Attached Files: MKT500 Template Part B Assignment 2 and APA Notes.docx (323.351 KB)Assignment 2: Part B: Your Marketing PlanDue Week 6 and worth 240 pointsUsing the same hypothetical company from A

 Attached Files:

•  MKT500 Template Part B Assignment 2 and APA Notes.docx (323.351 KB)

Assignment 2: Part B: Your Marketing Plan

Due Week 6 and worth 240 points

Using the same hypothetical company from Assignment 1, for this assignment, you will focus on the company’s branding strategy, primary and secondary target markets, positioning statement, and consumer behavior.

Note: You should create and/or make all necessary assumptions needed for the completion of this assignment.

Instructions

Create the second part of your marketing plan:

1. Describe or list the feedback you received on Part A of your marketing plan. Explain how you will use the feedback to improve your plan.
2. Develop a branding strategy for your product / service that covers the brand name, logo, slogan, and at least one brand extension.
3. Thoroughly analyze the primary and secondary markets that you want to target. Thoroughly include the demographic profile (e.g., age, gender, ethnicity, etc.), psychographic profile, professional profile, geographic profile, and any other segmentation variable you deem necessary.
4. Prepare a positioning statement. Include a perceptual map that shows your company’s position against its competitors. From this map, create a statement that depicts your position.
5. Examine the relevant consumer behavior for your target market. Explain the main reasons why the brand name, logo, slogan, brand extension, as well as the positioning statement are right for the identified target market.
6. Use at least three academic resources as quantitative marketing research to determine the feasibility of your product / service. These resources should be industry specific and relate to your chosen product / service. Note: Wikipedia and other similar websites do not qualify as academic resources.

Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:

• Be typed, double- spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.
• Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.

The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are:

1.   Analyze marketing environments and strategies used to strengthen product or service positioning.

c.   Examine the marketing science of customer behavior and products in the marketing exchange process.

2.   Evaluate marketing strategies used to create/communicate customer value.

a.   Analyze the marketing framework through a situation analysis.

b.   Evaluate target customer segments and positioning products within these segments.

c.   Evaluate the basis for market segmentation and approaches to segmentation.

3.   Create an effective marketing plan.

a.   Develop recommendations based on market analysis and strategy.

b.   Develop strategies to assess performance and achieve marketing goals.

c.   Develop dynamic strategies for competing.

d.   Develop branding strategies for existing and new products or services.

Assignment 3: Part C: Your Marketing Plan

Due Week 9 and worth 280 points

For this assignment, you will conclude your marketing plan by developing your hypothetical company’s pricing and distribution strategies, and integrated marketing communications plan.

Note: You should create and / or make all necessary assumptions needed for the completion of this assignment.

Instructions

Create the third part of your marketing plan:

1. Describe or list the feedback you received on Part B of Your Marketing Plan. Explain how you will use the feedback to improve your plan.
2. Develop the company’s pricing and distribution strategy.
3. Develop the integrated marketing communications plan most relevant for your product / service and audience. Develop your message strategy. Develop your media strategy.
4. Develop your public relations, sales promotion, and personal selling plan most relevant for your product / service and audience.
5. Develop your online and direct marketing plan most relevant for your product / service and audience.
6. Develop your social responsibility/cause related marketing plan most relevant for your product / service and audience.
7. Use at least three academic resources that address sustainability and monitoring of effective marketing plans and determine the applicability for your hypothetical company. These resources should be industry specific and relate to your chosen product / service. Note: Wikipedia and other websites do not qualify as academic resources.

Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:

• Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.
• Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.

The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are:

2.   Evaluate marketing strategies used to create/communicate customer value.

d.   Analyze integrated marketing communications and its relationship to advertising strategy.

3.   Create an effective marketing plan.

a.   Develop recommendations based on market analysis and strategy.

c.   Develop dynamic strategies for competing.

d.   Develop branding strategies for new products or services.

e.   Develop pricing strategies and distribution channels for products or services.

f.    Develop a fully integrated marketing communications plan for products or services.

 Assignment Topic: 

Ideal Phone Marketing Strategy

Ideal Phone Company is a company that deals with the production of smartphones. This smartphone will be running on the Android operating system. The company will have a close relationship with Google Inc., the company that deals with the updating of the Android operating system. This close relation will ensure that Ideal Phones run on the latest stock of android. There will also be minimal bloatware in Ideal Phones, and our customers will be able to enjoy a clean build of Android.

Research conducted by the Ideal Phone company has found that there is a gap in the smartphone industry in the market. Despite being a lot of smartphone manufacturers, there still exist certain elements of the consumers' needs that these smartphone manufacturers have utterly failed to fulfil. From our market research in the United States, we found out that people love iPhones. However, they are needlessly expensive. We also found out that iPhone take long to process customers' requests and the apple store doesn't match the Google' splay store regarding the number of applications and services. In the Android front, the consumers love the operating system. However, these individual manufacturers have introduced custom User Interfaces (UI) in their phones that limit them from enjoying a clean build of Android, except of course for Google's flagship smartphone the Google Pixel line up, which is too expensive for the average consumer (Insight, 2014).

The Ideal Phone 1 will be running a clean build of Android just like Google Pixel phones with no custom UI. The phones will be rocking the newest Snapdragon 855 chip that has excellent performance and excellent power efficiency. Ideal Phone 1 will incorporate the same LCD panel display that is being used by Samsung phones that bring a theatre experience to the phone's curvy display. On the camera front, the phone will have a dual orientation 8.0 MP selfie camera and a dual setup at the pack, one for the wide angle and one for the telephoto lens both 12.5MP sensors. This will be accompanied by an excellent image processing unit that will bring out camera professionalism within their users. The sensors will also be rocking optical and electronic image stabilizers that will cancel out the body's shaky effect. The video shooting modes will be available at 30 and 60 frames per second at 4K. The battery capacity will 4200Ma that will be enough to comfortably support a two days experience especially since the clean build of Android and the Snapdragon 855 chip are energy efficient (Teufl et al., 2011, May). The Phone will also come with dual front-firing speakers that will bring out the best audio experience to every audiophile who purchase the Ideal Phone. Presence of an earphone jack will also fill the market gap since most smartphone manufacturers are leaning towards wireless technology which most consumers are not comfortable with. The Ideal phone will have an IP 68 water resistance rating and will be fully functional under the one meter of water for thirty minutes without a problem. This is ideal for those who would love to take photos and record videos in the water. The phone will also come with an Ideal Phone voice assistant that will function just like Bixby, Siri or the google assistant. 

The mission statements

Our mission is to provide all the latest smartphone features and customer experience to the average consumer. 

The main goals, both short terms and long-term goals.

The following will be my short-term goals:

i) Ensure that the production line for the Ideal Phones is fully operational by April. 

ii) Ensure that production has started by early June.

iii) Ensure that the consumer market is fully aware of the product, its internal and external specification and the retail price.

The long-term goals for the Ideal Phone are as follows:

I) By the second year, the Ideal Phone has ranked in the same level of competition as other big smartphones names in the game such as Samsung, iPhone, LG, Xiomi and One Plus devices.

II) That the consumer market is fully aware of both the internal specifications such as a clean build of Android and the improved consumer experience that the Ideal Phone offers, the consumer market should also be fully aware of external specification such as the amazing display, the battery capacity, the Snapdragon chip among others. 

III) The company has significantly sold a good amount of the device to the consumer market.

IV) The company is involved in some researches that will better improve the customer experience.

The best way to measure the short-term goals are 

i) Carrying out an evaluation of the production process in the company to ensure that they are ready for the production process as stated project’s timeline.

ii) On the consumer knowledge, the company can randomly pick smartphone consumers and determine their level of knowledge on the Ideal Phone to determine the effectiveness of their marketing and advertising determent

iii)  They can also track the number of visitors who visit their website and download their content to get a sense of the consumer population who are interested in their devices.

For the long-term goals, the company can measure the goals through 

i) The volume of sales they make to the consumer market as it is through sales that a company can fully determine if they competitive enough or they are almost to be kicked out of the market. 

ii) They can also calculate the market share that the company has gained over time. They can do this by analyzing all the data from all smartphone manufacturers and comparing them to our volume of shares to determine the market share that we have gained over the years. 

iii) The level of profits margins earned as this will reflect directly to the volume of sales 

iv) The level of consumer engagement in the smartphones that we are offering. 

The Environmental analysis

The environmental analysis incorporates all factors that pose as a challenge to the production and marketing of our devices. For the smartphone industry, there are some environmental factors that we at Ideal Phone Company must factor in, conduct intensive research that will show us the approach that we have to take if we have to stay competitive in the smartphone industry. These researches will provide market gaps in the consumer market that we believe at Ideal Phone Company that we have manufactured our products to fully satisfy these needs. Some of these environmental factors we considered are: 

i) Competition

The Smartphone Industry is a very competitive industry n the entire world. There are so many smartphone manufacturers all offering a wide variety of smartphones products that are meant to satisfy different consumer needs in different parts of the world. Our competitors Apple, with the iPhone products for a long time had dominated the smartphone industry with their iPhone products. This was particularly due to Apple’s consumer loyalty and the ecosystem that Apple came up with that created a wall for their customers to buy other products other than Apple products. However, with the rise of popularity in the Android community, the consumer market has now realized how much they were missing due to the blind loyalty they had for Apple products (Cromar, 2010). Since my device runs of androids, it will be quite a challenge to win consumer loyalty over the night suddenly. However, we go something that other manufacturers don’t, the performance per the almighty dollar. It is true that our products will feature in the latest version of Snapdragon chip, the best quality camera, among the best display in the market and among the best front firing speakers. All of which are being provided by these big companies such, such Samsung, LG, One Plus and Google Pixel but they do so at much higher prices. The Ideal Phone will offer this feature but cur corners where it doesn’t hurt the most, such as the streaming experience, the inbuild premium quality and the design front. From our market research, we realized that the consumer market is more pleased with the functionality of the phone and care less on the design front. This will hugely lower down the selling price making our devices more affordable, and thus the dollar to performance comparison will be favorable to all.

ii) Economic

To ensure that we are economical in the production front, all the production and assembly processes will be in China. The human resource rates in China are way lower than what we have in the United States right now. Since we are determined to ensure that our products are affordable even to the average consumer, carrying out the production process at a cheaper rate ensures that the selling price is lower too. This means that regarding economic boom, our devices will experience a boom in sales to and during periods of a fall in the economy, unlike those expensive flagship devices from Samsung and iPhone, consumers will be able to purchase our devices too ensuring that we stay in business.

iii) Political 

Our devices will not be involved in supporting any political activities in the country. This means it can be bought freely by anyone.

iv) Legal

We will adhere to all local, central and international legal requirements from the manufacturing permit, assembly permits, shipping requirements and marketing requirements. 

v) Technology

As stated earlier my smartphone device will stay competitive in the market as we are offering the Ideal Phone with the latest technology in the market at a more affordable price. These technologies include the latest chip in the market, the Snapdragon 855, the curvy LCD panel, the best camera sensors and best front firing speakers and support for 3.5 mm earphone jack straight out of the box. 

v) Sociocultural forces

Since my device is an electronic component, a smartphone, which is universally accepted, we won't be breaking a sociocultural requirement. Clothes, bikini, and certain food such as pork to Muslims are the ones that would break sociocultural beliefs just to mention an example. 

The SWOT analysis of Ideal Phone

a) Strength

i) Affordability

The Ideal Phone will be highly affordable to the average consumer. Since it does not incorporate those fancy glass design that other high-end smartphones that form part of the competition do the phone’s cost will largely drop. This affordability will make it highly purchasable to the average consumer to have a 1000+ dollar smartphone experience from the likes of iPhone X and Samsung in the Ideal phone

i) Performance to the dollar.

 Given its performance per dollar scores when compared to other premium flagship smartphone devices from other companies, the Ideal Phone will emerge at the top and many consumers will choose it. 

ii) Excellent android experience

Since the Ideal Phone will be coming out with a clean build of Android, the consumers will be able to enjoy the experience with zero bloatware and annoying news and advertisements in the Ideal Phone smartphone.

b) Weaknesses

i) Competition

The smartphone will face stiff competition not only from the premium-built smartphone devices from iPhone and Samsung from other smartphones such as Xiomi’s Poco Phone FI, the Lenovo smartphones and other Chinese brands that are way cheaper.

ii) Not a premium build

The fact that the phone will be packaging high-end specs means that the Ideal Phone will cut some corners in the phone's feel in hand. The overall design may be off-putting to some who may decide to go for the premium flagship devices from Samsung, iPhones, and Google 

iii) Fails short in certain aspects

The Ideal Phone will fall short in certain aspects such as the online and streaming experience especially in Netflix which may be of putting to some consumers

c) Opportunities

i) An even better Android experience

A recent meeting with Google has been successful, and we are hoping that Google will be sending updates to the Ideal Phones immediately the same time they will be updating their Google Pixel phones. Android updates have been a problem to China brand smartphone and even to Samsung. 

ii) A larger market in unexplored territories

We hope to expand our market outside the United States to other places such as Europe< Asian and African market that will largely increase our volume of sales.

iii) A decrease in production costs

In recent years, certain smartphone electronic components have dropped in price> this means that our inputs in the production of the smartphone are expected to fall. This lead to the advantages of a drop in the price of the consumer leading to higher volume of sales.

d) Threats

i) Entry of other companies into the smartphone industry

There are so many smartphone companies that are working hard to enter into the smartphone industry. Even worse some have already, and they are comfortable at producing at no profits, especially Chinese companies such as Xiomi.

ii) Increase in the production costs

To achieve a premium build quality, certain electronic products such as the camera lenses and the LCD panel require higher purchasing prices that may lead to an increase in the overall price of the Ideal Phone which may reflect negatively on the consumer market. 

iii) Compliance with international laws.

With the recent terrorist attack, the company will be finding it difficult to ship their products to and from China to the United States as close inspection, especially of chemicals and electronic components, wastes time in the ports.

References

Cromar, S. A. (2010). Smartphones in the US: market analysis.

Insight, C. C. S. (2014). Global smartphone market analysis and outlook: Disruption in a changing market. Slough: CSS Insight.

Teufl, P., Kraxberger, S., Orthacker, C., Lackner, G., Gissing, M., Marsalek, A., & Prevenhueber, O. (2011, May). Android market analysis with activation patterns. In International Conference on Security and Privacy in Mobile Information and Communication Systems (pp. 1-12). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.