Business Marketing Audit Plan

Word Length:

The main body of the report excluding title page, executive summary, table of contents, introduction, conclusion, tables, figures, list of references and appendices must not exceed 2500 words (10%+/-). Use only 1.5 line-spacing, 12-point font & 2.5 cm margin on all sides of the pages

OUTLINE AND REQUIREMENTS

Assume you are the new marketing manager of a 'real-world' company that operates in UAE or MENA, providing a key product. You have been asked to familiarize yourself with the corporate objectives of the organization, and contribute towards the marketing strategy to achieve those corporate objectives. The focus of this assignment is on the steps preceding the formulation of marketing strategy, namely the Audit. Contact the lecturer in the first class on the appropriateness of your choice.

NOTE: The aim of the report is not to persuade the reader on how great the organization you chose is; rather, you need to critically evaluate the organization.

Topic: Emirates Airlines (Point of Sale / Tickets)

Task-1:

Analyze the context and environments in which your organization operates, and quantify the trends that are identified.

The environment refers to the macro-environmental forces impacting on the industry, namely, political, legal, economic, social and technological dimensions. Contexts normally associated with macro-environment analysis include a company looking at industry trends; a business looking at product trends driven by consumer preference; evaluation of a brand's market position relative to industry changes; a geographically defined business such as the subsidiary office of an overseas company; a company needing to identify opportunities for entering a market or country; and a business seeking to identify opportunities and threats in acquiring another company. To quantify the trends that are identified, use importance weights for each environmental dimension and rank the issues that are identified. Ranking and weighting increases the usefulness of the information to managers, as it prioritizes and attaches importance to different bits of information. Use positive/negative scales to rank salient trends to help managers better understand a trend's estimated impact. If wanted, you can reduce the data further by weighting each macro environmental force/dimension using weights of 0.0 to 1.0 - the sum of the weights for the dimensions ways adding up to 1.0. Derive a statistic for each dimension by multiplying the rank of each trend by the weight of each macro-environmental dimension and summing the products for each dimension.

Task-2:

Provide a brief overview of the organization in terms of what it markets; analyze its mission statement, and how its history has shaped the organization's development of core competencies. Then, describe the organization's performance from a financial and marketing perspective. Finally, evaluate the organization's marketing goals and objectives.

Task-3:

Using the Pyramid of Corporate Social Responsibility, examine the social responsibility and marketing ethics issues that are relevant for the company and product. How effectively has the company addressed those issues?

Task - 4

Pofile the organization's key target market for the product you chose. What are their needs and benefits sought? Identify the major competitors and their characteristics in terms of size, growth, market share, profitability and marketing capabilities. What factors have contributed to their success or decline? What are their major strengths and weaknesses? What is the organization's competitive strategy within the market? Are they a market leader, follower or niche? Discuss the implications.

Task-5:

Identify the critical success factors within the market. What things must be done exceptionally well to operate in the industry? What factors cause organizations to underperform? What is the organization's position with respect to the critical success factors? Conduct a SWOT analysis and present the key points. Then, assess whether the organization has the strengths to capitalize on the opportunities. Are there threats which the organization needs to address? Does the organization need to turn any weaknesses into strengths? How realistic are the organization's marketing objectives, given the anticipated environment, including the actions of competitors and the organization's core competencies? Evaluate the organization's existing value proposition. What relevant marketing issues face the organization?

Task-6:

How does the company want its product and its associated brand to be perceived by its target market, with respect to competition? Include a positioning statement. How does the target market perceive the selected company's product and its associated brand, with respect to competition? How strong, favorable and unique are the brand associations? Draw multiple positioning and perceptual maps for the target market.

What are the Subject Coordinators' expectations on research to address the assignment questions?

Address the assignment using material from the text, lectures, and situations found in written cases, your experience in organization(s), and external written sources such as journal articles, newspapers, magazines, and websites. You may conduct primary research such as small-scale surveys, informant interviews, observation and other field research. However, any statements and inferences need to be justified with evidence. You must acknowledge all sources of any facts and ideas which are not your own, both in the text and at the end of the report. Place information like matrices in the appendix.

MARKING CRITERIA The marks you obtain depends on the extent to which

1. You are able to demonstrate your understanding of relevant concepts and your ability to apply the concepts to the problems posed.

2. You are able to constructively critique the company's marketing situation.

3. The opinions you express are clear and supported by concise, creative, logical and separately by the group members).

4. The report is easy to read and understand and if the layout allows the reader to easily grasp the sense, direction and objectives.

5. The report is researched broadly and skillfully from varied sources (Journal articles, industry publications, magazines, websites,newspapers, interviews).

6. Harvard referencing style is used accurately and consistently within text as well as at the end of the report

7. The report is visually striking and appealing.