MARKETING MANAGEMENT

Assessment Task 2: Marketing Report

In brief

  • There is a lot of detail provided below about the nature of this Report, but to avoid the essential aspects of this assessment getting lost amongst all that detail, I’m going to summarise those key points here.
  • The whole point of this Report is to assess your understanding of, and ability to apply, Marketing theory. As such, this is NOT a Report about a language translator. The language translator serves no other purpose than to provide you with a real-life context to apply Marketing theory.
  • To help you identify relevant Marketing theory, the PowerPoint slides contain “Assignment Pointers”. As their name suggests, they will direct you towards theory you should consider including in your Report. Following these pointers will be essential to passing this assessment.

The full description

Assessment Task 2: Marketing Strategy

Due Date: Friday Week 10, 11:55pm

Assessment type:  This assessment task can be undertaken on your own, or in a group comprising 2-3 students.

Details of task: The purpose of this assignment is for you to demonstrate your understanding of marketing theory and its application in practice. It requires you to integrate marketing theory with a “real world” context. In doing so, it is designed to test your ability to apply relevant marketing concepts in a practical setting. The context for this assessment is a hypothetical language translator. The Muama Enence is a small, hand-held portable electronic device that can translate a language into more than 40 different languages. The original inventors originally designed it with holidaymakers and business travellers in mind, but it soon became clear that in a multi-cultural market such as Australia, people from a wide range of backgrounds (e.g. customs officers, ambulance crews, social workers etc.) could also use it to solve language barriers. Currently Muama Enence has a monopoly over this market, so your (hypothetical) firm has given you the responsibility of coming up with a marketing strategy for your own portable-translator-device. The ultimate goal is for your own language-translator to compete with, and ultimately steal market share away from, Muama Enence.

In order to do this, you will need to draw extensively on your knowledge and understanding of the BUMKT1501 course content. Your marketing plan should comprise the following sections:

  1. What is the value proposition for your product? In other words, what benefits will it offer, and what “costs” are involved in buying/using it?
  2. What elements of the Macro-Environment will have the biggest influence on your Marketing Strategy? Why?
  3. Who is the target market for your product?
  4. What is your positioning strategy for your product? Why did you choose that particular strategy?
  5. What is your product strategy? This strategy should actually comprise a host of sub-strategies such as:
    1. What product features will your language translator include? Why? (hint: think back to the ‘benefits’ in your ‘value proposition’)
    1. What brand name will you give to the product and why?
    1. What form will your product packaging take and why?
  6. What is your price strategy?
  7. What is your place strategy?
  8. What is your promotion strategy?
  9. Reference list (not included in the word count). Because the essential focus of your discussion should be on Marketing Theory, it should be obvious that the vast majority of your references should be academic textbooks. As per the Marking Criteria, aim to use (and reference) at least 3 other marketing textbooks when researching your assignment. While some limited use of the internet to source information about the industry is recommended, please note that Internet sources such as Wikipedia, ‘marketingtutor.com’, ‘learnmba.com’ and any similar sites are NOT credible academic sources and so should NOT be used.

Report format.

In this specific case, your Report should comprise the following subheadings:

  1. Executive Summary (approximately 250 words).
  2. Value Proposition (approximately 500 words).
  3. Analysis of the Macro-Environment (approximately 500 words).
  4. Identifying the Target Market (approximately 500 words).
  5. Identifying the Positioning Strategy (approximately 250 words).
  6. The Marketing Mix (approximately 2000 words): This should actually be divided up into four separate subsections: Product, Price, Place and Promotion strategy. However, for now, these four sections have been placed under the one heading of Marketing Mix. This is because how you wish to allocate the remaining 2000 words of the Report across these four marketing tools is entirely up to you. For example, if the key focus of your marketing strategy is on Product strategy, you may wish to allocate the majority of those 2000 words to that particular section.

Marking Criteria

This assessment task will be assessed using the following criteria:

  1. Is the primary focus of your Report on Marketing theory? As a benchmark for this, aim for at least 30 in-body references stemming from a Marketing textbook.
  2. Theoretical understanding. THIS CRITERION IS ESSENTIAL. Have you defined key concepts before discussing them and used them in their proper context? To state the obvious, the whole point of this assessment is for you to demonstrate your understanding of Marketing theory by being able to apply it in a real world context. And of course, in order to do this, you must include such theory in your report. This can take the form of defining key concepts before going on to explain how they will influence your marketing plan. Because it is such an important marking criterion, make sure theoretical sources such as Marketing textbooks dominate your research effort and referencing. There are a couple of example extracts later in this document that will show you how this can be done.
  3. Practical understanding: would your strategy work in the real world?
  4. Connections: Have key aspects of your marketing strategy been justified by linking them back to Marketing theory? No part of a marketing strategy operates independently from the other parts. Instead, early parts of the Report should be reflected in later parts, while later parts should be justified by earlier parts. As a simple example, if your Value Proposition is based on providing ‘value’ by minimising money and effort ‘costs’, this should be reflected later in your Report in such topics as your Product Strategy (e.g. easy to use features that reduce the ‘effort’ involved in using it), Place Strategy (e.g. can buy it online) and Price Strategy (e.g. cheaper than the Muama Enence). Similarly, when it comes to discussing your Price Strategy, link it back to your Value Proposition by highlighting that you have opted to charge a lower price than Muama Enence (e.g. a ‘market penetration pricing’ strategy) because it is consistent with your Value Proposition of competing on the basis of lower costs.
  5. Is your work free of spelling, grammar, punctuation and presentation errors?

Potential mistakes to avoid

  1. This is a Marketing theory assessment task. Its entire purpose is to assess your ability to apply Marketing theory. Please always bear this in mind. Whilst the task guidelines make reference to a language translator, it is nothing more than a context that allows you to apply Marketing theory to a real world situation. In short, this task is all about Marketing theory; not a language translator.
  2. In addition to the prescribed textbook, the “assignment pointers” in the Weekly Lecture slides will prove invaluable in helping you prepare for this task. Please do NOT submit this task without first working through all the “assignment pointers” for Weeks 2 through Week 9.

Task Assessor: Lecturer

Suggested time to devote to this task: A suggested minimum of thirty hours preparation time (20 hours standard preparation for such an assignment plus an additional 10 hours for completing all the “assignment pointers”).

Submission details: Please submit an electronic copy of your report via Moodle by Friday 5PM of Week 10.

Feedback and return of work: Marked assignments shall be returned to students within two weeks. If more time is required, the lecturer shall inform students in advance.

Word limit: Approximately 3500-4000 words.

Weighting: 30% Format: APA style.

EXTRACTS: TWO SHORT EXAMPLES TO SHOW YOU HOW TO SATISFY THE FIVE MARKING CRITERIA

Product Strategy

A product is anything of value that can be offered to consumers (Grewal et al., 2018). A Product Strategy covers a wide range of topics, including brand name, packaging, labels and product features (Grewal et al., 2018). Due to the fact that the value proposition for this strategy is based on benefits relating to Australian patriotism and protecting the environment, all of these topics will feature in the Product Strategy. For example, in order to cater to patriotism, the brand name ‘Translator Mate’ has been specifically chosen due to the connection of the word ‘mate’ to Australian culture. This will be a particularly important part of the overall strategy because, as Grewal et al. (2018, p. 249) state, “branding … provides a way for a firm to differentiate its product offerings from that of its competitors”. This brand name will help identify the translator as being Australian-made, and in doing so, help position it against (Grewal et al., 2018, p. 189) the American-made Muama Enence. In terms of the packaging, it will be green and gold in colour to emphasise the made-in-Australia theme. To further reinforce this, the product label will clearly state that the translator is “Made in Australia”. The product features of the translator will also specifically cater to serving the patriotic benefit. This will involve including Australian slang as a ‘novelty’ language. As can be seen, of the three product components – core, actual and associated (Grewal et al., 2018, p. 243) - the Product Strategy, by focusing on brand name, packaging and product features, is focused on the “Actual Product”.

Exploring this example

  • Please note: this is just a brief extract from the Product Strategy; it is not a complete Product Strategy. Your strategy would need to be larger than this short example.
  • Please don’t be put off by this example. It was actually written by one of your lecturers. This is not the standard required to pass Assessment Task 2. It is written to the standard of a “High Distinction”. So please just see it for what it is: an example of how to; (1) include theory; (2) relate that theory to your translator; and (3) make connections to other parts of your Report.
  • Note how the example is focused on Marketing theory from your textbook, covering such concepts as value, benefits, brand name, packaging, labels, product features and positioning.
  • Note how, in order to convey that the writer actually understands the theory they are discussing, they define key concepts before launching into their discussion of them. In the case of the extract, the relevant example can be found in the very first sentence.
  • Note how the product strategy does not work in isolation. In the example provided, it is clear that these are NOT just random strategies. Instead, they have clearly been justified based on their connection to the Value Proposition, the analysis of the Marketing Environment and the Positioning strategy.
  • Note how in order to illustrate their understanding of what a brand name might need to reflect in order to cater to a macro-environment trend such as “increased patriotism”, the extract provides an example of a hypothetical brand name (e.g. the “Translator Mate”). In doing so, it helps satisfy the criterion, “would your strategy work in the real world”?
  • Note how easy it is to meet the criterion of “25 in-body references”. In this one paragraph alone, there are 5 references. Also note how a reference can help highlight to the marker the inclusion of Marketing theory. For example: “This brand name will help identify the translator as being Australian-made, and in doing so, help position it against (Grewal et al., 2018) the American-made Muama Enence”.
  • Note how there are no spelling or grammar mistakes. Also, note how the extract is written without first-person references such as “I”, “we” and “you”. First-person references should NOT be used in a Business Report. One thing I must point out though is that the referencing provided in the extract is not 100% correct. In reality, page numbers are only required for direct quotes, whereas I have provided them for a couple of other references as well. The reason for that was simply to highlight to you exactly where in the Textbook the theory in question came from.

Here’s one more example extract, this time from the Part 3 of your report: The Target Market:

Target Market

Segmentation refers to the process of grouping consumers on some common basis, such as where they live, their age and gender, or the benefits they derive from a good or service (adapted from Grewal et al., 2018). There are five methods for segmenting a market: geographic, demographic, psychographic, benefits and behavioural (Grewal et al., 2018). Of these five options, this strategy will use geographic segments and benefits segments to help define its target market. Geographic segmentation refers to “the grouping of consumers on the basis of where they live” (Grewal et al., 2018, p. 170). Given that a key benefit of Translator Mate is to provide benefit in the form of appealing to Australians’ patriotic nature, the target market will be those consumers living in …

Exploring this example

  • This short extract ticks all the same boxes as the previous example, but also includes one additional strength. The MOST important marking criterion for this Assessment Task is that the primary focus of your Report must be on Marketing theory. This example does that by showing to the marker that the student understands that there are actually five methods for segmenting the market, and then begins to justify why they have focused on just two. It is a much better option than simply launching into a discussion on geographic segments and benefits segments, without acknowledging that the student understands that there were other options, but has made an informed choice to focus on just the two most important ones.
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