1. The course readings define marketing as "the activity, set of institutions, and process for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large."
What were your preconceived notions of what marketing is and does prior to taking this course. Think about how your definition differs from the definition in the course content.

2. The course content points out the many benefits of marketing and some of the career areas within the marketing discipline. Consider a company you worked for (or are currently working at) and think about how that company benefits society. How do they practice marketing? Or perhaps they don't practice marketing, do you think they could benefit from marketing?

3. Go online to the M&Ms website (http://www.mms.com/us/index.jsp) and evaluate it. You will have to go through more than just the main landing page-click on the current contests and other pages to get the data you need. What does the company do to build loyalty? To build community? Are there opportunities for feedback? Does the company partner with other organizations to leverage the loyalty those other companies enjoy with their customers? If so, what is the company doing? Overall, what do you think is most effective about the site? What is the least effective? Are you a loyal customer of M&Ms? If so, why?

4. Many companies use cause-related marketing to build their customer relationships. You see this when a product or service indicates a portion of each sale will benefit a specific charity.

Check out the blog www.selfishgiving.com. Scroll to the author's list of best cause-related marketing campaigns of 2014. Pick one to share with us why you think this was a good cause-marketing campaign.

5. Let's take the Model of Consumer Behavior for a spin. Consider the last time you purchased a nice dinner at an upscale restaurant. What was your choice of restaurant? Go through all the variables outlined in the first two columns of the model, environmental factors, and consumer factors, and identify the factors that influenced your decision. Note how they resulted in your purchase decision. (Hint: You might have to read ahead for more thorough explanations of each factor.)

6. Consider the restaurant purchase you made in question 5. What was your decision-making behavior? Was it a routine, complex, or limited problem-solving situation? Identify which behavior and explain how the level of involvement played into your decision.

7. Think of a product you believe is mass marketed. How did you arrive at this conclusion? You might want to comment on classmates' posts with your opinion as to whether they have selected a mass-marketed product, and if not, why you think their choice is actually a segmented market.

8. Your job in this Discussion Thread is to find an ad, print or TV, and tell us who you think is the target market. The hints are in the type of music used, the spokesperson's persona, the approach to the marketing communications message, the types of people used in the ad, the words chosen for the ad, etc. All this should tell you to whom the marketing communications is intended to influence.

Here's a link to the top ads for 2013-2014 as chosen by Ad Week, the industry trade publication.

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/worlds-26-best-commercials-2013-14-158533

First thing you'll notice is that most of them are foreign, most of them tell a story, and most of them don't even mention the advertiser until the end. You can choose your print or broadcast ad from one of these. Or, search youtube.com for your favorite commercial.

If you find your own ad to analyze, be sure to embed or link it when you post it to the Discussion Forum. Then identify at least three of the characteristics you think comprise the target market. Make your choices using Table 4.1 from the main text as your framework. But, don't merely say demographic/age. Tell us what age, or psychographic/values. Specifically note the value such as family or thrifty.