marketing culture

Advice about the assignment and presenting you work:

Disclaimer, please read this before you proceed with reading the rest of the advice.

Appendices in examples online can and do look overwhelmingly long and intimidating. It does not have to be this way. If you haven’t already started working on your assignment you will benefit the most from this advice. NO MARKS WILL BE DEDUCTED if you have longer appendices, explaining your choices, and do not have a methodology section. The advice below is for cutting down on the amount of typing you have to do to complete the assignment; it does not mean reducing the amount of data gathering and evaluation.

Please remember this is basic advice. In no way are the examples of the sources or criteria given are exhaustive. We encourage you to add your own.

Advice

Think strategically about the assignment. Consider shaping your thinking around the model below.

Looking at Business Environment model you may wish to consider structuring your report in the following format.

General advice about the layout of your submission.

Introduction:

As usual, this is the part where you introduce the company. You can also do a SWOT analysis of Schofield using Giles’s video and any other information you have found about the external environment it operates in: Threats, such as COVID, economic hardship in the UK, etc. This then will naturally lead to a discussion of the external Opportunities of exporting for Schofield and why now is a good idea to export. This is what your assignment is really about (you can either insert a SWOT analysis in the main test or put it in the back as an Appendix). You can use your knowledge of Luxury market to build the picture of external opportunities for SWC.

This Section should be no longer tan maximum 10% of the word count and you should aim for approximately 150 words.

Methodology: (we encourage you to use Muradarjan’s methodology). Why do I you to consider this?

According to the Business Dictionary, methodology is “a process used to collect information and data for the purpose of making business decisions”. This means once you have explained how you have selected your chosen countries, the screening criteria, how you have weighted and scored them, your appendices will then only contain the basic data from the criteria’s. You will still have to all the required evaluation. Again, for this part please read the disclaimer. There are a number of ways to go about this; there is no wrong or right way, as long as you explain why you choose to do something specifically.

The methodology should consist of three sections:

1. Initial screening. In this section you should address an initial screening of 10 countries and select for countries that all have the potential for SWC to export to. Here you need to justify your three initial screening criteria.

This goes back to the SWOT and internal Strengths and Weaknesses of Schofield. Select a maximum of 3 criteria upon which you will pick your 4 countries. Off the top of my head I have looked at the importation of Luxury watches sales; Language and disposable income (you can think why). However, we would encourage you to be more creative in your choices, so you can then rank the countries (maybe 10) and pick 4 that comply with all of the 3 criteria (this will look neat in table form). This should be a very short section was maximum of 100 – 150 words

remember if you are planning to use red Amber Green approach you need to say what it is, and why the use of race assessment is appropriate in development of marketing expert plans

Please use Excel worksheet (Formula 21) to help you with calculations. I

Country	Criteria
	Language	Disposable income	GDP per capita
A	Spanish		U
B	English
C
D
E	English
F
G
H	English
I
…

(don’t forget to site the sources of data used)

Screening. In this section, it is assumed that you will be using Muradarjan’s approach (Methodology 1) Please consider cross-cultural discussion of existing methodology. This is where you want to be making substitutes to reflect SWC. Perhaps inclusion of power distance ? Individualism ? – Education if you make any substitutions to existing criteria you want to be able to justify why is that? How it links to the nature of SWC offering?

Don’t forget to explain the fact that you are using scale, what scale you are using, what each element of the scale actually means. Please use Excel worksheet MK690 Formula 21 is the burden of the calculations. Below is an example of how you can conduct such calculations. Alternatively you can watch one of the recorded videos on my studies.

Again this is a short section which should be approximately 100-150 words and should be concentrating on your discussion of any substitutions of criteria you are making within cross-cultural section. Don’t forget references are important

The OECD has ranked data for 58 countries in ascending order for me. I will now divide 58/10 and get 5.8 which I then round up to 6. This means that the length of each interval score is 6 countries (see above). I can now easily give a score to any of the countries; in our example, Austria gets a score of nine. You will need to do this for each of the criteria. If you are using different databases for different criteria the length of the intervals will be different and is something that you need to consider.

Where to find the actual data? Please have a look at previous example “Assignment 2 example YC” where your peer does provide you with the sources of data and references to make it easy for you to find the right information.

Micro analysis: this is the last part of methodology section. I do not anticipate for you to use a lot of words maximum of 50 for the section.

Micro analysis. You should used the same methodology as above for your micro analysis. Consider micro environmental factors, such as competition, industry growth forecast, tariffs and non-tariff barriers, ways of shipping the product and cost. You should use examples.

Please use Methodology 2, methodology 3 papers and previous examples for data sources and criteria for assessment of your four chosen countries.

Entry mode strategy and Marketing Plan. This is where your assignment will made. You need to be able to justify which expert strategy SWC should be taken, its advantages and disadvantages in the context of SWC resources. Market entry approach should be no more than 200 words in length.

Marketing strategy is where your creativity should come to light. This is a section where majority of your references should be dedicated to. You need to talk about customer profile. And I really mean a customer profile - age gender lifestyle preferences where they work what do they do how many of them in the country what they spend their money on? Please use passport to find that information. Watch video from librarians to help you orientate and find the right data about customer profile. Talk about product changes in light of what you have found about customers talk about promotion and pricing give specific examples. If you are recommending celebrity endorsement give the names of the celebrities explain why SW should be partnering with them give details of the agents. Produce artefacts, like examples of social media or Instagram posts. If you’re planning to partner up with her physical stores again say which ones their locations the telephone numbers et cetera. Being specific will make your assignment to achieve very high grades. And remember in this section its reference reference reference. – this is the most creative and important part of the assignment. How do you combine the SWOT with what you have learned about the country and develop an exciting targeted entry strategy that will lead to the successful market capture for Schofield. This should be the longest section of your assessment of about 800 words

Conclusion: some up the country where you are exporting to and what unique highlight of a marketing strategy you propose for Schofield to adopt. Maximum 100 words

Appendices. No more then 3. You must include raw data for pre-screening, screening and micro analysis. If you wish to show off, consumer analysis of your chosen country or a SWOT for Schofield.

General recommendations

1. Make sure you provide tables, charts and figures numbers and titles;

1. Number each of your pages in the report;

1. Don’t forget to balance your work to cover the 2 key International Strategic Marketing Decisions in the Assignment:

1. International Market Selection and Target Market (s);

1. Market Entry Strategy [Mode of Entry and Market Channel (s)]’

1. Remember you are acting as an Export Marketing Consultant to advise Schofield and the Managing Director so think of the company’s resources, capabilities to make sure you are being realistic in your work;

1. Remember to reference the sources you are using.

1. This is a report, not the literature review. You need to write in third person professional language. Please don’t use are we you words. Avoid superlatives, such as huge, massive, amazing these are two subjective and diminished credibility of your statements. Short and sweet, simple sentences. Remember client wants to get good advice which is based on credible broad reading. You must come off as authoritative. In order to do this you must backup your recommendations and suggestions with facts, figures, starts and references