Select as your course topic a product or service, which you will explore throughout the course assignments. For this assignment, explore external factors and cultural influence as they relate to your selected product or service. If your product or service is strongly influenced by subcultural elements such as religion, ethnicity, age, or gender, address that as well.

Assignment Instructions

Identify a product or service that has been specifically designed for and marketed to your own consumer group. Prepare a 35-page paper that identifies and examines the possible relationships between external factors and cultural influences on your product or service. You will want to fully explore this topic by researching the library and raising questions that may be pertinent to your specific product or service.

In this rather open-ended analysis, you will discuss how these influences relate to marketing practices and the building of a marketing strategy for your product or service. Identify at least three marketing tactics to be developed as part of the overall marketing strategy you will develop in Unit 6.

To successfully complete this assignment, you are expected to:

Identify consumer characteristics of the selected product.

Analyze contemporary issues that impact consumer purchasing patterns of the product.

Describe how external factors and cultural influences impact consumer behavior within different segments of the consumer market.

Explains how external factors, cultural influences, and subculture membership relate to marketing practices when building a marketing strategy.

Identify marketing tactics and strategies specific to the product or service.

Present your analysis in a smooth manner, supported by properly cited resources.

Here are some questions to help you get you started:

What makes this product or service specific to your consumer group?

What external influences affect consumer behavior and the consumer purchasing decision-making process specific to this product or service?

How could consumers be segmented according to dimensions such as product usage, demographics (the objective aspects of a population such as age and sex), and psychographics (psychological and lifestyle characteristics)?

What relationships might there be between defined subcultures and your product or service?

Do you see your product as appealing to some of the defined subcultures? Why?

Do you think that use of your product is greater among members of any of these subcultures? If so, why do you think that is so?

What consumer behavior principles are being used by marketers in communicating to you about it?

What are the reference groups saying? What opinions would you influence as a marketer? How can social media help create a relationship with your consumer group?

Be sure to include at least 23 scholarly sources supporting your work, cited and referenced per current APA.

Contact your course instructor with any questions about this activity or the course project.

Note: Your instructor may also use the Writing Feedback Tool to provide feedback on your writing. In the tool, click the linked resources for helpful writing information.