Market Plan Business Report & Infographic Poster Requirements

Infographic Poster

An infographic poster covering one single Powerpoint slide, with audio narration of no more than five minutes (submitted electronically – no hard copy required).

A Market Plan Business Report with a 2,000 word limit (+10%: please refer to the university regulations regarding word count, which are on pages 7 & 8 of this document).

Infographic Poster (Individual Work, 30% of module weighting):

You are required to produce a narrated infographic poster providing key information on the national market you have chosen, and the organisation chosen to enter that market for the first time. (NB: for the purposes of this task, you are permitted to pretend that the organisation is not already present in a specific country, even if this is not the case in real life.)

Please create the poster on one single Powerpoint slide (or create it in another file format before pasting it onto one single Powerpoint slide).

Include a commentary of no more than five minutes. Please embed this within the Powerpoint file. This may be done by selecting ‘Slide Show’ and ‘Record Slide Show’. Please disable the video option by clicking the camera icon (in the bottom right-hand side of the screen), so that your commentary is audio only.

Please submit your narrated infographic poster electronically to the relevantly labelled submission folder on the module Blackboard site. Deadlines will be communicated via Blackboard announcement.

You may choose any organisation but NOT any of the following ones, which will be used by lecturers throughout the module to contextualise theory, or are included in the exemplars of previous students’ strong work in the Blackboard resources:

• Fjällräven
• Brewdog
• Fiat
• Ford
• Northumbria University
• Apple
• Coca-Cola
• Nike
• McDonald’s
• Quorn
• Lush
• Yorkshire Tea
• Ben & Jerry’s
• Caudalie
• Hamley’s

Information on assessed component two begins on the next page.

Market Plan Business Report (Individual Work, 70% of module weighting):

You are required to undertake a 2,000-word Market Plan Business Report, using the same organisation and proposed market/s which you used for the Infographic Poster.

Please submit your business report electronically to the relevantly labelled submission folder on the module Blackboard site. Deadlines will be communicated via Blackboard announcement.

Section 1 (40% of the Market Plan Business Report marks): Critical evaluation of an organisation in one or more established markets

Section 1 accounts for 40% of the Market Plan Business Report marks, and therefore the recommended word count is around 800 words, but at your discretion as long as the total word count for the report is observed.

• Identify an organisation which is strong and established in one or more markets.
• Analyse why it is currently strong in its home market / country of origin, referring to its brand, products and/or services, marketing communications mix, use of media, Relationship Marketing strategies, and any other elements of its identity or operations which you feel relevant to its success.
• In particular, refer to its meaning towards, and relationships with, its customers.
• When analysing the organisation, use theories and academic sources critically.
• Provide commercial context underpinned by industrial sources (i.e. – information which is already in the public domain).
• Do not undertake any primary research (i.e. – do not contact the organisation or its stakeholders).

Section 2 (60% of the Business Report marks): Proposal of strategies to enter a new market

Section 2 accounts for 60% of the Market Plan Business Report marks, and therefore the recommended word count is around 1,200 words, but at your discretion as long as the total word count for the report is observed.

• Propose strategies for your chosen organisation to use when entering one specific country for the first time. (NB: for the purposes of this task, you are permitted to pretend that the organisation is not already present in a specific country, even if this is not the case in real life.)
• Consider the needs and characteristics of this target market – in particular its consumers.
• Explain how these might differ from the needs and characteristics of the consumers it is currently selling to in its home market / country of origin.
• Use theory and academic sources critically to underpin your recommendations.
• Wherever possible, compare alternative strategies which you chose to discard with those which you chose to adopt, explaining their relative merits in the context of your organisation.
• When explaining your rationale, say what effects the recommended strategies might have upon the organisation, its brand, its performance, and its commercial sustainability – but also the effects upon the targeted consumers in the new market.