Posted: June 29th, 2015

Describe a new fictitious product idea that you believe would be a logical fit for your chosen organisation and its brand promise as well as commercially successful in a new international market of your choice

Overview Final Project
For this Final Project, imagine that an organisation that owns and manages a brand is experiencing a critical downturn in its business. The organisation needs to expand its brand offerings to be competitive in a global market. You are tasked with developing a new product that would fit within this brand to introduce to a new international market (i.e. outside the organisation’s home market).
To select an organisation and brand to feature, refer to Interbrand’s list of top 100 global brands. An Interbrand report is included in the Unit 1 Readings. Select one brand from among the last 50 brands (i.e. 50–100) of the Interbrand list to feature in your Final Project. Choose a brand that is more focused on business-to-consumer (B2C) products. http://www.bestglobalbrands.com/previous-years/2013
The academic resources should not older than 5 years and Harvard style referencing is to be used.
During the course of developing this Final Project, you will be conducting research in the following areas:
• Organisational business strategy and objectives
• Organisational internal and external environments
• Brand marketing strategy and objectives
• Market research approaches
• Marketing communications, with an emphasis on the opportunities afforded by digital communications
• Strategies for building a competitive advantage
The result will be a paper of approximately 6,000 words with the following components.
Your Final Project in this module consists of;
• Strategic Marketing Plan
o Section 1: Situational Analysis (1,500 words)
o Section 2: Marketing Plan (3,000 words)
o Section 3: Critical review of a current debate in marketing and brand management (1,500 words)
Final Project: Strategic Marketing Plan
• Section 1: Situational Analysis (1,500 words from Units 1 and 2)
o Compile a synopsis of your Individual Assignment entries from Units 1 and 2. Include feedback from your Faculty Member and colleagues.
o Add a reflection summarising what you have learned from completing your Unit 1 and 2 Individual Assignments, highlighting specific attributes that would help in determining an organisation’s current strategic marketing situation in preparation for selecting a new product to introduce in an international market.
o Use diagrams and tables to illustrate your points and save on word count.

To review:
o In Unit 1, you selected one organisation to feature throughout this Module whose marketing and brand management strategies you researched. You then conducted an informal situational analysis on the organisation you chose.
o In Unit 2, you described a fictitious product idea that would be a logical fit for your chosen organisation and brand. You then analysed the role of market research in the marketing strategy for introducing a new product and explored the buying process.
Unit 1
 Describe your process for conducting an informal situational analysis on the organisation you chose. What areas did you consider in your analysis?
 Based on your situational analysis, describe the business, marketing and branding strategies.
 Describe the alignment of the business, marketing and branding strategies. Be sure to address the following questions:
o At what points do they intersect and diverge?
o How strategic is this alignment?
o What are the dangers of not aligning these strategies?
(Please kindly note that situation analysis has to be based ONLY on the 5c’s, and academic references have to be used in support of your analysis)
Unit 2
 Describe a new fictitious product idea that you believe would be a logical fit for your chosen organisation and its brand promise as well as commercially successful in a new international market of your choice.
 Describe the market research approaches you chose that you believe would be most effective in determining the relevant segments and demand for this new product. Your post should explain why you believe they would be most effective in allowing you to better understand three of the following topics in terms of market demand:
o Current brand strength (e.g. measures of brand equity)
o Market and segment size and growth
o Customer segment characteristics
o Competitors and alternatives
o Buyer behaviour and the buying process (i.e. choice criteria)
o Potential for the use of digital marketing processes (e.g. ecommerce, social media) to support the customer buying process.

• Section 2: Marketing Plan (3,000 words from Units 3, 4 and 5)

To review:
o In Unit 3, you examined whether your new product proposition was right for your target market by going into more detail into segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP). You also described the brand and product value proposition.
o In Unit 4, you analysed the current marketing mix of your chosen organisation and created a new marketing mix for your fictitious new product.
o In Unit 5 , you developed strategies to build a competitive advantage for your chosen organisation.
Unit 3
Create segmentation, targeting and positioning strategies for your new, fictitious product that falls within the organisation and brand identified in Unit 1. For this Individual Assignment, include the following:
 Produce a graphic representation of your segmentation strategy for your new, fictitious product. Include any niche or subgroups in your graphic depiction that you think might be effective. Also include in your graphic representation a brief summation of the needs of each segment.
 In addition to this graphic depiction, write a 1,000-word paper that outlines strategies for creating or increasing brand equity for your branded product. Include:
o One strategy for targeting marketing efforts to each segment
o One strategy for positioning your product for each segment
 For each of the strategies, explain why they would be effective. Include specific examples and appropriate citations/support from the literature for your findings.
 Be sure to include specific examples and support your postings with evidence from the Readings and other current literature from the UoRL Library and other credible sources. Consult the Harvard Referencing Style Guide for proper citation and referencing information.
Unit 4

 Evaluate the effectiveness of the current marketing mix for the brand you selected for your Final Project. Does the marketing mix meet goals of forming consumer brand relationships? Include in your evaluation whether the marketing mix includes the right mix of P’s.
 In a 1,000-word paper, create a marketing mix you believe would be more effective for this new product in order to build brand equity in an international market and explain why you chose this mix. Include a variety of marketing methods, including digital marketing. How is the marketing mix for this new product different from the marketing mix that was most likely used for the organisation’s other products? Why?
 Be sure to include specific examples and support your postings with evidence from the Readings, other current literature from the UoRL Library and other credible sources. Consult the Harvard Referencing Style Guide for proper citation and referencing information.

Unit 5

In a 1,000-word paper, create a plan for increasing competitive advantage for the selected organisation and brand. The plan should include three appropriate strategies for increasing competitive advantage in your chosen organisation. For each strategy, include the following:
 Explain how the strategies support overall corporate business and marketing strategies to increase competitive market advantage.
 Identify essential resources required to execute these strategies for increasing competitive advantage.
 Explain how you might measure performance related to meeting strategy objectives for increasing competitive advantage.
 Be sure to include specific examples and support your postings with evidence from the Reading, other current literature from the Library and other credible sources. Consult the Harvard Referencing Style Guide for proper citation and referencing information.

• Section 3: Critical review of a current debate in marketing and brand management (1,500 words)
o Select a current debate in marketing and brand management.
o Search the Internet and University Library and identify a relevant article about the current debate you selected.
o To complete the critical review, compose an essay of approximately 1,500 words that includes the following:
 An introduction paragraph identifying the current debate you selected and why it interests you.
 A paragraph critically reviewing the article you identified.
 An explanation of what side, if any, you take in the debate, incorporating learning from the module. If you did not take a side, explain why.
Please note:
• Word counts: Submissions that range from 10% below to 10% above the recommended word count are acceptable. Students should recognise that assignment submissions that fall outside these parameters may be marked down, since the quality of the assignment is likely to suffer accordingly.
• All citations in your Final Project should be supported with appropriate literature sources. These should appear in Harvard format in a References section at the end of your paper.
Additional Guidance
The assessment criteria (rubrics) for each of the graded elements of the Final Project are available with other module rubrics and can be accessed by clicking the Rubrics button at the top of the Module Home page.
Please contact your Module Faculty Member if you have any additional questions about the Final Project.
Assessment and Grading
The Final Project accounts for 80% of your grade for this module. This 80% is further broken down as follows:
Strategic Marketing Plan (6,000 words)
• Section 1: Situational Analysis (25%)
• Section 2: Marketing Plan (40%)
• Section 3: Critical review of a current debate in marketing and brand management (25%)
• Writing and presentation style (10%)
The Final Project is due the last day of this module.
To complete your Final Project, do the following:
• Please submit in one Word document Sections 1 through 3 to the Final Project Part 1 Turnitin submission link in the Final Project area on the Module Menu.