respond to each student 100 words each

Willis Week 7 Discussion

• It is very importance of evaluating the competition because it helps you make your product, services and marketing stand out. It allows you to set your prices of your product competitively and help you respond to rival marketing campaigns with your initiatives. Evaluating your competitors will enhance your strategic marketing strategies to defend your business against your competitors. The key to an effective evaluation is being keenly aware of how your target customers will view and interact with your product among competitors (Koetting, 2015). It is not enough just to have an advantage over your competitors. For your business to be great, it needs to weather competitive and environmental storms. You have to be able to combat today's fierce market forces and uncertainty (Olsen, 2018). Your competitive advantage needs to be sustainable and able to endure the test of time for your company in order to be great because most advantages can be duplicated within a period of time (Olsen, 2018). First, you need to assess what your company does best by looking at what you are good at and what you are not good at. Turn it into a competitive advantage by focusing your energy on these activities. Lastly, make it something that will endure by continually developing and working at it (Olsen, 2018).  Here is a good example of developing a sustainable competitive advantage; if everyone else is using typography without imagery, you should explore using photography or illustration. Test your ideas by looking at how these elements are experienced from across the room. The shapes should be strong and simple enough to be more impactful than those of your surrounding competitors (Olsen, 2018). To ward of the competitors, you must do things that they are not doing or can’t do.

Michael Cox Week 7

• Keeping an eye on the market is key to help businesses keep competitive with prices and other businesses. Today’s economic landscape demands that learning and development professionals measure business results. This measure helps the business know how and what to change in their marketing strategies. The strategy of keeping track of last months sales and other competitor's can form a partnership within that business community. " Strategic alliances established between competitors are a growing phenomenon that may entail many benefits to those involved in these relationships. Still, business interactions between competitors are not sufficiently investigated and conceptualized. It is argued that an enlarged view of inter competitor relationships is attained by using a dyadic and network perspective. " ( Santos, J. N., & Baptista, C. S. 2015). The resulting sales from this type of alliance can bring great dividends to each business.  Monitoring existing profits and those past trends decide on which way the market goes. 

Shameka Woods Week 8 Discussion

• The product I chose to write my marketing plan is the MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro is a slim laptop computer its creator is Apple. The MacBook Pro has a longer battery life, the Force Touch trackpad, and Retina display. The Retina display reduces glare and enriches the color, pictures are so clear, and vivid it amazing.   The MacBook is only 0.71 inch thick and weighs less than five pounds. It is ideal for editing videos and sharing them. The duel-core and quad-core Intel processors and memory not only makes the MacBook fast it will perform whatever task you need it to. Spreadsheets will be quicker to set up and design you can use it for different graphs, and PowerPoint presentations at meeting.  I chose it because I like Apple and know that their computers are built to last. My husband has the Mac mini and I have never seen it crash. He is able to place both Linux and Windows on it. He can pick his Mac up and carry with him to the office and home he leaves the monitor and keyboards it fits in his briefcase. A Mac can grow with you from a high school student, to college, and then to your career it will continue to run for years before replacing it. Having issues with the projections of sales, costs, and profits maybe I can show the five year plan with the cost of the laptop and try to figure out the cost of each unit. The markup method is adding a percentage to the cost so that the retailer makes a profit on products sold (Finch, 2012).  By using the markup method I understand that Apple does not use this method.  I also understand that this is not an officially marketing plan and this will give me a cost for the five years Pro Forma Fianacial Information.   I could also use the cost of the panel which is $150 because of the Retina display and add an additional cost for operating system (Kersey, 2012).
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• Sherman Rouse W8 Discussion 
• When it comes to major companies who thrive in their particular marketplace, they do so by implementing the best social media applications into their communication strategies. In turn, it evens the playing field because the company's allowed to determine its objectives more precisely. From there, everything opens up, where the company fully understands and is aware of the benefits social media presents for any business (when utilized correctly), and is an ally to the bottom line. Using social media as a means for promoting reliable communication strategies may focus on one specific thing ideally. But in reality, social media is designed to work in correlation. In other words, a company might decide to hire a social media manager to develop strategies centered around brand awareness. Meanwhile, in the process of fulfilling that particular goal, the social media manager may also discover newer ways to increase at the same time.