MKTG 150 Major Project

Project Description:

The purpose of this project is to give you exposure to Services Marketing in practice. This project will give you the opportunity to do field research, observe and evaluate an existing establishment based on concepts studied in this class and the textbook. Students should use the material in the Essentials of Services Marketing textbook as a reference to help them assess how well the firm is providing service to its customers and to complete this assignment.

This is a major project worth 15% of your final course mark. This is a group project (note: students residing outside of Canada may have to complete this as an individual project). The maximum size of the group can be no more than 5 students. Each group must select a group leader who should communicate the names of the students in the group to the Professor for approval no later than Friday October 22. Students who have not been approved in a group by the Professor by October 22 will be ineligible to participate in a group and must complete the assignment individually. Students in a group will be responsible for dividing the work between them and will be equally responsible for completing this assignment and for its contents. All students in the group will receive the same mark. The group will decide between them which fast food retail chain to study and the leader will communicate this to the Professor by October 22 as well. Obviously each member of the group must have a restaurant in that chain near them to visit, it does not have to be the same restaurant location as others in your group but it must be a restaurant in the same retail chain. It is not necessary for students to meet in person to complete this assignment during the Covid period. Visits to the restaurant near you can be done individually. You must include a minimum of 5 photos of yourselves (one for each group member) to show you were in the restaurant(s) you visited in the Appendix of your Report.

Whether you do this assignment individually or as a group, each of you should visit the restaurant several times.

Students residing outside of Canada should select an equivalent fast food restaurant near them to study and submit the name of that restaurant/chain to the Professor by October 22 for approval.

Consider this project as a Formal Report you would submit to the Vice President of Marketing at your full-time employment hence it should written as such.

You are to choose one of the following establishments to visit.

McDonalds	Wendys	Harveys
Burger King	South Street Burger	Hero Certified Burgers
Burger Priest	Five Guys Burger & Fries	A & W

Select one of the companys locations that is convenient for you. You should visit the location as many times as you require in order to properly complete the project per the grading. On each occasion you should purchase one (or more if you wish) item(s). On every visit you should ask the person taking your order for information about one or more items pretending not to know what is in it or if it is healthy or what the price is etc. to see how knowledgeable/well trained and willing to help they are (you do not have to purchase this item). This will help you complete specific sections of the assignment. Your objective is to experience, observe and evaluate all aspects of the business, facilities and operations provided from a customers point of view from the moment you arrive to the moment you leave. Remember, in general service providers see their business as a process but customers see it as an experience. In this project you will be evaluating both.

Due Date for Written Report: Tuesday November 30, 2021 by 6:30 pm

• Reports should be in Word document format submitted as an Attachment to a Course Message in Blackboard.
• Submissions WILL NOT be accepted via email or submitted into the Business School.
• NOTE: Late assignments submitted after 6:30 pm November 30 will not be accepted and will result in a mark of ZERO.

Content and Format of the Report

The evaluation will be based on the following:

• Report must be 10-12 pages in length (excluding cover, Table of contents, appendices), typed in Arial 10 and double spaced; number your pages
• Apply terms and concepts from the text book Essentials of Services Marketing
• Pay attention to grammar, spelling and sentence structure it will be evaluated
• Use of photographs, diagrams and other visuals to support your argument(s) in Appendices.
• Use proper citation of all sources, footnotes/endnotes

USE THE FOLLOWING FORMAT AND HEADINGS EXACTLY AS INDICATED HERE IN THE SAME ORDER, DO NOT DEVIATE FROM THIS FORMAT. CONSIDER THE MARKS ALLOCATED IT WILL DETERMINE HOW YOU SHOULD PROVIDE INFORMATION/DETAILS FOR EACH SECTION/BULLET.

MARKS	REPORT PROFILE
2	Cover Page (page 1) & Table of Contents (page 2) Company name & address of location visited Course name Instructor name Submission date Student name(s)
11	Site Visit Include description of what you did on your visit (2) Days and times of visits (1) What you bought (1) General description of your experience (3) Did your experience meet your expectation(s) and why? (4)
10	Company Profile Provide a description of the company (do not lift it verbatim from the website), and the industry it represents (2) Identify trends in the industry cite market data (4) Is the company headquartered in Canada or is it a subsidiary of a multi-national company? (1) General company information revenue, number of locations, employees and relevant data that is important to the company in the context of this report (3)
11	Positioning & Competitive Analysis (Ch. 3) Draw a positioning map(s) that would be critical to this specific industry; explain and justify why you chose those attributes to compare (4) Identify 2 direct competitors, primary and/or secondary, in the immediate area (1) Develop a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) of the company in comparison to the two competitors table format with bullets is acceptable (4) Based on your SWOT analysis identify and justify 2 competitive opportunities your company could take advantage of. (2)
6	Core & Supplementary Elements (Ch. 4) What is the companys core business? (1) Identify and explain significant aspects of the Flower of Service concept the company is using to enhance your experience as a customer (5)

15	Promoting & Educating Your Customers (Ch. 4 & Ch. 7) Identify which branding strategy the company is using and what it is trying to communicate to its customers (1) Identify which elements of the marketing mix the company is using to drive business (3) Evaluate the effectiveness of their in-store promotions, external advertisements, online communities (web/social media) with a full explanation (4) Source and evaluate their positioning statement and explain if you believe your experience met its intended goal (3) Identify other elements of the marketing mix the company could use to entice you to come to their establishment again (4)
10	Design & Managing Service Processes (Ch. 8) Develop a Flowchart of your visit experience from the moment you arrived on the property to the moment you left the premises (bullet points/chart form is acceptable) (4) Identify the success and failure of the service you received based on your visits (does not have to have a success and failure if you did not experience them); explain why for each identified (4) Recommend areas of improvement the company can implement in order to improve the customer experience (2)
10	Crafting the Service Environment (Ch. 10) Identify four key elements of the physical environment of the restaurant; explain why they are each important and how well they were executed. (8) Choose one element out of the four identified, explain how you would improve it (2)
10	Managing People (Ch. 11) Identify the companys employee engagement with you as a customer during your visits; identify if appears to reflect the Cycle of Failure, Mediocrity or Success; explain why (6) If you were the employee you asked for help, how would you have improved the experience for you as a customer? (4)
15	Instructors Overall Evaluation Applied course material to evaluate the business Content flow; grammar, sentence structure Report Submission how professional does it look? Proper Title & Table of Contents Use of diagrams, charts and visuals to support arguments Provided appropriate appendices citations, references, bibliography, pictures etc.
100	Total Marks for Written report represents 15% of your total course mark

APPENDIX: Use End notes and create Bibliography of sources used, plus the photographs and any diagrams or other visuals you feel appropriate.

CAUTION: You must not copy directly from the company or other documents/sources without proper referencing (footnotes/endnotes). Failure to do so constitutes plagiarism and will result in a grade of zero and academic misconduct will go on to your record.