1. Let’s say you have developed a new, all natural granola style cereal. You want to see the reaction of a range of people to the product, so you decide to set up focus groups to sample the cereal. In one to two pages (single spaced), describe how you would carry out a focus group review of the cereal. a. How many people would be included in the focus group? b. How would they be selected? c. How would the taste test be carried out? Design a smart taste test – e.g., have attendees sample a total of three cereals, only one of which is your own brand. d. What questions would you ask of the focus group members after they have sampled the cereal? e. How would you use the information you gathered through the focus group exercise to guide you in moving the product forward (or killing the product, if appropriate)?
2. Let’s say you work in an airline that wants to determine how satisfied flyers are with the airline’s overall service. You decide to obtain feedback on passenger satisfaction by distributing a 5-8 question questionnaire to passengers. a. Design the questionnaire. It should fit on one page. Provide a short rationale for the study, brief instructions, and 5-8 questions. Your questionnaire should look very close to the questionnaire that would actually be distributed. b. Who would you target to respond to the questionnaire? c. How would you distribute and collect the filled out questionnaire? d. What kind of information would you derive from the distributed questionnaire? e. How could you use the information?
To understand marketing, a good first step is to master your insight into the Four Ps of marketing: Product, Pricing, Promotion, and Place (i.e., distribution). Everyone knows the importance of having a well defined product, appropriate pricing, and a good sales campaign. Perhaps the least appreciated of the Four Ps is place. Because it addresses the issue of distribution channels, you might even wonder why it is considered a marketing issue rather than an operations issue. As a thought exercise, provide a compelling argument that holds that place is the most important of the Four Ps. Be thorough in your discussion. Illustrate it with examples from a variety of businesses and scenarios. By the end of your discussion, you should be able to convince readers that place is indeed super important in marketing.
Assume you are the Director of Design for a cell phone manufacturing company. You work closely with the New Product Development Department. You are in the earliest stages of determining what your next cell phone product line should look like. Clearly, in designing the new phone, you need to know who the target customers will be. There are a range of potential customers: young vs. old, affluent vs. modest income, heavy users vs. light users, technology lovers vs. technophobes, etc. It doesn’t make sense to begin designing the new cell phone until you have identified what market segment you wish to address. For this assignment: 1. Identify different important market segments that you need to consider. 2. Which of these segments can be treated as “mainstream” segments, and which as “niche” segments? 3. Create a template form that shows the different categories of customer traits that will help you to define different market segments. 4. Select one market segment, and describe in one or two paragraphs what features the cell phone might have in order to be attractive to this segment.
You work in a company that offers management training. Your market research effort indicates that in your community (you live in New York City), there is hot demand for courses on project management. A number of competitors are offering such courses, and all appear to be doing well. Your market research effort entailed reviewing the course offerings of competitors, interviewing the training directors at fifteen companies, and conducting a survey of students who have taken at least one of your courses during the past two years. Based on this market research effort, you decide to develop a suite of four courses, each of which lasts two days. They are: · Project management fundamentals · Project planning and control · Project finance and budgeting · Project risk and quality management We have just discussed the product above. Now, put together a very short marketing plan that addresses pricing, promotion, and place (i.e., distribution). For each of these items, discuss what needs to be taken into account in order to deal with them effectively (e.g., What do we need to think about when pricing our courses?). Then briefly describe how the item will be handled (e.g., What steps can be taken to promote the courses?).