Select a topic for the marketing plan you will develop throughout the term in the practice papers. The practice papers are the framework for the final integrated marketing strategy presentation. The three practice papers are assigned to help students learn how to develop the final presentation. Students may choose to complete the practice papers as group assignments because learning is a social activity. Or they can write their papers independent of the group. The practice papers are assigned in weeks 3-5 but first you must select a topic.
The topic for your practice papers must be a single product or service, not a system or process. Research your concept before you finalize your choice; be sure you can find adequate data to inform an integrated marketing plan. Look for data about customers, markets, competitors, and distribution channels.
Meet in your group to discuss and select a product or service that will be the subject of your practice papers. Be very narrow in your selection. For example, don’t pick “athletic shoes”, pick “Nike Air Jordan”; don’t pick “fast food”, pick “In & Out Double-Double”. Keep it simple.
When you write your paper, address the following questions, in detail:
1. What is the problem/need the product/service solves or addresses?
2. Who is the customer, in demographic terms? Be specific.
3. What is the customer’s psychographic? Be specific.
4. Where is the customer located — what is the geography? Pick a place, be very specific, by zip code so that you can easily pull data. If you go wide, like a region, a state, a county, a country, you must pull data for this entire area. Drilling down into zip code, or even a neighborhood within that zip code, is preferable.
5. Describe the 5 Ps (product, place, promotion, price, people) at a high level. You will further develop the marketing mix later in the practice papers, but you need a sense of how this will look before you proceed.
6. Did you find adequate data to inform research? If not, rethink your topic. You must have at least ten examples of solid data that proves your topic is viable for market planning.
7. How is your product or service innovative? What does it do that makes it innovative? Note: your product or service must be new, or innovation or a major improvement of something that already exists. Do something to your product or service to make it innovative. Change a function, a flavor, a color, a size – – something that makes it innovative or different from the existing product.
Next, write a 300-word paper describing your selected product or service
