Marketing Plan

Throughout this course you have explored all of the elements of a marketing plan. Now it is time to put your marketing plan together for the company you selected for your marketing manager internship.

Instructions

Part 1 General Information and Situational Analysis

Section 1 Company Background

Describe your selected company or brand.
Tell a brief history of the company.
Summarize the core products and services the company offers.
Identify direct current competitors.
Explain why they direct competitors.
Section 2 SWOT Analysis (Links to an external site.)

Complete a SWOT analysis.
Propose the product or service line you want to develop a marketing plan for.
Justify your proposal with a SWOT-based argument for why it warrants marketing investment.
Section 3 Macro- and Microenvironment

Analyze at least two elements from each quadrant of Table 8.1 in the course text as the micro- and macroenvironment factors that affect the companys overall marketing strategy.
Part 2 The Marketing Plan

Section 1 Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning (STP)

Describe your segmentation approach for your proposed product/service.
Be sure to discuss these elements of the segmentation approach: demographic, geographic, behavioral, and psychographic segmentation approaches.
Provide rationale for this approach.
Describe the target audiences or markets.
Create a positioning statement.
Section 2 The Marketing Mix

Formulate the 4Ps for your proposed product/service:
Product
Describe your core product, extended product, and the product concept.
Explain how you plan to achieve competitive differentiation through creating customer value in four areas:
Branding
Packaging
Support
Quality
Price
Place
Promotion with a special focus on digital media and integrated marketing communications (IMC)
Section 3 Global and Ethical Considerations, and Conclusion

Identify three business or sociocultural considerations in translating your marketing plan for use in a foreign market.
Discuss at least one policy/philosophy or idea regarding the companys
corporate social responsibility (CSR),
green marketing practices, and
ethics and ethical marketing.
Conclude with a summary of your plan and why it deserves to be funded.
Helpful Tips

Use your Week 2 assignment and make sure you incorporated your instructors feedback and have improved your previously submitted work for Part 1 and Part 2, Section 2 (Product).
Understanding the background of the company will help you complete the SWOT analysis.
Propose a new idea to market the product or service line. Avoid writing about or proposing the current marketing strategy.
This is your idea, so use the SWOT analysis to defend it.
Use the information you researched and analyzed in the Week 4 video presentation to complete Part 1, Section 3.
Analyze some micro- and macroenvironment factors that affect the companys overall marketing strategy.
You need to provide enough details to the information you included in your slides to fit well with the rest of the paper.
Make sure you incorporated your instructors feedback and have improved your previously submitted work for this part.
Use the information you researched and analyzed in the Week 4 discussion forum, Finding and Targeting Your People, to complete Part 2, Section 1.
You need to beef up the information you discussed in that discussion forum to align it with your overall marketing plan.
Review and refer to Section 7.3 of the course text, Principles of Marketing.
Spend considerable time completing Part 2, the Marketing Plan; this is the essence of your plan.
Someone should be able to understand your plan, just by reading this section only.
Upload Your Project to Folio

It is recommended that you upload your completed project to Folio. Skills, that were reviewed in Week 4, can be tagged on your Folio page along with a description of the purpose of this project. For more information on these skills, review the Marketing Skills Module (Links to an external site.). For information on how to set up and use your Folio account as well as tag skills, check out the Folio webpage in the Student Success Center.

Project Submission Instructions

At the end of your marketing plan, add an APA-formatted appendix.
For information on how to create a APA-formatted appendix, please review the University of Arizona Global Campus Writing Centers resource Tables, Images, and Appendices (Links to an external site.).
Save your marketing plan as a Word document.
Upload it to Waypoint.
Formatting Requirements
The Marketing Plan final project paper

Must be nine to 11 double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages or slides) and formatted according to APA Style (Links to an external site.) as outlined in the Writing Centers APA Formatting for Microsoft Word  (Links to an external site.)resource.
Must include a separate title page and slide with the following:
Title of project in bold font
Space should be between title and the rest of the information on the title page.
Students name
Name of institution (Ashford University)
Course name and number
Instructors name
Due date
Must utilize academic voice. See the Academic Voice (Links to an external site.) resource for additional guidance.
Must include an introduction and conclusion paragraph and subject headers for all parts, sections, and subsections. Your introduction paragraph needs to end with a clear thesis statement that indicates the purpose of your paper.
For assistance on writing Introductions & Conclusions (Links to an external site.) as well as Writing a Thesis Statement (Links to an external site.), refer to the Writing Center resources.
Must use at least four scholarly or credible sources in addition to the course text.
The Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
To assist you in completing the research required for this assignment, view this University of Arizona Global Campus Library Quick n Dirty (Links to an external site.) tutorial, which introduces the Ashford University Library and the research process, and provides some library search tips.
Must document any information used from sources in APA Style as outlined in the Writing Centers APA: Citing Within Your Paper (Links to an external site.) guide.