As part of the formal assessment for the HNC/D programme you are required to submit an assignment for each module. Please refer to your Student Handbook for full details of the programme assessment scheme and general information on preparing and submitting assignments.

After completing the module you should be able to:

- Compile Marketing Audits

- Understand the main barriers to marketing planning

- Formulate a marketing plan for a product or service

- Understand ethical issues in marketing

Hyatt Hotels Corporation

As Marketing Manager you are required to prepare a marketing plan to present to senior management for a new product or service targeted towards a business traveler. The structure of the marketing plan will be as follows:

- An executive summary - this will briefly summarise the main areas of the plan and the product/service to be offered for sale to business customers. It will also explain why marketing planning is essential for strategic planning and factors that affect the effective implementation of the marketing plan, and how these have been taken into account in your plan (Remember this is a summary so keep it fairly brief.) (AC 3.1, 3.2, 3.5)

- An introduction - this will give the purpose of the plan. It will also include a review of the organisation in terms of changing perspectives in marketing planning and an evaluation of the organisation?s current capabilities for planning its future marketing activity.

Task 1 - Situational analysis:

- This will include an examination of techniques for organisational auditing and for analysing external factors that affect marketing.

- Carry out organisational auditing and analysis of the external factors that affect marketing planning within Hyatt Hotels. (Use the SWOT and PESTLE for this).

Task 2 - Barrier to Marketing Planning

- Assess the barriers to marketing planning and examine how Hyatt Hotels can overcome these.

Task 3 - Marketing Planning

- Objectives - this will include the introduction of the product/service.

- Examine techniques for new product development for the business traveler

- Justify pricing policy, distribution and a communication mix for the new product/service contextualising this to the business traveler.

Task 4 - Ethical Issues

- Explain possible ethical issues that might influence the plan and analyse ways to address these. Consumer ethics such as false claims also needs analysing with a brief plan on how to deal with these issues.

- Budgets - keep this brief (sales and costs).

- Implementation - this will take the form of a chart and will include all activities including a final activity of monitoring and evaluating performance.