The Marketing Plan
Every business should determine its own criteria for success when evaluating the attractiveness of a market because every industry has its own unique circumstances. Forces that shape segment attractiveness include the following:
• Market growth (market size, growth rate, and market potential)
• Competitive intensity (the number of companies, the ease of entry, and substitutes)
• Market access (customer familiarity, channel access, and company fit)
Although an index that is based on these criteria is useful in capturing the qualitative aspects of a market situation, the profit potential must also be assessed for all of the segments that are deemed attractive based on their market-attractiveness indexes.
Part 1: Segmentation Application
Develop a product-focused business. Please do not use an existing company or a scenario that you utilized in a previous course. You will continue working with this business throughout the course. Complete the following:
• Introduce the scenario of the business and the main product that it sells.
• Analyze customers' needs for the target product.
• Discuss segmentation strategies that are based on 2 real competitors' market positions.
• Devise a niche marketing strategy that would be appropriate for your company's product.
This section of the paper should be 3 pages in length and use research from the library's full-text databases and other quality college-level resources.
Part 2: Gap Analysis, Benchmarking, and Competitive Advantage
Complete the following:
• Carry out a gap analysis of 2 competitors. Discuss how the findings would be used.
• Develop competitor and competitive benchmarking.
o Competitor benchmarking involves identifying a business's main competitors and then comparing itself against them in key performance areas. Competitive benchmarking involves going outside a business's market or industry to study a company that excels in an area where the business is deficient.
• Devise strategies to achieve a competitive advantage for the company.
This section of the paper should be 3 pages in length and use research from the library's full-text databases and other quality college-level resources.
Your assignment should contain a cover page, an abstract page, and a reference page in addition to the body. The body of the paper should be 6 pages in length, starting with a brief, 1-paragraph introduction and ending with a short conclusion. The entire submission will be 9-12 pages in length.
• Objectives:
• Achieve the ability to present the findings of marketing strategies via written and oral communication.
• Appropriate use in how to design and conduct quantitative and qualitative marketing research to support marketing plan writing and research.
• Appropriate use in integrating, extending, and applying a marketing strategy and knowledge skills in a live business context.
• Compose a marketing plan that incorporates research.
• Execute mastery of customer analysis, competitor analysis, branding, marketing communication, channel designs, pricing strategies, and the whole marketing environment.