Marketing Plan, Smart thinking

Smarthinking Tutor Response Form

Your tutor has written overview comments about your essay in the form below. Your tutor has also embedded comments [in bold and in brackets] within your essay. Thank you for choosing Smarthinking to help you improve your writing!

Hello, Ronald! I’m Krista, and I look forward to working with you on this Grammar and Documentation Review to improve your writing today. Let's get started!

*Writing Strength: 
A strength of your paper is that you properly use commas within lists. Doing so shows the reader how the parts of the list relate to one another. Here is an example: “There are several segments in retail such as gender, age, geographic behavior, and lifestyle.”
Word Choice: 
Aim to write concisely and to eliminate wordiness. That way, your writing is clear.

Words that contribute little to the sentence should be eliminated. A great way to revise for wordiness is to locate phrases that could be replaced with words.

For instance, look at this sentence:

“Hurricane Katrina, which was certainly one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the Gulf Coast, caused damage to a very wide area.”

Now, look at the revised version:

“Hurricane Katrina, one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the Gulf Coast, caused widespread damage.”

Here’s an example of a sentence in your essay that you could rewrite:

This sales and marketing strategy is in alignment with the ever-changing online retail environment.

How can you replace lengthy phrases like “is in alignment with” with a single word? Consider this question as you revise.
Grammar & Mechanics: 
Remove unnecessary commas to improve your professionalism. A common grammatical error is to use a comma when no comma is necessary. For example, you don’t need a comma after coordinating conjunctions. Coordinating conjunctions are words like for, and, nor, but, or, yet.

Here’s an incorrectly placed comma: “Doctors like to use medicine but, I don’t.”

To correct, move the comma before the coordinating conjunction “but”: “Doctors like to use medicine, but I don’t.”

Here is an example from your paper:

Plunkett’s demographic group table below, offers a solid understanding that Virum’s concentration on their target market will take advantage of the highest percentage of internet users and demographic groups.

How can you revise to remove the unnecessary comma?
Documentation: 
Revise your writing by including in-text citations. Doing so ensures that you avoid plagiarism and use sources ethically.

Include an in-text citation at the end of any sentence in which you reference, paraphrase, summarize, or quote another source or another person’s idea. Since your professor asked you to use APA citation style, you’ll want to include in-text citations using that particular format type.

Here’s an example for a book with one author:

As Jay (2012) stated, “There are fifty million twentysomethings in the United States” (p. xxi).
Jay (2012) discussed how twentysomethings in the United States live with a large amount of uncertainty.

For your essay, be sure to include in-text citations throughout.

Here’s an example from your essay:

According to The NPD Group, Inc., a global information company, men’s apparel in U.S. retail sales reached $60.8 billion in 2013, a 5 percent increase over the $57.8 billion generated in 2012.

How can you use an in-text citation? What’s the author’s last name and the publication year? If unknown, how can you include a website or text title in an in-text citation?

As you read throughout your paper, notice any time you reference, summarize, paraphrase, or quote another author or text and add an in-text citation.
Summary of Next Steps: 

• Aim to write concisely so that your writing is easier to understand.

• Improve your professionalism by removing unnecessary commas.

• Add citations for any borrowed material to avoid plagiarism.

Thank you for submitting your essay for a review, Ronald. I enjoyed helping you with this step in the revision process. Have a good day! -Krista

You can find more information about writing, grammar, and usage in the Smarthinking Writer's Handbook.

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Please look for comments [in bold and in brackets] in your essay below.
Thank you for submitting your work to Smarthinking! We hope to see you again soon.

The Millennial generation ranges from 18 to 34 years of age and rely heavily on the use of technology and social media. [Revise your writing for parallelism. Parallelism gives your writing a sense of balance. One way to achieve parallelism is to make sure your verb forms match. For instance, note this non-parallel sentence, “The Pittsburgh Penguins are an excellent team and expecting to win.” Here’s the correction, “The Pittsburgh Penguins are an excellent team and are expecting to win.” How can you use this example to correct your sentence that begins, “The Millennial generation ranges […]” so “ranges” and “rely” use the same tense/form?] Virum's sales strategy will target the millennial market segment through the use of social media and internet advertising. Statistics Millennial consumers want to control their own image, and are turning to fashion to do so. Men are expected to keep expanding their color palates and their use of unconventional patterns. [Revise to use active versus passive voice. Active voice is the easiest to understand form of sentence structure. Active voice requires the subject to appear before the verb and object. For instance, here’s an example of active voice: “I kicked the ball.” “I” is the subject. “Kicked” is the verb. “Ball” is the object. Passive voice looks like this: “The ball was kicked by me.” Notice that the object comes before the verb and subject. How can you use this example to rework the sentence that begins, “Men are expected […]”? Who has this expectation of men? How can you use the answer to that question as the sentence’s subject? Consider these questions as you revise.] Understanding their social behaviors and shopping habits will provide a better understanding of this segment's buying potential. Using and understanding the power of social media platforms is one of the essential marketing component for Virum. They will use social platforms to expand-online sales and provide customized product lines for teams, clubs and businesses.

Virum’s business vision is to create, monitor, maintain and cultivate a strong relationship with their customers. The company relies heavily on a personal approach with their suppliers and customers, such as personal contact with the suppliers in order to establish the products in the stores and carrying a lucrative inventory. This sales and marketing strategy is in alignment with the ever-changing online retail environment. As the market develops and grows, access to consumer and their purchases improve, along with innovation in technology. The use of mobile devices for online shopping has grown and become another convenient avenue for shopping. Interest in men’s fashion is unlikely to decrease in the future, on the contrary, the expectation of men's shopping is growing rapidly; as younger consumers are among the strongest drivers of this trend. Menswear is expected to take some cues from feminine styles in this regard, and bold choices are expected to become more common. “Michael Kors, another predominantly women’s wear brand in the “accessible luxury” space, has set a similar target.” (Wang, 2014) [Improve your use of sources by integrating quotations into longer sentences. In other words, a quotation should not appear as its own sentence, but as part of a longer sentence. We call the language before or after a quotation a “signal phrase.” A signal phrase helps the reader to understand where the source is from and why the reader has selected it. A basic signal phrase includes the author’s name and a verb: As Alister Norty claims, “Learning about seahorses expands your mind and opens your heart” (19). How can you use this example to rework your quotation, “Michael Kors, another predominately women’s wear brand […]”?]

Ronald, this is the end place for my review. You can submit your essay again for someone else to look over the other parts of your essay.

Marketing Mix - Four Marketing P’s

Product:

• Men's clothes. Suits, pants, sport coats, overcoats, shirts, t-shirts, sweaters, shoes, accessories.

• Affordable top brand clothes.

• Virum products and styles emit the look and feeling of prestige and success.

Place:

• Products will be sold online/e-commerce.

• Products sold via website and various online distribution channels.

Price:

• Products sold at a minimum price of $20, with an average of $ 45 to $75 per product.

• It is a good value for what the customer will be getting.

• Prices will be comparable to competitors’ due to the inventory and selection we offer.

Promotion:

• We will promote via internet and social media.

• Products will be promoted through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Virum website.

• Customers will find us via newsletters and social feeds.

• Ads will be on the website, social media accounts, emails to customer database and inserts within the orders that ship to customers.

Table 1: SWOT Analysis

Virum apparel management will ensure teamwork philosophy is upheld. The team members will be able to work together collaborating to ensure company’s strengths and opportunities are achieved and any shortcoming is dealt with successfully. The company will be able provide opportunities for growth through workshops and continuing education programs to ensure our employee are adequately equipped with skills and knowledge to move this apparel to the next level.

Market Segmentation

There are several segments in retail such as gender, age, geographic behavior, and lifestyle. Virum will target adult males between the ages of 20 to 40. Diversity among consumer backgrounds are a critical factor for the success of the organization. This target market holds no ethnic barriers and lands in this broad-based niche of business oriented male adults. They are the target market persona that is the versatile consumer who adapts in any environment, desires upscale high-quality clothing and carries enough disposable income to pay and look great in every setting.

Market Analysis

The growth in e-commerce that is due to increased internet penetration, offers online retailers the ability to identify products and services, along with consumers, that drive sales and revenue growth and profitability. Plunkett’s demographic group table below, offers a solid understanding that Virum’s concentration on their target market will take advantage of the highest percentage of internet users and demographic groups.

Table 2: Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project. Plunkett Research, Ltd.

Industry Statistics & Market Size

According to The NPD Group, Inc., a global information company, men’s apparel in U.S. retail sales reached $60.8 billion in 2013, a 5 percent increase over the $57.8 billion generated in 2012. This is large part to double-digit gains in sales of men’s outerwear, pants, and socks. In contrast, the U.S. women’s apparel market grew 4 percent with total sales of $116.4 billion dollars. Of the 13 categories tracked by NPD in men's apparel, 12 experienced dollar sales increases in 2013, including pants, with sales increasing 12 percent to $4.8 billion, and socks, which grew by 14 percent to $2.8 billion. The only category to experience dollar sales declines was men's tops, which experienced a drop in sales of 2 percent. “Innovation and men’s perception of fashion contributed to an increase in spending in 2013,” said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst, The NPD Group. “Another notable reason for the rise included colder than usual weather conditions, which helped the sales of men's outerwear grow 12 percent.” “Most channels benefitted from total men’s apparel sales in 2013. Strong sock and pants sales influenced the increase at specialty stores, while outerwear trended sales upward at department stores and mass merchants.” (Group, 2014)

Table 3: U.S men’s apparel sales