Assignment: Five-Step Marketing Research Approach & Product Life-Cycle (PLC) Presentation

Slides must be emailed by Week #2, while the presentations will take place in the Week 2, 3 and 4.

Purpose of Assignment

The purpose of this assignment is to place students in the active role of a marketing manager with a problem threatening the organization's survival. Students will respond to a specific scenario that requires them to address the concepts both critically and creatively to solve the scenario's dilemma.

Assignment Steps

Resources: Marketing: Ch. 2: pg. 40-46, 54-69; Ch. 3: pg. 72-92; Ch. 8: pg. 207-227; Ch. 9: pg. 242-257; Week 2 video

Scenario: Select a local non-profit charity/organization whose funding is based on membership fees. You are the marketing manager. You've noticed a severe drop in new memberships and a decline in repeat memberships, which is threatening your organization's ability to survive and grow. You have decided to implement the Five-Step Marketing Research Process to help understand the problem and create solution strategies to implement.

You are also working as the marketing manager of your favorite company and manage the success of one of its products or services. Select a product/service. Your responsibility is to monitor the stages of the Product Life Cycle (PLC) and adjust the marketing strategies as needed for your product to thrive for as long as possible.

Create a 10 min Microsoft PowerPoint presentation on the Five-Step Marketing Research Approach for your non-profit organization and on the PLC on your company. Present how you will use each step to solve the membership issue the local nonprofit charity is facing and how will you manage PLC for your product. Be specific.

Address the following in your role as marketing manager:

• Part 1. Define the Five-Step Marketing Research Approach and discuss the importance of research in marketing illustrating with the examples. Steps in Marketing Research Process:

o Define the Problem.
o Develop Your Research Plan.
o Collect Relevant Data and Information.
o Analyze Data and Report Findings.
o Recommend the Course of Action.

• Describe each step of the Marketing Research Approach (one slide for each step) in detail including its goal, and create an example aligned to the scenario above to illustrate how that stage would be implemented toward the problem's solution. Define the two types of research data this process gathers and their pros and cons.

• Part 2. For your selected product/service create one slide for each of the four stages of the PLC (Product Life Cycle) describing the stage and analyze the implications each stage may have on price strategy, product, competition, and profit. Use the product/service you selected to illustrate each stage as it is discussed with original examples.

• Discuss the reasoning behind why the PLC is important to marketing managers and share examples of possible implications if it is not monitored.