Individual Assignment: Creating an Effective Marketing Mix

In the Shared Activity, you conducted an informal marketing audit on the organisation you chose for your Final Project. Such an audit helps organisations understand whether they are positioned to effectively market their products, including whether they have the right marketing mix.

One of the key areas examined in a marketing audit is how well the organisation makes use of its marketing mix for a product or brand. Typically, a marketing mix is composed of a group of attributes known in the field of marketing and brand management as the four P's. Traditionally, these Ps are: product, place, price and promotion. These P's were chosen to reflect the most critical aspects of any marketing strategy, specifically the following:

• Is this the right product for the targeted consumers? (product)
• Is it being sold or marketed through the right channels? (place)
• Is it priced effectively so as to maximise profits? (price)
• Is its message being communicated effectively? (promotion)

In recent years, to better capture certain organisational offerings, other P's have gained recognition, including: process, people and physical evidence (Jobber and Ellis-Chadwick, 2013).

Brand effectiveness may also be analysed in terms of Ps. Dillon et al. (2001) proposed that brands can be analysed based on two components: brand-specific associations and general brand impressions. Brand-specific associations refer to 'features, attributes, or benefits that consumers link to a brand and that differentiate it from the competition' (Dillon et al., 2001: 417).

This concept has been further refined by Lee et al. (2008), who have proposed a useful model for brand analysis that looks at brand-specific associations, general brand impression and brand commitment.

Because, for your Final Project, you will be proposing a new product that will fit with an organisation's brands and product line, it is important that you know how to apply insights on marketing and brand audits in practice.

If you have already completed your Shared Activity, information gleaned from that activity may be helpful as you develop a more effective marketing mix for your proposed product.

To prepare for this Individual Assignment:

• Review the Readings. Focus on specific examples of effective marketing mixes that improved the marketability of a product or brand. Also focus on digital applications related to the marketing mix.
• Consider the need for a marketing mix in a marketing strategy. What would be the danger in too little or too much of a focus on one of the P's?
• Using online or other sources, explore how the organisation that produces the brand you chose for your Final Project makes use of its current marketing mix. Pay special attention to how much or how little it focuses on each 'P'.
• NOTE: THE CASE STUDY I PICKED IS STARBUCKS

To complete this Individual Assignment:

• Evaluate the effectiveness of the current marketing mix for the brand you selected for your Final Project. Does the marketing mix meet goals of forming consumer brand relationships? Include in your evaluation whether the marketing mix includes the right mix of P's.
• In a 1,000-word paper, create a marketing mix you believe would be more effective for this new product in order to build brand equity in an international market and explain why you chose this mix. Include a variety of marketing methods, including digital marketing. How is the marketing mix for this new product different from the marketing mix that was most likely used for the organisation's other products? Why?

Be sure to include specific examples and support your postings with evidence from the Readings, other current literature from the UoRL Library and other credible sources. Consult the Harvard Referencing Style Guide for proper citation and referencing information.

NOTE: THE CASE STUDY I PICKED IS STARBUCKS  AND THE NEW PRODUCT IS VANILLA CAFÉ.