All three assignments focus on a live client, advised at the beginning of the course

All three assignments focus on a live client, advised at the beginning of the course. The client will provide a brief to the class in the first meeting, and be available for Q&A.

This first assignment focuses on the client’s current situation.

Trends, events and actors in macro and micro environments directly and indirectly affect markets and businesses.

Your task is to describe, analyze and evaluate how the market environment impacts on our client’s business in order to clearly define the marketing challenge we are solving, and to inform the value proposition that you will devise in your next assignment (again for our client).

The goal is to achieve clear focus on the problem – a precise, concise and specific problem definition.

This assignment requires considerable research effort and time is short. We strongly recommend students draw on the resources of their teams to jointly gather information, then share the information as the basis for individual analysis and reporting. Please include a contribution statement in the Appendix outlining who did what (e.g. interviews, observations).

Suggested structure

Introduction

Problem focus – brief client background.
Reader management – report purpose, how you will achieve it
Situation / 5C’s analysis

Company/ client background – business overview, current strategy (resources, competencies, target market, key competitors, value proposition), current performance (financial, customer, innovation, operations, triple bottom line).
Customers, Competitors, Collaborators, Climate (PESTEL) – identify the most relevant, significant and important factors affecting the client’s business, stated clearly and justified using reliable sources.
Use relevant infographics (e.g. perceptual maps) to highlight important aspects of consumer/ customer insight, competitive position (vs substitutes, direct and indirect competitors), key points of differentiation, or identify an unmet market need
Use analytic frameworks (e.g. SWOT, TOWS, Porter 5 forces, GE:McKinsey matrix) to process data into information.
Use an Appendix for supporting information. Consider carefully what is essential (must know, which you will want to include in the body), and what is supporting (nice to know).
Summarise the marketing challenge and offer your conclusions

Conclude with a clear, concise and precise statement capturing the essence of your findings – your ‘wisdom’ – the issues, problems and opportunities your analysis has highlighted, and what that might mean for our client (implications). These statements will form the focus for your marketing strategy, and for your value proposition in assignment 2.
Use graphs, pictures and print screens from external sources to strengthen your analysis (captioned and referenced appropriately). But no part of your own text should be turned into a picture, even if you are presenting them in tables or other formats.

References

You will want to draw on a robust body of data/information. This information is evidence that will support your argument, or point of view. It will answer the question “why should we believe it?” If there is no evidence, it is hard to convince an audience. You can use the following sources:

The client’s brief and Q&A session
Primary sources (research you do yourself):
Your own consumer and market research – observations, interviews, focus groups
IMPORTANT NOTE: Without talking to customers directly it is unlikely you will score more than a Credit for this assignment. Good marketers consider desk research and other arms-length approaches less effective than actually talking to or observing customers (i.e. buyers, end users or consumers) or collaborators (i.e. retailers, distributors, on-sellers, suppliers).