marketing plan for an American company
Final Project
Your task is to write a marketing plan for an American company of your choosing. The company is planning to expand to international markets with a product from their current line, or with a new product. The focus of this plan is on the market environment and SWOT analyses of this international market, development of competitive advantage, segmentation and positioning, marketing implementation, control, and metrics.
Please see details of each component of the project below:
Executive summary (1 page)
The executive summary should be a short summation of the main takeaways from each component of the document. It should be focused on the decisions that have to be made and expected outcomes of these decisions.
Market Environment Analysis (about 3 pages)
Describe all components of the market environment.
SWOT (about 2 pages)
Develop a SWOT analysis. Please make sure to include:
- Describe weaknesses, strengths, opportunities, and threats
- Identify key weaknesses, strengths, opportunities, and threats in a summarize table
- Assign a score to the weaknesses, strengths, opportunities, and threats
- Match strengths to opportunities, such that the strength can be used to take advantage of an opportunity, combining their values to assign priorities.
- Identify how weakness and threats can be dealt to become opportunities or strengths, or at least plan to minimize negative impact.
Finalize with key takeaways and priorities.
Development of competitive advantage (2 pages)
- Determine the overall competitive advantage strategy and detail the competitive advantage
- Establish the strategic focus and justify
- Lay out the strategy[unique_solution]
- Determine the general marketing goals and objectives
Segmentation and targeting (2 pages)
- Determine the overall segmentation strategy
- Determine the basis for segmentation
- Describe the segments and define the target(s)
Positioning strategy and the marketing program (3 pages)
- Describe the positioning strategy
- Describe the marketing program (product, price, distribution, communication) in line with the positioning strategy (make sure they are clearly aligned)
Customer relations (2 pages)
- Describe the activities that will be undertaken to develop and manage strong relationships with clients.
Creating shared value (2 pages)
- Describe whether and how the company intends to create shared value with its stakeholders.
- Justify choices and actions in line with marketing objectives, target segment, positioning, and marketing program.
Marketing Plan Implementation and Control (2 pages)
- Describe the implementation plan, including detailed timeline and responsibilities for implementation.
- Define the controls you will put in place.
- Describe which KPIs will be used and how the KPIs will be used to verify performance of the different activities in the marketing plan.
Communications fellow feedback:
Writing a persuasive project is an art that needs constant polishing. With that in mind, Baruch allocates communications fellows to work with students in their writing skills. In this project you will be asked to submit a final draft of the plan to Allison Caitlin Douglass, the writing fellow assigned to our class. You have to submit the final version of the project to her by April 17th. You will be required to meet with her to receive the feedback; she will make available several 1-hour sessions so your group can choose one that most, if not all of you can attend. After you meet with her, she will share with me the note of the meeting and I will expect you to revise your project based on her feedback.
Deadline:
The revised written project should be uploaded by the end of the last academic day, May 14th. Only one person per group should upload the materials. You will also be required to upload the original submission to Allison as well as the notes from the meeting. Late submissions will lose 20 points per day of delay. Please make sure you upload it on time and double check documents before uploading.
Peer evaluations
All students have to submit their peer evaluations. The peer evaluations will be a score from 0.8 to 1.2. The average score each group member receives from his peers will be used as a multiplier of the group project grade, resulting in an individual grade from 80% to 120% of the group grade.
Rubrics of Group Project
The written project will receive a grade from 0 to 90. 10 points will be automatically earned if you submit the project in time to the communications fellow and attend the scheduled meeting.
0 – 29: Serious problems, probably structural; there is no clear relationship with the content taught in class, make an appointment to meet with me;
30 – 59: Analysis reflect a grasp of some key issues, but there are too many mistakes and the different components of the plan are only loosely connected;
60 – 79: Analysis reflect extensive research; the plan clearly applies the concepts learned in class; a coherent strategy is presented and strong arguments in favor of the strategy are presented; insights are not deep or thoughtful; conclusions and recommendations are somewhat superficial. The project lacks a clear and cohesive flow.
80 – 90: Analysis reflect extensive research; the plan clearly applies the concepts learned in class; a coherent strategy is presented and strong arguments in favor of the strategy are presented; insights are thoughtful and non-obvious; the different components of the case are properly tied to each other; recommendations are sound and based on extensive research; the plan is persuasive and controls are properly delineated.