BBB4M Course Culminating Task Marketing Challenge Evaluation: Rubrie will follow. This is the culminating activity for the course. It will be worth 10% of your final mark! DUE DATE: To be announced in class. Stay tuned to the website. The purpose of this assignment is to provide you with an opportunity to learn the overall steps and detail involved in planning the marketing approach for a product. By completing this task, you will demonstrate a skill that is essential to a business practitioner. The marketing plan enables a business to establish strategies, objectives, and priorities, develop schedules and budgets, identify tactics and initiate checkpoints to measure performance. Developing a marketing plan also helps the business recognize potential problems, opportunities, and threats which may emerge in the future You are responsible for creating a product or service to market. You are creating a new product/service but within an existing product/service category. (Ex. A new brand of soft drink or a new brand of car etc...) STEP 1 - THE IDEA This process begins where all great marketing efforts begin with an original idea! Brainstorm ideas for products and/or services that are unique. Choose the best one for your marketing plan. Remember, for your product to be successful, there must be evidence of demand for it STEP 2 - THE RESEARCH Once you have developed a product or service', you are ready to continue to the research phase. It will be difficult for you to conduct primary research due to your distance from products around the world, therefore where primary research is not possible, you will conduct secondary research through use of books and internet. In this phase, you will identify your competitors and decide how to successfully compete against them. You will have to decide how to segment the market and which consumers you should target. You will have to try to develop a competitive advantage Some questions to consider: What can I do to set my brand apart from others? What value does this society have? What do they like? What don't they like? STEP 3 - THE PLAN The marketing plan is similar to a layout of a report. It is organized by headings and sub- headings. The plan is a specific strategy for each of the 4 P's. You will apply the concepts we covered in class to your product/service. In this step you are forced to think about issues such as: branding, pricing, distribution, retailing, and promotions. This plan will include the information from step 1 and step 2 above. This is what will be evaluated! Format of Report 1. Title page Name of product/service, person submitting the plan (student name), the person to whom the plan is being submitted too (that's me), the date of submission of the plan. 2. Executive Summary A one page summary of the contents of the report. Its purpose is to provide a quick summary of the marking plan. It should include a brief introduction, and the major aspects of the marketing plan. This should be divided into sections. 3. Table of Contents A listing of everything contained in the plan and where it is located in the report 4. Introduction The introduction should explain the market chosen as well as the product/service and why this plan is expected to be successful. This part of the report should make the idea sound attractive to "management" (me). It is useful to offer estimates of expected sales, costs and profits as well 5. The Marketing Mix (*Most important section of your report) This section explains in detail the selected strategy consisting of product, price, place, and promotion. Also, if marketing research has been done on these elements, it can be discussed in this section. i. Product: A description of the product brand, packing, product life cycle, the competitive advantage of the product. ii. Price: The price of the product/service, the manufacturer price (estimated). wholesale price (estimated), and suggested retail price should be listed and justified iii. Place: The channel of distribution, logistical analysis. Do your research to determine how the product will be distributed and the logistics of your operation. iv. Promotion: A description and justification of the planned promotion mix (examples: sales promotion, advertising, endorsements, coupons) competitive advantage of the product il Price: The price of the product/service, the manufacturer price (estimated) wholesale price (estimated), and suggested retail price should be listed and justified iii. Place: The channel of distribution, logistical analysis. Do your research to determine how the product will be distributed and the logistics of your operation, iv. Promotion: A description and justification of the planned promotion mix (examples: sales promotion, advertising, endorsements, coupons) 6. Financial Analysis (You may include this in the "price" seetion of your marketing mix) . This section must contain sales forecasts and an estimate of televant marketing 1. Sales forecast - based on a total number of persons in the selected target market ii. Fired and variable costs. This will include advertising costs, marketing research costs, expenses, etc. your best estimate based on research) i. Feel free to include financial statements such as a balance sheet or income statement to help identify your finance 8. Appendices Charts, diagrams, pictures, etc... 9. References . Sources of secondary data that was used in developing your marketing plan 10. THE END: Each person will present their product service they developed and describe their marketing strategy