target market segments.
This Unit VII Project represents the final assignment in a series of project assignments, which will complete the marketing plan for the company you selected in Unit III.
Rather than combining your previously completed sections (submitted in Units III–VI) into one document, in this final project, you are to summarize and condense each section that was previously submitted. The summarized sections should contain two to three paragraphs in your final marketing plan.
In addition, now that all the marketing plan sections have been completed, you can now create the plan’s executive summary. The executive summary is the most important part of the plan because it encapsulates all of the important strategy summary information and analysis shown in more detail throughout the other marketing plan sections in two to three paragraphs. Remember, the executive summary should only include information summarized and taken from the other marketing plan sections. It should be thorough but succinct.
As a review, the marketing plan consists of the following sections listed below.
Executive Summary
Situation Analysis
Market Summary
SWOT Analysis (i.e., analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats)
Competition
Product Offerings
Distribution
Marketing Strategy
Objectives
Target Markets
Positioning
Strategies
Marketing Mix
Marketing Research
Financials
Controls
Implementation
Marketing Organization
Remember, the final marketing plan project should not contain information that was simply copied and pasted from previously completed assignments. Your Unit VII Final Project should contain a condensed summary of each of the sections previously submitted to form the concise final project. You should also include an introduction to your final marketing project. This assignment should be at least three pages in length and consist of the executive summary and the section summaries.
You should include the sources that you used in Units III–VI to support your sections for the marketing plan. Your sources should be from the CSU Online Library, but you may also include outside sources as well. All sources used, including the textbook, must be referenced and follow APA formatting, and quoted or paraphrased material must have accompanying in-text citations.
MBA5841 Strategic Marketing
Unit 8 Assignment
Board of Directors Presentation
You have done a tremendous amount of planning, research, and strategizing with your marketing plan in your role as the marketing manager. It is now time to present it to the company’s board of directors. You are to create a presentation in which you synthesize your research and recommendations from your previous assignments.
As you know, the ability to create and deliver strong presentations is a critical skill for all managers, leaders, and employees. You can improve this skill through practice. In this unit’s assignment, you will have the opportunity to hone your presentation skills.
In this assignment, create a PowerPoint presentation for the board of directors, and include speaker notes to elaborate on the information on each slide. Your presentation should contain at least 12 slides, not counting the title and reference slides.
You need to ensure that you address the items listed below.
Executive Summary: Use the Executive Summary from the Unit VII Project assignment to prepare and present the key elements associated with your research and recommendations in the marketing plan.
Remember to use bulleted text, and include a minimum of two graphics. Ensure you reference the sources for your images.
Include speaker notes for each slide of your presentation, to indicate what you want to convey in your presentation to the board of directors.
Your presentation should have a professional style and appearance.
You should consider adding audio to your slides to enhance the quality of the presentation. To view a tutorial on adding audio to a PowerPoint presentation, click here .
For this assignment to be authentic, you are highly encouraged to complete the audio portion of the assignment, as audio can increase the impact of your message. If you are unable to complete the audio portion, you are required to write out your full speech within the speaker notes section of PowerPoint underneath your slides. If you write out your full speech, you will be required to use appropriate sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation.
