Marketing Update

This week we covered chapter 10, and discussed the Marketing paper.

Next week you will have a quiz over chapter 6-9, and we will cover chapters 11 and 12.

Keep working on your marketing papers, the due date will be here quickly....don't procrastinate.

Building Your Marketing Plan PART 1

BUILDING YOUR MARKETING PLAN

Your marketing plan will include a situation analysis based on internal and external factors that are likely to affect your marketing program.

The most rigorous way to have students do an environmental scan for their marketing plan is to have them add two right-hand columns to the Figure 3-2 format—the first labeled "opportunities" and the second labeled "threats." This forces students to think about implications of the trends for their business or product or service. The environmental scan can give depth to the industry analysis, competitor analysis, and customer analysis portion of "Section 4: Situation Analysis" of Appendix A.

1. To summarize information about external factors, create a table similar to Figure 3-2 and identify three trends related to each of the five forces (social, economic, technological, competitive, and regulatory) that relate to your product or service.

2. When your table is completed, describe how each of the trends represents an opportunity or a threat for your business.

Helping with Common Student Problems

As with the SWOT analysis activity for Chapter 2, students often end their analysis by simply listing the environmental trends in their environmental scan. By having students add the "opportunities" and "threats" columns described above, they are forced to try to translate the trend into what it means for their marketing plan. Sometime it suggests a specific action. At other times, it suggests the student be aware of the trend, which may lead to actions in the future.