Market discussion

Overview

The goal of this assignment is to provide you an opportunity to demonstrate what you know and have learned about customers and customer behavior in our Market Share case/simulation. Then, apply this knowledge to segmentation, targeting and positioning of the customer market.

This assignment is a combined assignment for the peer review (a customer analysis, which is a week 5 deliverable) and the discussion assignment (segmentation, targeting, positioning, which is a week 6 deliverable). As such, the assignment has two parts, is worth the combined points of both assignments, and will be due at the end of Week 6. Although it's not a discussion assignment in the traditional sense, the assignment counts to the "discussion" category as outlined in the syllabus.

Background

In the market planning framework, marketers must learn as much as they can about the customer market. In our Allround case, this will be an analysis of the consumer market for OTC cold remedies. Understanding customers will help us segment the market, determine the target markets, and develop a marketing mix that meets customers’ needs (STP).

There are numerous sources of information available to you, such as student posts in the discussion forums, the market share casePreview the documentView in a new window, and the interpretive simulation. Ultimately customer analysis & STP rests on the marketer's ability to pull together multiple sources of information and form a composite picture of the market.

Part 1: Customer Analysis

What the marketer wants to know about customers will vary based on the product and market. Common topics the marketer might address are the following:

Geographics (are there specific geographic areas in which customers are located?)

Demographics (what are the demographic characteristics of customers in the market?)

Psychographics (what are the psychographic characteristics of customers in the market?)

Buying behavior (e.g., frequency, sale items only)

Factors influencing buyer behavior (e.g.,, situational factors, economic needs, etc.)

Consumer decision making process or problem solving (need awareness/recognition, decision criteria, decision-maker etc.)

Current levels/measures of customer satisfaction

Current levels of brand awareness or familiarity

Current levels of brand loyalty

Current levels of trial and/or repurchase

Reasons why non-buyers don’t buy

Channels that buyers prefer (where customers buy)

Price-sensitivity of buyers

Your analysis should contain customer information that will be the most useful to designing a marketing mix that meets customer needs. It is not necessary to address every item. Instead, create an analysis for the Allround brand as if you were part of the marketing team at Allstar.

Part 2: STP

Segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP) are essential to creating a marketing mix (4Ps of marketing). After reviewing the simulation reports & assessing the consumer market, address each element (segmentation, targeting & positioning) in this section of your document.

Segmentation Bases - What segmentation bases are available in the MarketShare simulation for the cold market?

Target Market - Describe the current target market(s) for Allround.

Positioning Statement - Create a positioning statement for Allround.

Deliverable

Your deliverable will be one document, no more than 1000-words, submitted as a DOC, DOCX, TXT or RTF file. Other file types will be rejected. Appendices, such as a bibliography, references, tables or graphs, do not count to the 1000-word limit. There is no need to do outside research: Course materials provide all the information that you need to complete this assignment.

You may use other students' posts in the discussion forum to learn more about the reports available at the MarketShare simulation site (Interpretive). However, in no instance should you copy and paste someone else's work, nor should you rely on someone's report of original work. Instead, you should go to the original report in the simulation and discern the relevant information for yourself. Consider this process similar to finding cited work online (e.g., at Wikipedia). The appropriate practice would be to go to the original work that is cited, not rely on Wikipedia as your source of information.

Your document will be submitted to Turnitin, our plagiarism detection software. For students who do their own work and appropriately cite & reference others' works, this will not be a concern. I encourage all students to make themselves aware of what constitutes academic misconduct and the possible consequences of violating the university's policies. I take my responsibilities in this area quite seriously. Don't, just don't.

The document is due no later than June 29th. Documents will be accepted up to 1 day late but will lose 2 points, regardless of the reason for submitting late work.

Example work

Many students might want an example to work from. There is not "one way" to approach this assignment. In addition, if you begin searching for examples online, it's quite possible that you'll get overwhelmed with non-essential information, plus risk gathering information that could violate the academic conduct policies of the university.

If you are looking for a resource to use as an example, please restrict yourself to these sections of a marketing plan for a veterinary clinic:

Part 1: Customer Analysis

Customer Analysis

Part 2: STP

Segmentation Bases

Target Market(s)

Positioning Statement (note the positioning statement, which is similar to the one in Module 5)