marketing B2B

Type of Assignment

Report

Word Count

2000 words MAXIMUM (excluding, list of references and appendices)

Weighting

50%

Submission Date

July 27th 2020, via Blackboard by 1300hours. The link to submit will open one week before submission.

Assessing Learning Outcomes #

2,5 & 6

Introduction

IKEA has recently eyed the B2B market as an area with potential growth opportunities. Specifically, they have identified pre-school kindergartens, nurseries[endnoteRef:1] and creches as an area with potential. [1: Nurseries= a room in a house as a business for the special use of young children]

Your Task

Focusing on this segment only in the UK market, your outline brief for this task is as follows:

There are 2 key parts to this assessment as follows:

1. Formative Feedback (No Grade)

· To ensure you understand your brief and to allow us to give you some formative feedback on your progress, you should UPLOAD a summary A4 sheet [which should detail the outline of your assignment] on the Turnitin link by July 13th, 1300hours) at the latest.

2. Prepare a marketing plan to cover the following areas:

a) Identify the key macro drivers affecting this B2B sector. Please do not use PEST for this. (10%) (250 words)

b) Analyse the core competitors to IKEA in this sector:

· Draw a positioning map to identify the main competitors and identify the core strategic group of competitors whom IKEA compete with.

· Having selected the 3-4 key competitors[for the sector under study], you should use 3-4 years statistics to identify key trends in the industry coupled with the various strengths and weaknesses of the selected competitors. Please do not use Porters 5 forces model for this analysis. (20%) (500 words)

c) Based on your research, examine the growth and opportunity in this segment and justify a segmentation strategy to pursue. (10%) (250 words)

d) Outline the products & pricing strategy that you would chose for this segment. (10%) (250 words)

e) Develop a promotional/communication strategy aimed at increasing awareness, developing leads and driving B2B sales for this segment for IKEA.

· Include an array of justified promotional tools to reach your target B2B segment . (Please be sure to include academic justification of your chosen promotional methods).

· You should also include some costings, and these should be based on your research taking due care to reference the sources of your costings.

· In addition, you should align your selected promotional tool with the AIDA framework and identify [specifically] which element of the DMU it will target.

· Finally, you should include a detailed Gantt chart which summarises your promotional plan which should be for one full year, starting from September 2020 (30%) (750 words)

f) You are NOT required to include an executive summary in your Marketing Plan.

Submission Requirements

· Use 1.5 line spacing,

· Font 11

· Typeface: Tahoma, Arial or Calibri ONLY!

· Please ensure that you include a cover page, a table of contents and a brief introduction. You should use salient headings (numbered) throughout to signpost your work.

· You are encouraged to use some diagrams, but please make sure these are embedded in your assignment and that their contents are referenced accordingly using the Harvard Referencing System.

· Please ensure you use Harvard referencing to cite all relevant literature and sources.

· Avoid including unnecessary appendices; marks will be deducted for unnecessary appendices that are not cross referenced in the report body.

· Please make sure you use salient academic literature and other industry research to support your Marketing Plan.

· You will be rewarded for excel compiled diagrams which illustrate detail and help you reduce word count. Please ensure that you standardise all excel created charts and diagrams whilst referencing appropriately.

· As this is a marketing plan, you should aim for it to be more visual: diagrams, tables, etc., as this will help you reduce actual word count. In addition management prefer more visual reports compared to long over- text based reports.

· However, you will be penalised for the use of cut and paste charts which you could have standardised using excel.

The structure of your Plan should be as follows:

Cover Page

Table of Contents

1.0 Introduction

2.0 Analysis of Macro Drivers

3.0 Competitive analysis

4.0 Segmentation analysis

5.0 Product & Pricing

6.0 Promotional Strategy

6.1 Use a sub-heading for each promotional activity and your final sub heading should indicate a tabularised summary of your promotional plan.

List of References.

Note: In addition to the above structure, you should also use numbered sub-headings where appropriate.

Assessment criteria for Assignment 2

Weighting

Macro Drivers

10%

Competitive Intelligence

20%

Segment Analysis & Strategy

10%

Product & Pricing Strategy

10%

Promotional strategy.

35%

Presentation, Clarity, Structure & Executive Summary

15%