Posted: April 11th, 2015

Marketing Management

Question 1
“Marketing is everywhere. Formally or informally, people and organizations engage in a vast number of activities that we could call marketing. Good marketing has become an increasingly vital ingredient for business success. And marketing affects our day-to-day lives. It is embeded in everything we do- from the clothes we wear, to the websites we click on, to the ads we see” (Kotler and Keller, 2012, p.3).
Contemplate the above observations and answer: what is the scope of marketing, why is marketing important, what developments do you witness in Oman’s marketplaces that support the above observations?
(Guidelines: Use your observations, make appropriate assumptions, and wherever available, give evidences from secondary sources using Harvard Style of referencing). 10 Marks
Question 2
Summarize a marketing research paper from top tier journals. Describe how the data were collected. Was the research objective exploratory, descriptive, or causal? Is the research qualitative or quantitative? What were the limitations of the research and what contributions did it make to the existing knowledge? Explain your observations and present your arguments well. 10 Marks
(Guidelines: Use search.ebscohost.com and choose only some well ranked journal e.g., Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, or Journal of International Marketing). Upload your paper in the SULMS at the supplied link for evaluation purpose.
Question 3
Visit a grocery store and examine the brands of shampoos. Using the bases for segmenting consumer markets, identify the segmentation variables a specific brand appears to be using. Summarize the segmentation and targeting strategy for each brand. Identify brands following similar positioning strategies. 10 Marks
Note:
Written coverage for each question should not exceed 2 A4 size doubly spaced typed pages, using 1 inch margins on all the sides. Illustrations to be inserted as Appendices referred appropriately in the main text. Each paragraph and section should begin with a new line. References to be cited using the Harvard system where references in the text give the author and date of publication in round brackets (Belwal 2012) and the full reference appears in a bibliography at the end of the term paper. Where more than two authors are involved in the text reference, the first should be cited followed by et al., as in ‘…analysis of the mobile phone market (Belwal et al. 2011).
In the REFERENCE section at the end of the article, entries must be laid out as follows:
Journal articles
Author surname, initial(s). (date of publication) ‘Title of article’, Journal name, Volume number, first page – last page.
Books
Author surname, initial(s). (date of publication) Title, place of publication.
Compilations
Author name, initial(s). (date of publication) ‘Title of paper’, in ed(s). editor surname(s), initial(s) Title of compilation, place of publication, paper first page-last page.
Refer to the Harvard Manual for complete information (e.g., http://www.staffs.ac.uk/support_depts/infoservices/learning_support/refzone/harvard/ )