Question 1: You have been asked to present a formal Marketing Plan. Describe the significance and meaning of each of the different elements that you would comprise in the Marketing Plan.
Question 2: All Golf was the first retail store devoted exclusively to selling Golf equipment and clothing in a medium-sized northern city. Sales were low for the first year and then the store experienced 10-years of fast growth in sales and profitability. Throughout this period, the popularity of Golf mushroomed. Then, the store’s sales leveled off and its profit declined. The manager was concerned. He knew that two new Golf stores had opened in the past 2-years. One was basic Golf, which seemed to appeal primarily on a low price basis. The other was love Golf that emphasized on high fashion clothing and famous, prestigious brands. Yet the manager did not feel that two more competitors must have hurt the business that much. The number of Golf players had grown substantially and the manager felt that All Golf appealed to “mostly everyone who played the game.”
You have just been appointed marketing manager of All Golf and have been asked to carry out a study on its market condition.
What target market options would you propose to All Golf? How would you assess those options? Describe your answers.
Question 3: The first step in strategic marketing planning is recognizing marketing opportunities. Companies generally consider growth markets as good marketing opportunities. Though this might not always be true.
In your opinion what factors marketing planners should consider in assessing the marketing opportunities? Describe why such factors are significant.
Question 4: The Pharmaceutical industry:
Barriers to entry are high as of the need for huge fixed research and development costs and economies of scale in selling to physicians.
Substitutes for an effectual drug are slow to develop and Buyers have not historically been price sensitive.
Suppliers, who give mostly commodities, have little power. Lastly, Rivalry has been moderate and focused not on price cutting which erodes industry profits but on other variables like R&D which tend to expand overall industry volume. The existence of patents has as well slowed competitive imitation. Industry structure in pharmaceuticals has been highly favorable to profitability, supporting sustained returned on investment among the highest of any main industry.
By using Porter’s five forces model critically analyze the above case and formulate a strategy that a firm in that position could adopt.
Question 5: Will the nature and composition of the marketing mix be similar for all the products at similar stage in the product-market life cycle? Describe your answer.