AM#1

MBA 5501, Advanced Marketing 1

Course Learning Outcomes for Unit II Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

1. Explore the ethical management of marketing implementation. 1.1 Determine the next steps for a business after evaluating the current market position within an

industry. 1.2 Analyze the ethical situation of a company.

2. Synthesize the use of marketing research to predict global business outcomes.

2.1 Compile a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis in order to research the internal environment of a company.

2.2 Analyze a PEST (political, economic, sociocultural, and technology) analysis in order to research the external environment of a company.

3. Analyze the use of marketing strategies in the management of global customer brand equity.

3.1 Analyze how a company has built a strong customer relationship with its target market. 3.2 Examine potential marketing strategy alternatives for a company. 3.3 Determine marketing strategy solutions for a company.

Course/Unit Learning Outcomes

Learning Activity

1.1 Unit Lesson Chapter 3, pp. 67–95 Unit II Case Study

1.2 Unit Lesson Chapter 3, pp. 67–95 Unit II Case Study

2.1

Unit Lesson Chapter 3, pp. 67–95 Chapter 4, pp. 99–120 Unit II Case Study

2.2

Unit Lesson Chapter 3, pp. 67–95 Chapter 4, pp. 99–120 Unit II Case Study

3.1

Unit Lesson Chapter 3, pp. 67–95 Chapter 4, pp. 99–120 Unit II Case Study

3.2

Unit Lesson Chapter 3, pp. 67–95 Chapter 4, pp. 99–120 Unit II Case Study

3.3

Unit Lesson Chapter 3, pp. 67–95 Chapter 4, pp. 99–120 Unit II Case Study

UNIT II STUDY GUIDE

Ethics, Research, and a Customer World View

MBA 5501, Advanced Marketing 2

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Required Unit Resources Chapter 3: Collecting Information and Forecasting Demand, pp. 67–95 Chapter 4: Conducting Marketing Research, pp. 99–120

Unit Lesson When starting a business, entrepreneurs have high hopes of providing customer offerings to not only satisfy their customers’ needs and wants but also to delight many of them. In doing so, they hope their products will move many of their customers to become outspoken brand advocates. It is further hoped that these advocates will share their positive product experiences with their respective like-minded communities. The entrepreneur hopes the brand advocates’ like-minded community members will also be moved to purchase and exhort their positive product experiences even further across similar virtual communities. This scenario would not have been possible a few years ago before the Internet and social media existed. Until then, consumers had been anonymous and unknown to each other. They could only seek or provide information to the marketer on a singular basis. As such, they were described as targets (i.e., something to be hunted and captured). The Internet provided a disruptive change to this traditional marketing scenario. Consumers are now able to form like-minded digital communities where they may share their product experiences, seek advice, and caution others of any suspect products and potentially misleading claims. In other words, customers are no longer anonymous targets to be grouped, collected, and harvested. This does not mean that gathering research on customers is no longer necessary. Rather, marketing research is more important than ever. If you were going to put together a start-up company, think about the external factors that would impact your company. These external factors have a significant impact on your company from both a domestic and an international perspective. The underlying impact is substantial as the business owner does not have control of these external factors. Developing an understanding of how these factors impact the overall organization will enable the manager to effectively manage these changing factors. A tool used by marketing managers is the PEST (political, economic, social, and technological) analysis. This tool analyzes how changes in the political and legal environment impact the organization. It also examines how changes in the economic environment impact the organization. Additionally, it evaluates how changes in the sociocultural environment impact the organization. Finally, it analyzes how changes in the technological environment impact the organization. Watch the video Zipline in Rwanda to see how the use of advanced technology solved a problem in Rwanda (transcript for Zipline in Rwanda video). The solution discussed in the video impacts inventory cost, cost of lost sales, and transportation costs for companies attempting to deliver medical products in Rwanda.

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For this unit’s assignment, you will conduct a PEST analysis and examine the impact of these environmental changes on your start-up organization. Franzini and Sadeghian (2017) describe how the PEST analysis enables the researcher and the stakeholders within an organization to understand external factors that will affect the organization. While these factors are absolutely not controllable, the goal is to develop an understanding and to make changes within the organization to minimize the negative impact of these external changes. Beyond the external factors that are associated with the PEST analysis, there are several other considerations when analyzing the external environment. Industry health as well as competitive pressures will also impact the overall operation of the business. These will be discussed in greater detail in subsequent units. In developing an understanding of the external as well as the internal environment of an organization, the execution of a strategic marketing research plan is key. The world changes at an incredibly fast pace, which supports the need for a continuous research plan. Kotler and Keller (2016) refer to this as one of the elements of a firm’s marketing information system. A marketing information system allows a company to track changes and modify product or service offerings, distribution plans, pricing strategies, or even the methods used to communicate the benefits of the product/service to the target market (promotion).

(Kotler & Kotler, 2016)

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Review the Identifying Populations Interactive Activity for more information (alternative format for Identifying Populations Interactive Activity). According to the American Marketing Association (2017), the definition of marketing research is below:

The function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information— information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process. Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the method for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyzes the results, and communicates the findings and their implications. (para. 3)

Review the video Analytics Proves Perfect Assist for NBA Team to see how the Orlando Magic organization uses marketing analytics and marketing research to grow their brand (transcript for Analytics Proves Perfect Assist for NBA Team video). At its very basic form, the marketing research process can be viewed through a series of steps as described below.

As the researcher moves through these steps, the methods to gather the research must be determined. The first decision is whether to conduct a focus group, a survey, or behavioral research. Focus group research suggests that the researcher gathers eight to 10 carefully selected individuals with the designated purpose of acquiring their opinions on a topic through a discussion forum. Survey research offers the respondents with a series of questions, either in paper form or electronically. These responses are then tabulated, and conclusions are drawn. Behavioral research draws conclusions based upon the buying behaviors of consumers. This research is typically gathered based upon observations or the accumulation of buying records, such as cash register records. A survey is one of the most widely used research methods today because this is one of the most cost-effective methods of gathering large amounts of data. Survey types include telephone interviews; U.S. mail surveys; email surveys; or popular online survey methods, such as Survey Monkey. Researchers need to understand that consumers today are time poor, and they really have little time to respond to questionnaires. With that in mind, the survey needs to be organized to allow respondents to finish the survey quickly. As one might imagine, gathering data from consumers is not always an easy task.

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Through these steps, the market researcher attempts to gather research, perform the statistical analysis, and solve the problem within the organization. The data is stored in a database, which has expanded to include significant quantities of data. With today’s technology, we can store vast amounts of data and review the data cumulatively, which allows marketers to understand the relevance between different areas of the data. This collection of data is considered to be incredibly valuable by market researchers. The final step in the process is for the researcher to be able to communicate the research results. This must be done at the appropriate levels within the organization and, in many cases, to multiple stakeholders. A recent challenge for marketers is the use of ad blockers by consumers to avoid advertisers. Take a look at how companies are using embedded messages, viral events, and games, which all use data and analytics to create content more appealing to the consumer in the video Advertisers Use New Tactics to Grab Consumers (transcript for Advertisers Use New Tactics to Grab Consumers video). The aforementioned video is an excellent example of how proactive use of market research can impact change and increase overall effectiveness of a company’s marketing and advertising campaigns.

Coming Up Throughout this course, you will be compiling a digital marketing brief for a fictional company. This will be a comprehensive digital marketing brief that you will compile in Units IV, VI, and VIII. While this is a cumulative brief, each part should be submitted separately, as described in the assignment instructions.

References American Marketing Association. (2017). Definition of marketing research. https://www.ama.org/the-definition-

of-marketing Franzini, B., & Sadeghian, K. (2017). How will a new administration impact my business? Policy, data and

business intelligence. Business Intelligence Journal, 22(3), 44–51. https://libraryresources.columbiasouthern.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direc t=true&db=bsu&AN=125246948&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Kotler, P., & Keller, K. L. (2016). Marketing management (15th ed.). Pearson. SAS Software. (2014, November 18). Analytics proves perfect assist for NBA team [Video]. YouTube.

https://youtu.be/G3DiLefLBbs Wall Street Journal. (2016, June 21). Advertisers use new tactics to grab consumers [Video]. YouTube.

https://youtu.be/GG1bWdxnQYw Zipline. (2016, May 13). Zipline in Rwanda [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/OnDpE8uSb7M