Business Marketing

Week 2 Assignment

• The world of marketing is multifaceted and offers unending challenges that require creative thinking to make a difference. For this weeks assignment I offer the challenge for you to look around your city/neighborhood for a product or business that has failed in the marketplace. What happened to cause this business or product to fail? This assignment is meant to get you thinking outside the box, and to have fun and be creative. There is no right or wrong answer. Building a better mousetrap won’t guarantee success, and this assignment drives this message home.

• Through this assignment you will learn that failure is a valuable learning tool and that many great ideas are born from the experience of failure are well on the road to success. Through this assignment you will be able to showcase the knowledge you gained from this weeks reading and lecture on the first element of the marketing mix, “Product”, and if you choose you can use the product life cycle to assist you in explaining how the business/product failed. 

• For this assignment you can choose to either write a traditional one to three page paper or get creative and create a six to eight slide power point presentation.  Your assignment should incorporate marketing terms you learned through your reading and lecture assignments, as well as references or sources used.

Week 3 Assignment

For this week’s assignment pick a product with which you are very familiar with or take the time to go through your clothes closet and try and find a product made in the USA, or one that you can anticipate being able to research easily.

• Map the supply chain of your product as far back as is feasible. A simple example is a diamond sold by a local jewelry store, purchased direct from diamond wholesalers in the Netherlands, bought by wholesalers from diamond centers in South Africa, and brought out of mines owned by a company in South Africa. 

• Identify as many participants in the channel as possible by company name and location.

• Identify the mode of transportation used between each stage in the channel.

• Identify by name and location the component parts of the product if any.

Week 5 Assignment

• As a consumer think of a place you like to shop at because of the so-called great bargains, coupons, cash back and or discounts they offer. 

• From your shopping experience explain in three to four paragraphs if the discounts you received on your purchase you feel was a bargain deal or do you feel you overpaid.

• Did you believe the retailer is sacrificing revenue for you the consumers’ benefit? 

• Why or Why not?  

• Do you find their sales practices to be ethical and beneficial to the consumer or perhaps unethical and misleading?

Week 6 Assignment

• Which stages of the consumer decision-making process are affected most by comparison shopping on mobile platforms? Explain. 

• Technology has drastically altered the consumer buying behavior, today as consumers we have the luxury to browse and shop virtually anywhere at anytime. What are your thoughts on being able to shop 24/7 virtually?

• Do you find yourself shopping online more as opposed to the traditional shopping method of visiting the store during store hours? 

• Why or Why not?

• What are your thoughts on Black Friday in store deals versus Cyber Monday, do you find one to be more beneficial to the consumer than the other? 

Week 7 Assignment

Jane Barksdale has designed a line of clothing targeted toward Hispanic Americans. The items are sold only by catalog and on the Internet. She thinks that she can increase sales by claiming in ads that the firm is owned by a Hispanic American and that all the company’s employees are Hispanic Americans. She is not Hispanic American nor are most of her employees. She needs a high level of sales to pay her bank loan and remain in business.

Answer the following:

• Should Jane claim that she is Hispanic American? Explain your response.

• Does the Federal Trade Commission address this issue? Go to www.ftc.gov and search for guidelines for small business advertising or e-commerce. 

• What does Jane risk in making false claims in her ads?

Week 8 Assignment

For the Final Project, you need to find a business such as your employer, a company you support through your personal consumer buying behavior, or a business in your city that is successful and explain how each of the Four P’s of marketing mix work together in order to make this business a success. If one of the elements of the marketing mix was to be off balance with the other P’s would this change the success of the business? Why or Why not? 

Your assignment can be a traditional written paper in one to three pages double spaced in length, or you can create a 6-8 slide Power Point presentation.