MARKETING 461 -- MARKETING MANAGEMENT, FALL 2009
Dr. Nader H. Shooshtari Office Hours:
Office: GBB 302 Tuesday and Thursday
Phone: 243-6701 8:40 – 9:30, 11:00-12:00
E-Mail: and by Appointment
REQUIRED Materials, Readings and Power Point slides will all be posted on Blackboard.
COURSE OBJECTIVES: This course is designed to utilize the concepts and tools that students have learned in previous marketing classes in solving real-life marketing problems. Prerequisites for this class include: BADM 360, MKTG 362, 363, and 366.
Specifically, the course objectives include:
1. Enhance your understanding of the marketing management process, learn to make marketing decisions and develop your ability to formulate marketing strategy, including the trend toward sustainability and green marketing; business organizations can no longer afford to ignore the impact of business and marketing decisions on the environment. More is not necessarily always better!
2. Further develop your research skills: collecting and analyzing pertinent market and financial data and making sound decisions and recommendations based on the analysis
3. Continue to develop your oral and written communication skills, working toward standards of professionalism expected in the business world today.
4. Improve your interpersonal skills and ability to work effectively in teams.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
Marketing Plan: Written ReportPresentation / 40%
10%
Best four of five Quizzes (10% each) / 40%
Participation / 10%
TOTAL
/ 100%EXAMINATIONS: There are five mid-term examinations which include short essay questions covering lectures and assigned readings. The scores for the best four quizzes will be used to calculate your grade. No late quizzes or make-ups will be given.
Class Format: Classes will consist of lecture and discussion. Marketing only becomes "real" when we apply the principles to actual situations, and we'll do this through class discussions of readings. Therefore, I expect you to attend every class and be prepared for the discussion by having read and thought about that day's assignment. Your contribution to class discussions will be considered in your class participation grade. I will keep track of your attendance so please let me know in advance if you have reasons to miss a class. You are required to be present during the classes in which the final team presentations are given.
Professional Business Conduct in Class: You are preparing to enter the business world as professionals and to prepare for a business career, so I expect each of you to behave in a professional manner in class.
- Arrive on time and stay for the entire class (unless excused by me).
- Behave with honesty and integrity. Don’t let your team down!
- Respect everyone in class and listen openly to their ideas.
- Come to class prepared for discussion.
- Refrain from eating and drinking in class or engaging in behavior that disrupts the class.
Academic Integrity: Academic misconduct is any activity that may compromise the academic
integrity of the University of Montana. Academic misconduct includes, but is not limited to,
deceptive acts such as cheating and plagiarism. Please note that it is a form of
academic misconduct to submit work that was previously used in another course.
“Plagiarism is the representing of another’s work as one’s own. It is a particularly intolerable offence in the academic community and is strictly forbidden. Students who plagiarize may fail the course and be remanded to Academic Court for possible suspension or expulsion.”
“Students must always be very careful to acknowledge any kind of borrowing that is included in their work. This means not only borrowed wording but also ideas. Acknowledgement of whatever is not one’s own original work is the proper and honest use of sources. Failure to acknowledge whatever is not one’s own original work is plagiarism.” So, ALWAYS err on the side of caution by citing the resources used in preparing your work. Moreover, always use direct quotations for exact wording taken from another source.
All students need to be familiar with the Student Conduct Code. The Code is available for review online at http://www.umt.edu/SA/VPSA/index.cfm/page/1321.
DSS: Reasonable accommodations are available for students who have a documented disability. Please notify me during the first week of class of any accommodations needed for the course. All accommodations must be approved through the Disability Services for Students (DSS) in Lommasson Center 154, phone: 243-2243
Marketing plan team project:
You will work in a team of three or four students to develop a comprehensive marketing plan for one year for a Montana business or non-profit organization. I have a list of potential clients so you will have an opportunity to choose the client based on your team’s preferences. This project will require you to draw upon all your marketing knowledge and apply it to a real situation. Since the marketing plan is the core of what a marketing professional does, going through the actual process of developing a plan will provide invaluable experience for you. Work on this project will proceed throughout the course, culminating in a written marketing plan and a formal presentation to the class and the client in the final weeks. Throughout this project, I will be available to provide guidance and react to ideas. Several marketing plan check-ins will be required, but you can see me any time in between as needed. Your project grade will be based on the quality of the plan your team develops and presents. However, I will adjust your final grade based on your individual contribution as measured by self and peer evaluations. Basically, members of each team will be given the opportunity to evaluate the contribution of their fellow team members as well as their own to their marketing plan. So, make sure you choose your fellow team members very carefully as this decision significantly affects your performance in this class.
The marketing plan consists of the following. Students will perform an in-depth assessment of the current status of the organization and its environment. Special attention is given to the market: you will engage in primary market research, such as customer interviews and competitor observation, in order to identify the factors that drive customer value and buying behavior and the competitive advantages and disadvantages of the organization. Based on the assessment of the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, the students will recommend a set of objectives (e.g., customer awareness, traffic, and sales), target market segments, and the appropriate brand/product positioning for the respective segments. Finally, students will make specific recommendations for product/service design and store environment/layout (where applicable), pricing, distribution (where appropriate) and promotion. While you are required to develop the set of promotional activities up to the concept, you are encouraged to design sample promotional materials such as ads and flyers. The recommend promotional activities will be within the marketing budget of the organization.
Important Note: In addition to presenting your plan in class, you are also required to give your client a copy of the report and make a formal team presentation to your client. You will not receive your course grade unless I receive confirmation from the client for the report and presentation.
Ethical conduct in working with the client:
You act as a business consultant for your client and therefore you must adhere to the highest standards of professional and ethical conduct. A few specific points:
- You are not allowed to share data with others outside of your student team and me, unless you have prior agreement with the client. That is, treat all information relating to this project confidentially
- You are not allowed to accept a client for your marketing plan if you own, are employed by, or have any other relationship with a competing organization
- Do not misrepresent yourself when collecting data for your client
- Do not misrepresent the data you have collected to the client
Presentation - This is your opportunity to present your hard work, creative ideas, and marketing knowledge to your peers. Please prepare a professional presentation with appropriate visual aids that runs about 15- 20 minutes, depending on the number of marketing plans to be presented. Every member of your team must be present and play an active role in the group presentation or they will lose their presentation points. The presentation will not include all parts of the business plan, but will focus on the important strengths and opportunities and subsequent marketing recommendations and implementation. You will present as a marketing consultant who has been hired by the company to write a marketing plan. Be creative and dynamic. All marketing presentations have the opportunity to be boring, make it interesting – sell your client.
Marketing Plan Instructions
As you work on your Marketing Plan, maintain clear distinctions among the three major sections of the plan. Keeping in mind that each major component addresses a different question will help you maintain the correct focus. If you find yourself straying into areas that address one of the other two questions, you are on the wrong track. The major sections of a Marketing Plan are:
Part 1. Situation Analysis - Where are we now?
The Situation Analysis should examine the firm’s current situation, but should not get into decisions regarding future direction. This step involves an Environment Analysis, scanning both the external macro- and micro-environment to “get the lay of the land.” You must do consumer and competitor research on your own here. Further, the analysis should include the firm’s internal environment and its current marketing strategy (if any). This section ends with a SWOT analysis that involves an analysis of the firm’s internal strengths and weaknesses, with the scope of assessing the firm’s most serious treats and greatest opportunities offered by the external environment.
Part 2. Overall Strategy: Objectives, Target Market Selection, and Positioning - Where do we want to go?
This section focuses on the firm’s future strategic direction. You must state specific, measurable objectives for the year of planning and compare them to the previous year (if possible). Based on the market segments identified and analyzed in the previous section, you must choose and justify the firm’s target market segments, without specifying how exactly to serve those customers (that will happen in the next section. The market segment(s) that can feasibly be targeted and served must be grounded in the conclusions reached in your Situation Analysis. The course of action selected from the choice set of feasible options will vary based on your team’s internal analysis, deliberations, decision and/or preference criteria, weighting of criteria, tolerance for risk, etc. While you may recommend the targeting of multiple segments at this stage, you should focus your further analysis on one or two most attractive and interesting segments (target segments for whom you think you can make the most interesting marketing-mix recommendations in the next section). This step concludes with the recommended positioning strategy, and its rationale, for the selected target-market (two position statements if you choose to focus on two segments).
Part 3. The Marketing Plan- How do we get there?
The Marketing Plan section details the specific tactics that will be used to serve the needs of the selected target market segment(s), to enact the desired positioning, and to achieve the stated objectives. Any effective Marketing Plan must encompass all marketing mix elements (product/service, promotion, pricing, distribution – if any) and any other marketing-related tactics that are necessary to serve the target market (s) and achieve the firm’s performance objectives. You must develop a budget based on the costs of all your recommendations. An implementation calendar should summarize what will be done, how, when, and by whom.
Part 1 Situation Analysis (Detailed Guidelines):
This is a checklist of issues/topics to address in each component of the Situation Analysis. Some of these topics may not be appropriate for your client, so you should skip them.
I. Macro-Environment Analysis
Examine and summarize the (1) important characteristics of the current Macro-Environment situation and (2) crucial directional trends in Macro-Environment. Remember the emphasis is on how the Macro-Environment can affect the Micro-Environment and, most importantly, the industry of the focal firm. Consider how these trends involve elements in the various
Macro-Environment domains, including:
§ Cultural Domain (e.g. socio-cultural values, lifestyles)
§ Demographic Domain (e.g., distribution of age, gender, race, income, education, etc.)
§ Economic Domain (e.g., interest rates, employment factors, taxes, etc.)
§ Legal-Political Domain (any type of regulations that affect business operations in your industry – e.g., distribution of alcoholic beverages)
§ Technological and Physical Domain (the Internet and other information systems, customer self-service technologies other than websites; include here or address separately important effects of the physical environment - e.g., climate changes)
II. Micro-Environment Analysis
Market Assessment
a) Market Definition
§ Identify the underlying, core need. What motivates customers’ purchase of (or failure to purchase) product-services offered by the competitors in this marketplace? Is this the same for all customers?
§ Identify the market and define its boundaries. How does one qualify as “in” versus “not in” this market? What are the essential characteristic(s) that identify a consumer or organization as part of this market? Try to use as many bases for market definition presented in the lecture as you can.
§ Are there any readily identifiable market segments, common for all players in this industry?
b) Market Assessment
§ Assess Market Potential, Industry Sales, Untapped Potential, % Realized Market, etc, if possible. Implications?
§ Consider the adoption curve, if applicable. Do current and potential buyers differ? Implications?
§ Analyze the industry (product category): structure, competitive forces etc.
c) Customer Behavior
§ Try to map and describe customers’ entire experience with the product of this industry in general.
§ Analyze the total value that the customer derives from the product experience. What are all the benefits and the costs?
§ Describe the decision-making process. What decision-making process (es) are used? Who makes the product choice decision? What other parties, if any, influence the choice decision? Is the decision-maker the same as the user? What are the implications if the user and decision-maker are different?