Assignment

1. Your company has developed a new educational electronic game. Your target market is 4-6 year old children. What research methods would you use to test this product concept? Choose at least three methods that you believe will provide valuable information, and describe your research strategy. (Points :

2. Choose a specific brand (i.e., Coke, Nike, McDonalds, etc.). Using this brand as an example, describe what makes this a unique brand that is easily recognizable by consumers. What do you, as a consumer, think of when you see this brand logo? How would you describe a Brand? What roles do Brands play in the market and what signals success?

3. Let us look at the retail book industry as an example. There are a lot of people who buy a wide variety of books. Using this industry as an example, divide this market into smaller market segments. Describe at least three of these markets segments. By making some assumptions, describe some characteristics of the target market (end customers) for each of these market segments. Also what are the key criteria for segmentation to be effective?

4. An increasing number of companies are basing their prices on the customer's perceived value of the product or service. Explain the concept of perceived value pricing. What is the "key" to pricing in this manner? How might the marketer determine the price that the consumer might pay in exchange for that value that they receive?

5. You are the Sales Manager for your company. Your sales team is one that, once they gain the initial sale, enjoys considerable repeat business. Sales reps are paid a base of $35K and their commission package can add as much as $49K a year (average). Top producers make as much as $65K a year in commission--along with their base pay, they make $100K.

Sales reps have not been aggressive in pursuing new business. They have become comfortable in making repeated sales calls on their existing customers "to be visible" and to handle any issues.

Your VP of Sales wants to see a 12% increase in NEW business next year. How might you structure the compensation plan to drive selling behaviors that would result in more effort being made to gain new business?

6. Why do intermediaries bother to sponsor their own brand? What is the role of private label brands in the market place? From the consumers viewpoint, why would you or wouldn't you buy these generic brands versus more well-known brand names? Does it depend upon the product being sold?

7. Describe the supply chain strategy using demand chain planning. By looking at the company as the center of a value network, how will this approach enable the company to be more financially efficient?

8. With the memory of the many companies showing poor judgment and poor ethics, such as B&P, Toyota, Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, and others fresh in your mind, you have been asked to advise your company's CEO on to how to minimize the risk of a similar event occurring at your company.

Specifically, what recommendations would you make to your CEO that would minimize unethical business and marketing practices by your employees, such as those alleged to have occurred at these and other companies?

9. Now that you have completed the Final Draft of your Marketing Plan, were you to begin anew, what would you have done differently insofar as your efforts to segment your TARGET MARKET and your efforts to reach that TARGET MARKET via your promotional mix? What would you have done differently? Please be sure to provide a graduate level response based on the marketing principals learned in class.

Be sure to refresh your instructor's mind by providing one sentence that communicates what your Marketing Plan brought to market.

10 Sales Promotions offer consumers an incentive to buy. Name at least four different types of sales promotion tools, tell how you would use them, and provide an example of a type of product or service you would promote using this tool.