1. Background to selection of the sustainable market offering (draw on Topic 3)

Document the process the group went through in deciding upon the offering. Each of the following five pre-implementation stages of CPS needs to be addressed:

i. Problem identification

ii. Problem delineation

iii. Information gathering2

2 If your group wishes to undertake primary data collection to inform the project (e.g. a survey of potential target customers), please ensure that you do NOT infer or claim that the research is supported or endorsed by the University. To make this claim, you will need ethics approval - see the SCU's Research Responsible Conduct Policy available at

iv. Idea generation - provide a minimum of two (2) potentially suitable ideas/solutions.

v. Idea evaluation and refinement.

(Note: Working toward the 6th and final step in the creative problem solving process - implementation - is the aim of the marketing plan.)

Assessment 1 - Initial concept development for sustainable offering

Requirements

This part of the assessment focuses on marketing as ‘the process of offering creative solutions to consumer problems' (Titus 2000, p. 225). This is covered in Topic 3 of the Study Guide Creative problem solving (CPS) in marketing, which you will need to study before attempting this assessment.

Apply each of the five pre-implementation CPS steps to identify a sustainability-oriented consumer or marketing problem and start working toward a potential new or improved sustainable offering to address the problem. Present your initial thoughts in the blog within your MyGroup in Blackboard by creating a new blog entry.

Notes

A sustainable offering is a product and/or service which is ‘more sustainable in terms of achieving a balance between environmental protection, social equity and economic prosperity throughout its life cycle, while still meeting other key requirements, e.g. quality, technical feasibility and cost'(Maxwell et al., 2006). Another key requirement is, of course, that the offering provides customer value. This means that the consumer's perceived product benefits (i.e. function, social, affective, epistemic, aesthetic, hedonic, situational, holistic and sustainable) need to be greater than the consumer's perceived costs (monetary, time, risk, human energy) (Lai, 1995).

The key ‘sustainable' benefits for each of the three triple-bottom line elements are:

- Economic - cost reductions from eco-efficiencies; higher margins for same/reduced productivity

- Environmental - material efficiencies; energy efficiencies; waste/pollution reduction

- Social - detoxification strategies providing health and safety benefits to consumers/end users; Social economy initiatives (Maxwell et al., 2006).

Your new or improved sustainable offering may be a consumer good, industrial good or a service. If it involves a physical product, your proposed change can occur at any stage of the product's lifecycle, i.e. extraction, manufacturing, distribution, usage or disposal. However, you will still need to predict and decide how the change will help meet your customer's needs while generating a profit for your business.

Your sustainable offering may involve a technical change to a product - either minor (incremental; continuous) or major (radical; discontinuous. It must involve some degree of newness or change in marketing (relative to the perceiver). Hence, three types of sustainable offerings are possible:

a. an existing sustainable offering capable of being marketed more effectively (change in marketing, e.g. packaging, advertising, minor product modification)

b. an existing non-sustainable offering capable of being redesigned for sustainability (incremental technical innovation and change in marketing)

c. a new offering with a key sustainability benefit that overcomes an existing or latent ‘problem' (radical technical innovation and new marketing).

The five pre-implementation CPS steps for concept development are:

i. Problem identification: Which human or end-user needs are unmet (e.g. through a ‘bug list')?

ii. Problem delineation: What utility (task/functionality, form, place, time or possession) and what benefits have to be met to satisfy the customer/end-user? What are the wider systems implications of doing so?

iii. Information gathering: What do you know about the problem or functionality required? What assumptions do you hold about it? What further information would you like to have to proceed?

iv. Idea generation: What are at least two (2) different ways to provide the functionality required? Start thinking divergently to generate novel ideas. Consider the lifecycle stages of your idea(s) (raw material, production, distribution, consumption, end-of-life).

v. Idea evaluation and refinement: To what extent does your idea meet appropriate evaluative criteria, e.g. valued by target customer, commercially viable, sustainable (economic, social, environmental), feasible (complexity of idea - technical, organisational, marketing)?
Week 3 Tutorials will support you with CPS required for developing your initial sustainable marketing offering concept.

Assessment 2 - Peer evaluation of initial concept development for sustainable offering

Topic: Evaluate each of the initial sustainable offering proposed in Ass3 by your group members (minimum 1; maximum 4)

Requirements

Present your feedback as a Comment to each fellow group member's blog entry within your online group. As a guide, you can comment on the following aspects of each of your peers' concepts for a sustainable offering:
- How well (e.g. on a scale from 1=not at all to 5=extremely so; 3=moderately so) was the CPS undertaken, i.e.
o an unmet need identified?
o the utility & benefits to be delivered explained?
o the assumptions about the problem explored and further information needs outlined?
o Ideas/concepts (more than one) generated?
o The ideas/concepts/ (more than one) evaluated?
- What do you think could be improved about the CPS? Be specific!
- Would you consider working with this problem area or one of the concepts for Ass 5 & 6? Explain!

Assessment 3 - Concept development for sustainable offering and situation analysis

Topic: Develop a sustainable offering upon which your plan will be based. Analyse the current situation.

Requirements

Within your group - drawing on each member's ideas from Ass 3 and the evaluations in Ass 4, arrive at a consensus about which ‘bug' or concept to pursue (e.g. the most doable, sellable, desirable with the best fit to the team's interests and abilities). Go through the CPS process together to arrive at your group's final offering.

To simulate an authentic client-based situation, your group should decide to act as a marketing consulting company or as the organisation marketing the proposed offering. Make any necessary assumptions about the organisation behind the market offering (e.g. strategy, size, structure, culture) to ensure that you can proceed to planning the commercialisation step, of which your marketing plan is an important part. As indicated above, your chosen offering may relate to an existing organisation. In fact, we would welcome a real ‘client-based' project if you can scope it to the demands of the assessment task.

Document the CPS process, develop a situation analysis for the chosen offering and report using the format recommended below.

Format of the concept and situation analysis

The report is to be set-out in two main parts:

1. Background to the selection of the offering

2. Situation analysis relating to the offering.

Both headings should appear as links on your Ass 5 wiki page, which is in turn linked to your group wiki home page:

1. Background to selection of the sustainable market offering (draw on Topic 3)

Document the process the group went through in deciding upon the offering. Each of the following five pre- implementation stages of CPS needs to be addressed:

i. Problem identification

ii. Problem delineation

iii. Information gathering

iv. Idea generation - provide a minimum of two (2) potentially suitable ideas/solutions.

v. Idea evaluation and refinement.

(Note: Working toward the 6th and final step in the creative problem solving process - implementation - is the aim of the marketing plan.)

2. Situation analysis of the selected sustainable market offering

This section of the report elaborates on those parts of Section 1 that relate to the final chosen market offering positioned on sustainability. It comprises three parts and draws on various Study Guide topics:

i. Profile of the sustainable market offering, e.g. in terms of:
- nature- what combination of product, service and/or experience (Topic 1)
- type - industrial or consumer good (Topic 1, preview Topic 5)
- value provided (utility created) to customer/end-user to address their unmet needs; discern between core, actual and augmented levels of offering (if applicable) (Topic 1,3; preview Topic 8)
- sustainability benefits - economic, social, environmental (Topic 3)
- existing brand perceptions (if applicable) (Topic 3; preview Topic 8)
- information needs to be filled and an outline of the marketing research (secondary, primary) required to do so (Topic 4).

ii. Environmental analysis (draw on Topic 2)
An assessment of current external macro- and micro environmental factors pertinent to the future of the sustainable offering:
- main issues and trends within political/legal, economic, socio-cultural, technological and ecological (PESTE) macro environment
- competition: main direct and indirect competitors (e.g. in terms of their size, goals, market share, product quality, marketing strategies and other characteristics that are needed to understand their intentions and behaviour). Focus on their key competitive advantages and weaknesses. How are they positioned?
- suppliers and intermediaries: main issues and trends
- information needs to be filled and an outline of the marketing research (secondary, primary) required to do so
- SWOT analysis:

o Describe the sustainable offering's internal strengths (things it does well) and weaknesses (things it does not do well).
o Describe the opportunities and threats in the external environment that would influence the prospects of the offering.
o Assess how strengths might be matched to opportunities to produce leverage.
o Assess the problems that result when environmental threats attack weaknesses in the offering.
o Anticipate how internal weaknesses or limitations may prevent the offering from taking advantage of opportunities.
o Anticipate how strengths might be used to used reduce the vulnerability to threats.

iii. Market and customer analysis (draw on Topics 4 and 5)
- Consumer or business market

- Market type: potential (interested customers), available (interested with income and access to offering), qualified (available and suitable on other criteria, such as age) and target (qualified and to be served) and penetrated (current buyers)

- Customer need

- Market growth, market share (if applicable)

- Influences on consumers (e.g. cultural, social, personal) or business customers (e.g. size, industry, growth, resources, supplier relationships)

- Information needs to be filled and an outline of the marketing research (secondary, primary) required to do so.

3. References

On a separate wiki page, provide a List of References to which you have referred in the body of your wiki. You can use the same page for references in both Ass 5 & 6.

In addition to the group wiki, we encourage you to complete the individual and confidential ‘Peer evaluation of group contribution' form for Ass 5 and submit to the unit MySCU ‘Assessments' by the due date. While no marks are attached to this, your tutor/marker will refer to this when finalising your mark.

Assessment 1 - 500

Assessment 2- 500 words

Assessment 3- 1000

Eight harvrd reference