Week 1 Assignment – Researching Marketing Questions

Purpose of Assignment 

This assignment is designed to help students analyze and interpret primary and/or secondary data and research. First, students will be provided with a marketing report that allows for preparing basic executive level data insights. Second, they will be allowed to pick a company and product or service. This assignment will help prepare students for the development of their marketing plan. Students will be creating a marketing plan (refer to Marketing Plan and Outline document) so they may want to choose a company and product or service that has data readily available or where they can use demographic/psychographic data to provide insights.

Assignment Steps

Part 1:

Analyze the Week 1 Business Growth Overview dataset. This is a marketing report generated by an analyst for the Senior Vice President (SVP) of Marketing at a large corporation. The analyst is new and has provided summary data but no insights or commentary for the SVP.

Construct a minimum 525-word memorandum for the SVP providing insights and commentary. The memorandum should include your analysis of the following:

• Major areas of increase and      decrease in revenue or type and/or category of business
• Trends that are evident in      terms of revenue or type and/or category of business
• Insights that would help formulate      marketing strategies to either continue growth or reverse decline
• Additional analysis you (if you      were SVP) would like to build a marketing goal and strategy or      strategies (and why)

Part 2: 

Select a global or multi-regional (does business in more than one country) company and one of its products or services that will serve as the basis for your marketing plan. You should obtain two years of annual reports as well as two years of 10K reports (provides a comprehensive overview of the company’s business and financial condition and includes audited financial statements) for your data source. Once you have selected your product or service, you must define the size and type of your selected company that provides the product or service (available from annual reports). This need not be elaborate but must include total number of employees, production volume, distribution methods, and so forth. Record this information in a summary document as outlined below.

Company and product selection is a critical part of this project. You must ensure your proposed company can implement the marketing methods discussed in Marketing Management.

Prepare a minimum 175-word summary document and send it to your instructor as a record of your selection. The summary document should include the following:

• Name of Company
• Location of Company      Headquarters
• Name of Product or Service      selected
• General description of company      (number of employees, revenue, type of ownership, web page, etc.)
• General description of product      or service

Format your assignment consistent with APA guidelines.