1. Think of a recent situation where a company faced negative publicity. How did the firm handle it? Was this an effective method? What would you recommend they could have done differently?

2. The chapter discusses various forms of and ways to stimulate interpersonal communication. Choose a company you think has effectively done this and analyze their efforts. Do you think it was effective? How might you improve the process?

3. What is the most important thing to consider in new product development? Why? Why is it necessary to evaluate the new product idea at each and every stage of the development process? How can marketers best promote consumer adoption of a new product?

4. Consider customer lifetime value (CLV). Choose a business and show how you would go about developing a quantitative formulation that captures the concept. How would that business change if it totally embraced the customer equity concept and maximized CLV?

5. Pick a brand and go to its Web site. Locate as many forms of communication as you can find. Conduct an informal communications audit. What do you notice? How consistent are the different communications? OR (BETTER YET), use the company for whom you now work.

6. What are some of your favorite TV or Internet ads? Why? How effective are the message and creative strategies? How are they creating consumer preference and loyalty and building brand equity?