You are to choose a brand in the marketplace and do a complete marketing analysis.  You will research the brand, the industry and the competitors in an environmental analysis and then you will critically evaluate the marketing strategy of that brand including: the target market strategy, the positioning of the brand relative to competitors and the 4 ps of the marketing mix.  You must do research to determine the brands current position before you can evaluate the success or failure of the brand in the marketplace.  The brand you choose must NOT be the number one brand in terms of market share and may NOT be a brand of Athletic Shoe.  Please have your product approved by the professor before you start. 

You will need to access library websites to complete this assignment. We are fortunate to have a librarian attached to this course  — Brendan Plann-Curley —  [email protected]. Please contact him if you have questions about library resources.

The paper should be 6 pages doubled-spaced and contain the sections below. You must use each of the five sections below as headings within your paper.

1.    Industry Analysis.  Who are the major players in the industry and how does each perform?  What are sales like for the various competitors?  What are the market shares?  What positioning does each brand hold in the marketplace?  What major issues face the industry as they compete today?

Consult a variety of library databases, including those listed on the Situation Analysis tab on the Advertising and Marketing Research Guide

2.    Target Market. Who is the target market for this product?  Please indicate the target in terms beyond demographics.  What psychographic, geographic and behavioral factors are at play with the target market. Even if the company doesnt indicate these other factors, you should do so.  The purpose of this is to be able to analyze whether the companys target strategy is correct. 

Here you should consult Simmons and MRI data, both available from the Advertising and Marketing Research Guide, click on the Consumers tab.

3.    Marketing Mix. What are the 4 ps of the marketing mix for this product?  Describe the product in detail with the important features.  How is the product distributed and how does it get there (please do research here including contacting the company).  What are the prices of the brands in the category?  What is your brands pricing strategy?  How is the brand promoted?  Consider all 4 parts of the promotional mix here including: advertising, personal selling, sales promotion and public relations (consult the text book if you do not know what these are). 

You should also consult Ad$Summary (available at the Reference Desk at the Birnbaum and Mortola Libraries) for ad spending information for the various competitors.

You may also find your company included in the Nations Biggest Advertisers list available in the AdAge Datacenter database, available from the Library website. On the AdAge website, click on the Datacenter link at the very top of the page.

4.    Marketing Strategy. Here is the meat of the paper. You are going to evaluate the marketing strategy of the brand given the industry, the environment and the target market.  Are they doing well against the competition?  Are they doing an adequate job of reaching the target market?  How could they improve their strategy?  I want you to do real analysis here, not just reporting.  Using the information you collected I want you to delve deeply into the roots of the successful and unsuccessful strategies.

5.    References. Please cite all sources by indicating the source in the body of the paper in parentheses as follows:  (Fox 2002) and then put the citation at the end in the References section like this:

    Fox, Brian (2002) The Marketing Environment, Journal of Marketing, June, p.     23-    32.

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