Marketing Management Assignment: A Comprehensive Guide

Question 1: Critical Assessment of the Organizational and Market Environment

Assignment Question: In your role as a Marketing Manager for a stated organisation of your choice, you are required to complete the following assignment that has been requested by the newly-appointed Managing Director. 1. A critical assessment of the current internal organisational environment and the external market environment which have a direct impact upon the performance of the marketing function [400 Words - 10 Marks] [Key findings and practical conclusions should be presented in the form of a SWOT Analysis. In addition key operational constraints which limit marketing performance should be highlighted.] 2. Undertake Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning analysis for the product or services launched by the firm. [400 Words - 10 Marks] [Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning Analysis.] 3. Marketing Performance targets for each of the next 3 years for sales volume, sales value and organisational profit contribution. [400 Words - 10 Marks] [Figures are required for the next 3-year period for revenue and profit, allocated to each major market segment and aggregated into a summarised statement of marketing dept performance. It is assumed that the marketing function drives sales performance] 4. Using the Ansoff Matrix as a framework, show how your marketing performance targets will be achieved through these broadly based, risks assessed, marketing strategies for the next 3 years. [800 words - 20 Marks] [Market Penetration, Market Development, Product/Service Development and Diversification Strategy options should be used as appropriate with timescales applied to sales and profit contribution targets. Risk assessment is required for each of the Ansoff strategies adopted. ] 5. Undertake Marketing Mix Analysis and Develop Action Plans to deliver Ansoff based strategies over the next 3 years. [1200 Words - 30 Marks] [Appropriate Professional and Academic concepts models, Tools and marketing frameworks should be referenced and applied to the 7 P’s of the Marketing Mix to achieve a schedule of actions to be taken.] 6. The cross-functional dependencies which are critical for achieving the stated performance targets for sales and profit contribution. [400 Words - 10 Marks] [The marketing department performance targets will depend upon other functional areas of the organisation. The Marketing Director will need to know these critical linkages to ensure these are managed effectively and adequately resourced.] In the Annex to the report, you must outline the key areas of research undertaken in a Gantt chart and then specify the literature and other evidence sources used to complete the requirements of this assignment. [400 Words - 10 Marks] Assessment Requirements: • The submission of your work assessment should be organized and clearly structured in a report format. • Maximum word length allowed is 4000 words, excluding words in charts & tables and in the appendixes section of your assignment. • Student is required to submit a type-written document in Microsoft Word format with Times New Roman font type, size 12 and line spacing 1.5. • Indicate the sources of information and literature review by including all the necessary citations and references adopting the Harvard Referencing System. • Students who have been found to have committed acts of Plagiarism are automatically considered to have failed the entire module. If found to have breached the regulation for the second time, you will be asked to leave the course. • Plagiarism involves taking someone else’s words, thoughts, ideas or essays from online essay banks and trying to pass them off as your own. It is a form of cheating which is taken very seriously. Report Structure Title Page Table of Contents Abstract Introduction Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Conclusions References Annex Notes on Plagiarism & Harvard Referencing Plagiarism Plagiarism is passing off the work of others as your own. This constitutes academic theft and is a serious matter which is penalized in assignment marking. Plagiarism is the submission of an item of assessment containing elements of work produced by another person(s) in such a way that it could be assumed to be the student’s own work. Examples of plagiarism are: • The verbatim copying of another person’s work without acknowledgement • The close paraphrasing of another person’s work by simply changing a few words or altering the order of presentation without acknowledgement • The unacknowledged quotation of phrases from another person’s work and/or the presentation of another person’s idea(s) as one’s own. Copying or close paraphrasing with occasional acknowledgement of the source may also be deemed to be plagiarism is the absence of quotation marks implies that the phraseology is the student’s own. Plagiarised work may belong to another student or be from a published source such as a book, report, journal or material available on the internet. Harvard Referencing The structure of a citation under the Harvard referencing system is the author’s surname, year of publication, and page number or range, in parentheses, as illustrated in the Smith example near the top of this article. • The page number or page range is omitted if the entire work is cited. The author’s surname is omitted if it appears in the text. Thus we may say: “Jones (2001) revolutionized the field of trauma surgery.” • Two or three authors are cited using “and” or “&”: (Deane, Smith, and Jones, 1991) or (Deane, Smith & Jones, 1991). More than three authors are cited using et al. (Deane et al. 1992). • An unknown date is cited as no date (Deane n.d.). A reference to a reprint is cited with the original publication date in square brackets (Marx [1867] 1967, p. 90). • If an author published two books in 2005, the year of the first (in the alphabetic order of the references) is cited and referenced as 2005a, the second as 2005b. • A citation is placed wherever appropriate in or after the sentence. If it is at the end of a sentence, it is placed before the period, but a citation for an entire block quote immediately follows the period at the end of the block since the citation is not an actual part of the quotation itself. • Complete citations are provided in alphabetical order in a section following the text, usually designated as “Works cited” or “References”. The difference between a “works cited” or “references” list and a bibliography is that a bibliography may include works not directly cited in the text. • All citations are in the same font as the main text.