Purpose

The individual paper is intended to be an in-depth analysis of the environment and industry of a real-life product. You are expected to identify and describe the environmental factors and competitive forces that currently affect or could affect the market performance of the product.

Expectations

The Individual Paper must be detailed and well-organized. Your analysis must be based on facts and must have supporting rationale. Information must be specific, and generalizations and vagueness must be avoided. Assumptions may be made on a limited basis, but must be realistic. Do not accept marketer information and claims at face value - your paper should not be a marketing brochure for the product. Your information must come substantially from credible sources (described later), and must not extensively depend on the chosen business' publications or websites.

Choose a Product and Brand

You may select any product category and a brand within it. Since a good amount of detail is expected, you should choose a product category that is widely covered in the media, and on which you can find information through secondary research. Be as specific as possible in your choice. Do not choose a category that is too broad i.e., pick-up trucks or soft drinks, but select a specific class within the category, like medium-size trucks or diet soda, and a specific brand such as Toyota Tacoma or Diet Coke. Where the brand is in more than one market, choose a specific market (no larger than a country) for analysis. So for a product like Coke which is in many countries, you must choose a particular market, not larger than one country, for analysis; or you could choose Texas for medium-sized pickup trucks, etc. Do not attempt to do your analysis for the entire global market for global brands like Coke or Toyota.

Provide a background

Provide a background for the product and the company that owns the brand. In this section, you will give a brief overview of the company, and the position of the chosen brand within the company's business, a detailed description of the chosen product and data on its market performance. This section should be a minimum of four pages.

Macro Trend Analysis

Perform a macro trend analysis for your product.
• Assess the impacts of current situations and foreseeable trends arising out of each of the environments for your product.
• You must consider trends that are relevant to your product, and assess their impact.
• All assertions must be based on researched data, and not based on personal opinions or perceptions.
• This section should be about the environment i.e., what is happening outside the company. This section should NOT contain descriptions of company actions. For example, when you are dealing with the technological environment, you should write about the technology in the industry and the trends in that technology, and not about the company's technology.

• See Chapter 3 in the text for a description of a PESTLE analysis.

Five Forces Analysis

Perform a five forces analysis for your brand.
• Rivalry among existing competitors: list all key, direct competitors. Create a competitive profile based on key strengths and weaknesses for your chosen product and its competitors. Present factual and concrete research-based information, not your personal assessment. Provide details at the brand performance level, and not at the aggregate firm financial level. For example, if your product is Diet Coke, then you should find information on sales and market share of the competitors, and not just financial information on the companies.
• Threat of new entrants: evaluate the threat of new entrants into the market. What, if any, entry barriers exist in the industry? How easy or hard is it for new entrants into the market?
• Bargaining power of suppliers: Identify the key suppliers and assess the bargaining power of suppliers. How dependent is the product's supply chain on key suppliers? Do they pose a threat to the brand's market position and profitability, or can they integrate forward? What is the possibility of lowering costs and improving quality?
• Bargaining power of buyers: Identify the key buyers and assess the bargaining power of suppliers. What is the potential for the buyers (both intermediaries and final buyers) to create margin pressure or integrate backward.
• Threat of substitute products: Identify substitute products at various levels. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of these substitutes on key buyer criteria.

• See Chapter 3 in the text.

Recommendations

Based on your analysis, what recommendations would you make for the future marketing efforts of the product?
• Recommendations must cover the major marketing program areas - product, price, promotion and distribution-and should be specific and detailed in each of these areas. They must be at the level of specific, implementable actions. Recommendations for further study or something like "they must do more research on their customers" will not be acceptable.
• Recommendations must be based on and flowing from your analysis, and must be implementable.

• Vague, broad and unspecific recommendations are not acceptable. Before making a recommendation, make sure the organization is not doing it already.

Quality of Information

Information that you use must be from quality sources. In order to locate quality sources, you will have to go beyond the obvious step of doing a Google search. Make sure you access databases such as Business Source Complete, which are available free to all SHSU students through the library. Acceptable sources include well-established business and general media, government, and credible third parties such as research organizations. Blog content is considered opinions rather than data, even when the blogs are affiliated with media organizations. The information you use in your analysis cannot significantly come from company sources.

Writing

The paper must be a well-written document, 20-25 double-spaced pages for the main body (excluding title page, table of contents, references, exhibits, etc.). Exhibits (figures, tables, charts) may be attached at the end of the paper. Poor writing and document preparation will cause a loss of grade. Please follow the APA style of document preparation, or that of any leading Marketing journal. Excellence in writing includes the following expectations:

• Writing is concise. Information presented is easy to follow. Focus and direction are extremely clear.
• Sentences are concise, flow well, and clearly express ideas. Organization of paragraphs enhances readability. Logical flow. Good transition between paragraphs. Writing is nearly free from errors in language, grammar, and typing.
• Document is extremely neat and professional-looking. Everything is formatted correctly. Proper use of any necessary conventions (citations and documentation).
• Appropriate use of vocabulary that reflects your participation in a graduate business program.

Submission

The Individual Paper is due by 10:00 am on Monday, July 18 as an editable MS-Word