Marketing Plan and Critical Review of Current Issues in Marketing and Brand Management

Developing a marketing plan and a critical review of the current issues in marketing and brand management. You are required to complete the following:

Part 1: Marketing Plan
Part 2: Critical Review of a Current Debate in Marketing and Brand Management

Part 1 - Marketing Plan (3,000 words)
For the first part, you will be proposing a new product that will fit with an organisation's brands and product line. Create segmentation, targeting and positioning strategies for your new, fictitious product that falls within the organisation and brand identifiedWal Mart. Also, 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?

Finally, you will develop strategies for your chosen brand that will foster a competitive advantage for your proposed product. Consider how organisations can develop objectives and strategies to manage a product or brand through inception, growth, decline and new growth through new products or brands. Review Porter's 5 Forces model, and check some of the Sector Overviews in the Interbrand Web site. Study the ways by which some of the world's top brands strategise to maintain a competitive advantage.

To complete:

For this part of the Unit 5 Project, include the following:

Produce a graphic representation of your segmentation strategy for your new, fictitious product. Include any niche or subgroups in your graphic depiction that you think might be effective. Also, include in your graphic representation a brief summation of the needs of each segment.

In addition to this graphic depiction, write a 1,000-word essay that outlines strategies for creating or increasing brand equity for your branded product. Include:

One strategy for targeting marketing efforts to each segment One strategy for positioning your product for each segment
For each of the strategies, explain why they would be effective. Include specific examples and appropriate citations/support from the literature for your findings.

Evaluate the effectiveness of the current marketing mix for the brand you selected for your 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 essay, 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?

In a 1,000-word essay, create a plan for increasing competitive advantage for the selected organisation and brand. The plan should include three appropriate strategies for increasing competitive advantage in your chosen organisation. For each strategy, include the following:

Explain how the strategies support overall corporate business and marketing strategies to increase the competitive market advantage.

Identify essential resources required to execute these strategies for increasing competitive advantage.

Explain how you might measure performance related to meeting strategy objectives for increasing competitive advantage.

Part 1 of this Project should be approximately 3,000 words in length.

Part 2 - Critical Review of a Current Debate in Marketing and Brand Management (1,500 words)

No organisation, product or brand exists in a vacuum, so it is important to understand current issuesin marketing and to be able to critically analyse their significance.

Among other issues in marketing and brand management, perhaps one of the most transformational has been the rise of the digital age. Social media sites have changed both the form and function of marketing. Gone are the days when customers passively accepted the messages organisations passed down to them in the form of advertising campaigns. Due to the ease of relating information on products and services to one another, today's customers are actively engaged in the marketing process, which has both positive and negative consequences for organisations. Within this technological evolution are many related issues and debates. For example, marketing experts caution that customers have transitioned from the ‘funnel' approach in which they considered many options, narrowing them down until making a choice, to a new path to decision making (Edelman, 2010). This new, four-stage path is critical to understand when developing strategic marketing plans for any new service.

To complete Part 2:
Compose an essay of approximately 1,500 words that includes the following:

An introduction paragraph that identifies the current debate you selected, and why it interests you A paragraph that critically reviews the article you identified

An explanation of what side, if any, you take in the debate, incorporating learning from the module (If you did not take a side, explain why.)
Part 2 of this project should be approximately 1,500 words in length.