Question: A Project to Fail

• The world of marketing is multifaceted and offers unending challenges that require creative thinking to make a difference. For this weeks assignment I offer the challenge for you to look around your city/neighborhood for a product or business that has failed in the marketplace. What happened to cause this business or product to fail? This assignment is meant to get you thinking outside the box, and to have fun and be creative. There is no right or wrong answer. Building a better mousetrap won't guarantee success, and this assignment drives this message home.

• Through this assignment you will learn that failure is a valuable learning tool and that many great ideas are born from the experience of failure are well on the road to success. Through this assignment you will be able to showcase the knowledge you gained from this weeks reading and lecture on the first element of the marketing mix, "Product", and if you choose you can use the product life cycle to assist you in explaining how the business/product failed.

Option 1 - Get Creative

Design and format a 10 - 15 slide Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. The requirements below must be met for your presentation to be accepted and graded:

• Design and format each slide for a presentation.

• The notes sections must total a minimum of 250 words for the entire presentation. Use these sections to explain and support information provided on your slides.

• Include a cover slide and reference slide (these slides do not count toward the 10 - 15 slide requirement).

• At least 80% of your presentation must be original content/writing.

• No more than 20% of your content/information may come from references.

• Use at least two references from outside the course material, preferably from EBSCOhost. Text book, lectures, and other materials in the course may be used, but are not counted toward the two reference requirement.

• Identify sources on slides that contain reference material (data, dates, graphs, quotes, paraphrased words, values, etc.) and list them on a reference slide.

Reference material (data, dates, graphs, quotes, paraphrased words, values, etc.) must be from sources like scholarly journals found in EBSCOhost, online newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal, government websites, etc. Sources such as Wikis, Yahoo Answers, eHow, etc. are not acceptable.

A detailed explanation of how to cite a source using APA can be found here (link).

Option 2 - Traditional Paper

The requirements below must be met for your paper to be accepted and graded:

• Write between 500 - 750 words (approximately 2 - 3 pages) using Microsoft Word.

• Attempt APA style, see example below.

• Use font size 12 and 1" margins.

• Include cover page and reference page.

• At least 60% of your paper must be original content/writing.

• No more than 40% of your content/information may come from references.

• Use at least two references from outside the course material, preferably from EBSCOhost. Text book, lectures, and other materials in the course may be used, but are not counted toward the two reference requirement.

• Reference material (data, dates, graphs, quotes, paraphrased words, values, etc.) must be identified in the paper and listed on a reference page.