Product or Service Selection for Marketing Plan

Your marketing plan is about a specific product or service. You may select any product or service that interests you, within the following guidelines:

1. It may not be for an existing brand or specific company, meaning no Coke, Wal-Mart, or McDonald's.

2. The product must be technologically feasible.

3. It must be legal and appropriate for a class environment.

4. While the instructor will make exceptions, the product should not require a national launch.

5. You may wish to consider a local service rather than a physical product that involves manufacturing issues.

6. Your product may NOT be non-profit; although the company may be a non-profit organization. For example, you might market a series of training manuals from the American Marketing Association, which is a non-profit professional association. However, the manuals are priced at $2500 per set. Conversely, you might select your favorite charity and develop a marketing plan for raising funds, but you may NOT develop a plan for the services the charity provides free of charge.

A. What product do you select for your Marketing Plan?

B. Describe the description of the product using the guidelines below.

Marketing Plan: Product Description Guidelines and Rubric

As the owner or marketing director for your business, you will decide what features your product or service should have in order to be competitive. Then, determine what value each of those features provides to your customers. This value is the benefit associated with the feature.

This section of the Marketing Plan has TWO parts, both of which are required.

Part One - Product Description

What makes it special or unique • Key design elements • What it looks like • How it works • What it does • Name of the product or service •Describe the product or service in detail. This is NOT a sales pitch. Do not use this section to promote or advertise the product; this is a factual and objective description of the product. The style of this assignment is similar to an instruction manual; in other words, "just the facts." For the Product Description, include the following:

Note: For services, adapt the above list to fit an intangible product. The concentration will be on what services you provide for your customers.

The benchmark for determining if the Product Description is done correctly is to have another individual read it, and then describe the product verbally. They should be able to accurately describe your product.

The Product Description portion of this assignment must be 2-3 pages in length in APA format.

Part Two - Features and Benefits

For this part of the Product Description, identify the Features and Benefits of the product or service. This will be done in a table, listing no less than five features of the product or service, with at least TWO customer benefits for EACH of the features.

Include the Features and Benefits table in the same document as the Product Description. For this part of the assignment, correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation are required.

C. Design a SWOT analysis.

1. SWOT does not have to be strategic. Strategy can be hard to implement and usually takes a long time. SWOT allows us to identify tactical opportunities, which we can act on quickly with limited resources. While SWOT can indeed be strategic, it is often tactical and can be applied to short-term objectives.

2. SWOT provides a structured approach to brainstorming. The sharing of ideas is a critical part of problem solving but it is often hard to produce concrete results. SWOT gives us a framework to help in clarifying and prioritizing ideas.

3. SWOT can be very high level or very issue specific. Some SWOT analyses are aimed at an entire organization and can take several days. On the other hand, we can take a small part of the big picture and focus just on that piece. This is particularly useful if we need to solve a specific problem or react to unforeseen environmental conditions.

For each of the four parts of the SWOT Analysis, at least four factors are required; however, more may be needed depending on the product or service. Part of the grade will depend on how well the critical SWOT factors are addressed. Bullets may be used, but grammar, punctuation, and spelling will count.