Posted: April 12th, 2015

MKT 301 PRINCIPALS OF MARKETING M2

THE MARKETING MIX: PRODUCTS AND BRANDS
Introduction-NEW YOR TOUR SERVICES
This assignment requires you to consider the service you have chosen-NEW YORK TOUR SERVICES to market and hopefully, are using to gain a “competitive advantage”. Here regard a competitive advantage as something you do better than your competitors in serving your target markets.
Make sure you use the following section headings (indicated in bold) for each of the Questions/Issues:
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE ANALYSIS: How well does the proposed service meet the demands of the market compared with the competition? To help do this analysis:
• Create a Product/Market Matrix. This is a table listing the various segments you identified in the Customer Analysis section for MOD01 and the products which those segments buy. (This is NOT to be confused with a table of a similar name developed by Igor Ansoff.)
• To analyze the competitive situation show the competitors providing those products for each segment in each cell as appropriate. *
• Don’t just present the matrix; explain what it shows.
Which are MY TARGET SEGMENTS your business will focus on and why? Using the information from section 3, present a table that lists the primary potential target markets with information for each drawn from all prior sections to explain your decision as to which you will focus on.
Describe THE SERVICE that you will provide using your analysis of yourself, the market and the competition to explain how you reached this conclusion. Describe the People who will deliver the service, the Physical Environment (if any) in which the service will be provided and the Processthrough which the service will be provided.
Statement of your business’s MISSION (what business are you in or what are you supposed to do).
The GENERAL OBJECTIVES or GOALS of your business (for example, achieving sales of X% by date A).

BACKGROUND MATERIAL

Having developed an understanding of how consumers make purchase decisions, and how marketers analyze markets and select targets, we turn our attention in Modules 02-05 to how firms can win and retain customers and here in Module 02 we focus on one of the four elements of the Marketing Mix, the Product and the closely associated concept of the brand. This raises a number of questions such as:
• What is a “product” and what is a “brand”?
• What is branding, why do firms do it and is it effective?
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/
Module 2 Readings
Christ, P. (2011). Principles of Marketing. KnowThis.com.
Read the following chapters:
• Product Decisions.
• Managing Products.
Available March 7, 2013 at
http://www.knowthis.com/principles-of-marketing-tutorials/
McNamara, C. (2007). Entrepreneursip – Product and service development.
Available March 7, 2013 at http://managementhelp.org/productdevelopment/index.htm