MMBA 6530 Project Revision

Program Project

Program Project: Overview

Based on your course readings, a working knowledge of marketing from the simulation activities, and the video material, augment the New Venture Plan or Business Analysis (Due Diligence) Report that you started in previous MBA courses with new information related to topics covered in this course.The focus of your work on your project for this course is to draw from the content of this course and your own research. You are strongly encouraged to read the MMBA 6530 Program Project Rubric (found in the Course Info section) for specific components and criteria that must be included in your MMBA 6530 Program Project submission. Note – the rubric document includes two tabs, one for a New Venture and one for Business Analysis/Due Diligence. Your instructor will use this rubric to assess your work.

Before adding topics from this course to your plan, you should revise your plan based upon the feedback you received in your previous courses. Remember that you must continue working on the same plan that you already began. You must submit your updatedProgram Project Feedback Tracker with your updated plan so that you instructor can verify that past feedback has been addressed. Keeping your Program Project Feedback Tracker is each student’s responsibility. If you do not submit the Tracking document with previous instructor feedback and your comments related what you have done to update your project, your instructor will not grade your program project submission. Late penalties as outlined in the syllabus apply.

Your first task is to review your plan and determine what information you will have to acquire in order to make adequate planning decisions on how to create or improve your business. Remember that your plans should be based on evidence and not opinion. Your instructor will be looking for references and facts. Areas should include but are not limited to: Marketing Mix, SWOT analysis, PEST analysis, and Marketing Strategy. Other content areas and requirements are outlined in the rubric for the program project.

In this course you will focus on the Marketing Plan components of your Program Project. The Marketing Plan is a summary of the competitive landscape assessmentof the marketplace and describes how the enterprise plans to reach its marketing goal (the desired end result) and objectives (the means to achieving the desired end result. You will create new content adding to previously started sections or creating new subsections within your report to address these key points:

  • Marketing Mix: In this section, you will analyze the controllable variables needed satisfy a target market:
  1. Product or Service
  2. Place: a specific target market(s)
  3. Price: competitive, discount, payment plan
  4. Promotion: advertising modes, special promotions, etc.
  5. People: internal customers that can relate to the external customers
  • SWOTAnalysis(market focused): You will complete an overall analysis/evaluation of a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats including a synthesis of the SWOT from a marketing perspective. In essence, you will evaluate the organization’s resource capabilities and deficiencies in relation to its future well-being in specific external and internal marketing environments.
  1. Strengths: Identify internal company resource strengths and competitive capabilities
  2. Weaknesses: Identify company resources weaknesses and competitive deficiencies
  3. Opportunities: Identify the company’s market opportunities
  4. Threats: Identify external threats to the company’s future marketing prospects
  • PEST:You will complete an overall analysis/evaluation of the political/legal, economic, social and technological elements in a given market in which the enterprise (new or existing) intends serve, whether it is targeting a domestic or foreign market. In addition to performing the analysis of each area, you should provide of synthesis of the implications of these factors.
  1. Political/legal environment: According to Keegan (2002) each market (domestic or foreign) has its own unique political and legal culture, which includes the governing party’s attitude toward sovereignty, political risk, taxes, etc.
  2. Economic environment: Each market has its own economic policies and procedures, and, whether the economy is expanding, retracting, etc.
  3. Social (Culture): cultures vary from country to country, market to market, etc.
  4. Technology: Levels of technology will vary from country to country, market to market.
  • Marketing Strategy: In this section you define the organization’s overall marketing strategy as a result of the marketing analysis you have completed. This includes defining/identifying the marketing goals/objectives as they relate to target markets.

If you are writing a New Venture Plan, your focus will be on planning for the future growth and success of the enterprise. Typical questions you should address include:

How should the new enterprise/organization view and approach its role (as a marketing enterprise and marketer) in both domestic and global business?

What will be necessary for the enterprise to understand and implement regarding culture and its impact on marketing, selling, and operating in an a global setting?

What practices and procedures will have to be put in place, and what research undertaken, to determine and mitigate the impact and effects of ethnocentricity, and self-reference criteria on the enterprise’s ability to successfully market internationally? Consider how these might affect the "five Cs" and the "five Ps."

What modifications to the enterprise’s goods or services might be needed to market them into one of the countries listed in this week’s material, or into a specific country of interest?

What policies, practices, and organizational structure need to be established to optimize enterprise or organizational success in both the domestic and global business arenas?

What additions, changes, or modifications need to be made in the following areas to improve competitive advantage?

  • Type of market entry—direct, indirect, representative, foreign direct investment?
  • Market penetration and distribution
  • Logistics and supply chain management
  • Customer support and the ability to achieve “customer excellence”
  • Communications, and media selection and placement

If you are writing a Business Analysis (Due Diligence) Report, your focus will be analyzing the current state of the organization and making recommendations for changes or improvements to ensure future growth and success of the enterprise. Typical questions you should address include:

How does the enterprise or organization approach its role as a marketer in the world of domestic and global business? What are the similarities and what are the differences? What recommendations would you make to ensure future success?

How do culture, ethnocentricity, and self-reference criteria potentially impact the enterprise’s view of marketing? For example, how might these affect the "five Cs" of the Situation Analysis and the "five Ps" of Marketing Strategy? What modifications, if any, might be needed to market the enterprise’s goods or services into one of the countries listed in this week’s content, or into a specific country of interest?

What marketing policies, practices, and structures are in place or need to be modified in order to optimize enterprise or organizational success in the global business environment?

What additions, changes, or modifications need to be made in the following areas to improve competitive advantage?

  • Type of market entry
  • Market penetration and distribution
  • Logistics and supply chain management
  • Customer support and the ability to achieve “customer excellence”
  • Communications and media selection and placement

Remember, no proprietary, confidential, or otherwise internal information relating to a company and its performance that is not publicly available should be used in your work. If the information is only available to senior executives or distributed to employees as confidential and for internal use only, it is NOT appropriate for inclusion in this project. However, you may use any information that is available on the Internet, reported by the media, or that qualifies as public knowledge.

You must change the name of the organization and generalize the location so that you do not explicitly identify the organization, if you choose a Business Analysis report. It is important that you redact any information that will lead a reader to easily identify the origination. You are required to change the name of the company in all materials (including drafts shared with peers) to protect the information. In some cases, you may elect to maintain confidentiality by removing key pieces of data that might give away the organization’s identity or inappropriately divulge proprietary details. You should work with your instructors when these situations occur.

You may not survey or systematically interview employees at a company. If at some point you wish to pursue interviews or surveys, you will need to follow the standard university procedures to obtain prior approval from the Walden University Institutional Review Board (IRB). Collecting data from human subjects without IRB approval can result in dismissal from the program. You will need to produce your recommendations based on analysis of documents or observations you are able to make. You will need to be careful that no proprietary, sensitive, or confidential information is disclosed in your report. You should find out about the organization’s policies on use of company resources (including email addresses, printing materials etc.) for individual projects. Many organizations have restrictions on use of company resources.

Instructions for Submitting Assignment

  • You are required to submit your MMBA 6530 Project work to TurnItIn within 48 hours of the final deadline (by day 2 of Week 8). Walden encourages students to submit their work to TurnItIn prior to the Application deadline so that you are able to use the report results to improve or correct any errors. You will find the link to do so in your course homepage. This is a requirement of the assignment and failure to comply will result in the application of late assignment penalties up to and including a zero grade for your project.
  • By Day 5, you must post your Program Project with your MMBA 6530 sections completed to the Discussion Board as an attachment with a brief summary in the discussion post that includes the name of your project and anything particular you on which you would like your peers to focus. Your paper should be a final draft that fulfills the requirements of the assignment.

Reminder: When posting this assignment to this week's Discussion area, you must offer at least two critiques of other class members' workby day 6.You should plan to go back to the discussion board and read your peers’ comments.

***Important*** You must submit two documents to the Dropbox by Day 7:1) your updated Program Project with all changes or additions highlighted and 2) your Program Project Feedback Tracker (with the feedback you received from previous instructors, including your summary of the rubric evaluation, and a record of changes you made to your project as a result. This is a requirement of the assignment and failure to comply will result in the application of late assignment penalties up to and including a zero grade for your project. *** Important ***

  • By Day 7, you must submit your Program Project to the Drop Box, along with your Program Project Feedback Tracker. This should be your final version of your project component for this course, after you have incorporated any feedback you have received from your peers, reviewed the results from TurnItIn and corrected any issues identified in the TurnItIn report, carefully proofread your work, and evaluated it against the rubric.

Save your Application as a ".doc" or ".rtf" file with the filename APP7+last name+your first initial. For example, Sally Ride’s assignment filename would be "APP7RideS". Use the "Submit an Assignment" link, choose the Week 7: Application basket, and then add your Application as an attachment.

Note: By the end of the course, you will have received feedback from your instructor and your peer reviewers. Edit your project based on this feedback and be sure to saveit in at least two locations, such as on your computer's hard drive and then to an external medium such as a flash drive, DVD, or CD-ROM. There will be subsequent assignments in future courses that will build your Program Project. The final Project and the Program Project Feedback Tracker will be submitted at the end of the program.

Reference

Keegan, W. J., (2002). Global marketing (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.