Assignment on sustainable marketing strategy

This task brings together the main themes of the module and requires you to develop a report in 4,000 words. The report will demonstrate your knowledge on the practical application of the core theories and concepts of strategic marketing management.

Based on any real-life brand from any industry, in your report, you will provide a brief evaluation of theories and concepts of strategic marketing, culminating in a concise marketing strategy proposal for the brand. In terms of selecting your brand, please, make sure that your chosen brand has (1) a public website, (2) been operating for minimum two years, (3) and you have identified a brand-specific problem (challenge or concern) to address the problem in your assignment. In terms of evaluating theories, you should focus on one or more marketing or cognate theories and concepts that will be discussed in this semester. The purpose of this evaluation should be exploring the potential of such theories or concepts, in order to plan and implement strategies to address a particular brand-specific strategic.

Assessment Brief

marketing problem of your selected brand. Such strategic marketing problems would include but not limited to (for example) declining sales or increased customer complaints in last six months. Your analysis and synthesis here should demonstrate your knowledge and aptitude to clarify how different discussed marketing or cognate theories and concepts would be useful to propose a strategic marketing plan for your selected brand to address the brand- specific problem.

Assignment contents and assessment criteria

Your report should include the following sections:

Section 1: Brief introduction to the chosen brand:

When the brand was launched;

What is the product/service;

What is the brands core target markets;

What is the brands current position (e.g. market share, reputation etc.) in the market?

A very brief summary of your assignment purpose (brand-specific problem), theoretical area, key findings from secondary research, and major recommendations to address the brand- specific problem.

Section 2: Assignment purpose (brand-specific problem):

Addressing the brand-specific declining sales or increased customer complaints or any other operational issues that adversely impact on business sustainability of the brand.

Or exploring any unserved market opportunity, e.g. if you could justify that your chosen brand does not serve a particular market segment (e.g. disabled customer segment) at the moment, and serving that unserved market segment would be valuable to underpin the business sustainability of your brand.

Please, cite relevant references to verify such brand-specific issues/problems or unserved market opportunity that you may want to address in your assignment.

Section 3: Theoretical area:

Brief literature review to justify the significance of your theoretical focus to address the brand-specific problem (e.g. declining sales or increased customer complaints, or to explore any other market opportunities (e.g. unserved market segment) that adversely impact on business sustainability. Here you will discuss the relevance of a theoretical area that you are adopting to address this specific brand-related problem or explore the market opportunity for your brand (e.g. why your selected theoretical context is important to address the brand-specific problem or explore the unserved market opportunity).

Section 4: Secondary data and application of your theoretical area:

Based on analysing secondary data, how you apply your selected theoretical area to address the brand- specific problem (e.g. declining sales or increased customer complaints) or explore any unserved market opportunity, in order to underpin the competitive advantage and business sustainability of your selected brand.

Here you should demonstrate the application of your theoretical area based on the interpretation of secondary data for inform decision making to pursue the purpose of your assignment (e.g. addressing the declining sales or serving a new or unserved market segment). For example, on the one hand, you have adopted the new product development theory to propose a new product, in order to address the declining sales of your brand. On the other hand, you have found on a publicly available customer

forum website that customers are complaining about some specific features of a product or service. Such customer forum website would be those websites, where customers share their views e.g. whether or not they are happy or unhappy after receiving a product/service that they ordered online. In this context, focusing on the product features that making the customers unhappy, you could apply the new product development theory to propose a new product for your selected brand that would reflect on the customers comments, which you have found on that customer forum website (a secondary data source), so that the brand would be able to turn those unhappy customers into happy customers based on your proposed new product.

Secondary data sources could include the brands website, other industry-specific websites (e.g. customers forum, chamber of commerce etc.), news articles, brands social media sites, different databases linking from the University library etc.

Section 5: Practical implications for your chosen brand:

Recommendations and discussion of how your selected brand would be able to apply your proposed strategy that you have discussed in section 4 (e.g. your proposed new product) to underpin the brands business sustainability.

Section 6: Conclusion

Please ensure to include graphs and charts and tables as the example

Please note, in text citations [e.g. (Smith, 2011)] and direct secondary quotations [e.g. dib-dab

nonsense analysis (Smith, 2011 p.123)] are INCLUDED in the word count.

If this word count is falsified, students are reminded that under ARNA page 30 Section 3.4 this will be

regarded as academic misconduct.

If the word limit of the full assignment exceeds the +10% limit, 10% of the mark provisionally awarded

to the assignment will be deducted. For example: if the assignment is worth 70 marks but is above the

word limit by more than 10%, a penalty of 7 marks will be imposed, giving a final mark of 63