Order Number |
245445467789 |
Type of Project |
ESSAY |
Writer Level |
PHD VERIFIED |
Format |
APA |
Academic Sources |
10 |
Page Count |
3-12 PAGES |
Students will complete a final project that encompasses key learnings of the course. You will be choosing Starbucks, analyzing the brand’s marketing and environment, and planning strategic recommendations to enable the brand to pursue a marketing opportunity with a set of offer recommendations.
The Final Project deliverable should meet the following guidelines:
Font: Times New Roman, 12 pt.
Spacing: Double-spaced
File saved using the following naming convention: FinalProject_Name.docx
Adherence to professional guidelines including mechanics, grammar, and spelling.
Tips for Research
Your Approach
For your final report, imagine that your brand has hired you as a marketing strategy consultant (such as a team from McKinsey) to guide the brand in its future marketing strategy.
Your report is your “deliverable” to the CEO and CMO of the company for which you work. Therefore, your report should be professional, well-documented, well-written, insightful, and well-supported with the proper analyses.
Use APA format to guide your use of headings and sub-headings and your use of in-text citations and references. The guide at https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/ is a good one. Note though that this is a BUSINESS report – not an academic paper. Therefore, in terms of title page, headers, and such – make choices more appropriate to business writing.
Assignment Instructions
Please include the following components in your Final Project:
Overview
Give a short account of the history of the brand’s organization to “set the stage”. Note: If your company is complex, you may select a narrow aspect to use as the focus of your project.
Provide an overview of the organization’s current product portfolio, pricing strategies (e.g., skimming, penetration), distribution strategies (e.g., direct or indirect; intensive, selective, exclusive; etc.), promotion strategies (e.g., promo mix).
Situation Analysis
Analyze the internal strengths and weaknesses of the organization and the opportunities and threats that it faces in its environment (SWOT analysis). You may use a table to express your SWOT analysis with some accompanying explanation.
As part of the OT portion of the analysis, include Porter’s Five Forces model to the industry in which the organization is based. Porter suggests that industry attractiveness is a function of the power of buyers (customers), suppliers, and competitors as well as threats from substitutes and potential new entrants into the market.
Discuss the relative power of each force for the organization. What substitutes exist for the customers of the organization? Are there barriers to entry to frighten away new competition? What are the sources of current competition (be sure to recognize all sources of competition for the organization’s product.
For instance, competition for a Friday evening sporting event includes anything and everything the target market might do instead)? What does this model tell you about the attractiveness and business opportunities in the industry?
When completing the OT portion of the SWOT, you will be answering the question, “Are there any changes taking place in the macro environment (i.e., political, environmental, social/ cultural, technological, legal environments) that might have an impact, either positive or negative, upon the industry in which the organization is based? If so, what are these changes, and how will they affect the industry?”
In what stage of its lifecycle is the industry in which the organization is based? What are the implications of this for the intensity of competition both now and in the future?
You may use tables and figures to share critical information more efficiently if you wish.
Market Opportunity Analysis
Consider what general market opportunities exist for the company using the Market Opportunity Matrix or the Growth Strategy Matrix. Pick one quadrant from either matrix and explain your idea for the brand’s new opportunity briefly (or if the company is already using this opportunity, describe it).
For the opportunity being considered, what strategic quadrant from the Strategic Quadrants Framework will be most relevant for guiding the marketing strategy decisions you will make? Explain the quadrant and the implications for the company.
Estimate the market size for the opportunity you selected using the tam method: total available market, total addressable market, total achievable market. You will need to identify the sources of information you used in your estimates. Explain why you used the information you used. Based on your estimates, how attractive is the market for this opportunity?
Estimate the market attractiveness using “market scoping”. You should already have this information as it is based on the OT portion of the SWOT. Here you are referring back to the OTs from the Unit 2 assignment to support your assessment of opportunity attractiveness from the perspective of market scoping.
Segmentation and Targeting and Buyer Behavior
Approximate the segmentation procedure to select a viable target audience for the opportunity you recommended in the Market Opportunity Analysis. You will explain the variables you would use in a cluster analysis to segment the market into distinctive and discriminant segments.
What type of targeting approach do you recommend the brand use?
Complete the targeting procedure. Include a buyer persona for the primary target market you selected. You are encouraged to utilize a buyer persona canvas to present your buyer persona in a cohesive manner. You may wish to use the templates for buyer personas offered at Canva.com or Xtensio.com.
Positioning
Conduct the positioning procedure for your brand. Note that most (perhaps all?) of your companies will likely already have a position in the minds of buyers in the market. If it does, you will still conduct the positioning procedure and you will be able to identify whether the position is the best one and if so, how it can strengthen the position.
If the position is not the best, then the brand should reposition and your procedure will reveal what the new position should be. If your company is new enough not to have a position, your positioning procedure will reveal the position that should be pursued. In your assignment, please include the following:
If your company has a position, explain what it is. Note whether it is an emergent position or a strategic position.
Identify the value drivers that motivate behavior among your target market. I include 6 in my video example. Choose the most important ones – 5ish is good. If you have too many, it will hinder your work. The goal is to choose those that are truly the most important to your target market when making a buying decision.
Back up your choices with references if you can. Note that typically you’d gather this information from a focus group or survey. Since you won’t take that step, try to find references that suggest the most important value drivers.
Identify each of the values as a hygiene value or a motivator value.
Plot the relative importance of the value drivers.
Plot the scores for your brand and the competing brand (like I do in the video).
State your positioning statement using the positioning statement template to guide you.
Now that you have your recommended strategic opportunity, the target market, and the desired position, make marketing mix recommendations that would optimize perceived value in the minds of the target market and allow the brand to pursue the chosen strategic opportunity.
Use the analyses to design the best value offer to bring to market. Do this for each P in the marketing mix. Be sure to relate your offer recommendations to the specific strategies and tactics discussed in the course with regard to each P.
Product
Place
Process
Marketing Performance
Explain what marketing metrics the brand should measure to evaluate its marketing performance and guide future decisions.
Write a succinct conclusion that summarizes the main points of your Final Project.