Critical thinking assignment 1

Critical Thinking Exercise #1

Please keep to no more than three pages. Your paper must meet the standards of good business communication. Your arguments should be well thought out and all comments and information should be presented using proper grammar and punctuation.

You MUST PHYSICALLY VISIT A TRADITIONAL GROCERY STORE. Take a picture of the store you visited and attach it to the report.

Note: You don’t have to purchase these items but you MUST TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS of the items in your study.

Grading:

35 Points for content

15 Points for layout, punctuation and grammar.

Objective:

This exercise aims to deepen your understanding of how different companies and brands approach their marketing efforts; and how they compete within similar product categories.

Overview:

You are the new marketing assistant for a major marketing consulting firm, Cougar Creative. Cougar Creative works with food and beverage manufacturers that produce packaged food sold in just about every category of the grocery store (except produce and meat).

You are going to be providing a recommendation on a given food category of your own choosing.

Approach:

Choose one category of a packaged food item (pick something that you are personally interested in to make it more enjoyable).

Visit your local grocery story and review all the different products that are being sold in that particular category. Note you must have at least 3 different manufacturers in your chosen category.

Answer the following questions about your chosen category:

Packaging

What do you notice about the packaging that differed from each product?

Are there different packaging options in use?

Why do you think each company decided on the particular packaging being used?

Pricing

What did you notice about how these items were priced? Was the price similar among the various items? Why are some priced higher or lower?

Target Customer

Who might be interested in buying these items?

What characteristics might they have in terms of income, age, education?

Will all the items be promoted to the same target market? Why or why not?

Advertising/Promotion

How do you think these items should be advertised?

Include pictures of the items that you are comparing.