Posted: April 4th, 2015

MKT 301 PRINCIPALS OF MARKETING M1S

MARKETING AND MARKETING STRATEGY
Assignment-3 PAGES
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to do something completely different? Well here is an opportunity for you to combine your wondering with analysis and perhaps to put some flesh on those dreams.
Your assignment in MKT301 is to develop a marketing strategy for a service business which you will (hypothetically) manage. That is to say, you are to assume that you will be free to start a one-person business and are to examine yourself, develop a service business concept (for profit or not – the choice is yours) which you will provide, and develop a marketing strategy for it. You can assume that this will be a one-person business consisting of you alone, or that you will employ others.
In doing this project your fundamental goal is to demonstrate your understanding of and learning about what is being taught in the course.
Over the session you will conduct the necessary marketing analysis for your strategy and present this in your paper. In each assignment you will complete a section of the marketing strategy, building on the sections previously completed in prior modules. What you are to submit in each module is as follows:
• ASSIGNMENT 1:Title page, section (see below), References & Appendices.
Provide the following information:
1. NAME, LOCATION & NATURE.
• The name of your prospective (hypothetical) service business and
• its probable location. Note that you’ll be asked to examine location in more detail in a later assignment and you requested as writer
• A brief description of the nature of the business, (“body-guard service”, “bar”, “child-care”, etc.). (Reminder: There are detailed notes on how to approach each section of the assignment in the Background Information page).
2. SELF-ANALYSIS. For this you should:
• assess your skills, abilities and competencies, (strengths as well as weaknesses) and
• compare these with the demands of potential markets, and
• the offerings of competitors.
Ensure that the self-analysis is relevant to the proposed service and that you make the comparisons.
3. CUSTOMER ANALYSIS.
• Identify potential customers you could serve.
• Identify the benefits they seek.
• Describe and label your market and any segments there are.
• Estimate the size and value of the potential market.
• Estimate the size abnd value of the (to be) served market.
4. ANALYSIS OF PRIMARY COMPETITORS:
In a table identify the main competitors and provide a brief summary of how each competes. For example, does the competitor use low-price, reliability, reputation, high quality or some other basis for positioning itself in the market?
5. To complete sections 3 and 4 you should do some MARKET RESEARCH, i.e. talk to people and gather some data to get some relevant information for your business idea. Briefly explain what you did and indicate the sources you have used.
6. Analyze the MARKETING ENVIRONMENT. The Marketing Environment is covered in a Powerpoint presentation provided in BACKGROUND MATERIALS. Excluding any factors which are not important or which are analyzed in other sections (e.g. competition), analyze the other major Marketing Environment factors which need to be taken into account in the development of your marketing strategy, e.g.:
• Political factors
• Economic factors
• Social and cultural factors
• Technological factors
• Legal or Governmental factors
• Non-marketing costs (supply purchases and manufacturing)
Note that though the sections above are to be presented individually the analysis which underlies them is inter-related and you will probably have to think about yourself, the possible market, and potential and actual competitors at the same time, and to revise your thinking about them as you progress. Thus for instance for THIS ASSIGNMENT you should expect to spend some time researching and thinking about your skills, the market and the competition together, before you can come to a conclusion about what service you will offer.
A set of notes giving guidance on each section of the ASSIGNMENT, and a Word document listing all the sections of the ASSIGNMENT for all modules are provided on the Background Info page. PLEASE READ BOTH BEFORE STARTING YOUR PROJECT.
As far as style of writing is concerned do not write an essay, you will waste a lot of space that way. Three pages is not a lot so you’ll have to decide what you think is important to include. Use the text inCAPS above as section headings for each of the topics indicated and elsewhere use words in bold as sub-headings. What you write should be organized, succinct, and professional.

BACKGROUND MATERIALS
The former concerns how people buy products and how knowledge of buying behavior can be used by marketers, while the latter concerns analyzing a market as part of the development of a marketing strategy. This immediately raises some fundamental questions such as:
• How do consumers decide what to buy?
• How do marketers use that knowledge?
• What is a market?
• What is a marketing strategy?
• What kinds of analysis do marketers do to determine whether a market for a new product might exist?
Your ASSIGNMENT asks you to develop a marketing strategy over ASSIGNMENTS 01 – 05, broken down into five parts, one for each of five modules, which begs the question “What’s a marketing strategy and how does one do one?”
The resources on this page will directly help answer all those questions.
Resources for All ASSIGNMENTS
1. The course designer has prepared background materials for each module that can be accessed through the presentations link at the top of each page.
2. An extensive glossary of marketing terms can be accessed at
Marketing Power Dictionary (2011). American Marketing Association.
Available March 7, 2013 at
http://www.marketingpower.com/_layouts/Dictionary.aspx
3. The following reference covers a range of marketing topics:
Marketing Made Simple. (n.d.). Available March 7, 2013 at
http://www.marketing-made-simple.com/