THE MARKETING PLAN

Introduction

Marketing as a subject can provide substantial experiential learning, as we are almost day in day out bombarded with products/services that are marketed. We have till now experienced them as consumers. Now is the chance as part of the marketing course to convert experience to enterpreneurship. Marketing a new product is the apt way to learn marketing as it happens in the business world. Therefore this assignment is being designed in order to provide this flavour.

Objectives

The objectives of this assignment are

1. To get yourself familiarized with marketing plan formulation

2. To sensitize you to the various concepts of marketing

3. To experience the intricacies of marketing as it exists in real world

Methodology

Each of you in your core groups are businesses involved in only marketing (not producing) a product/service allotted to you. You need to understand the product/service market in its totality and derive a marketing plan to sustain your product/service as a business proposition. All the activities from understanding consumer behaviour to the impact of the macro environment have to be reflected in your marketing plan. The various decisions concerning the marketing mix elements have to be taken by you based on inputs and interactions in the real marketing world. Real world marketing information needs to be sourced about competitors both in the organized and unorganized market and through primary (field) and secondary research. The experience of interacting with customers and other intermediaries in Udupi and Manipal would be the basis for the (demand) extrapolation of your marketing plan for any part of the country.

Final Output You need to submit a report (a soft copy only; not more than 10 pages only for the product assigned to your group, font: times new roman 12, 1.5 line spacing with any number of relevant exhibits) that would cover the following.

1) Consumer behavior/marketing environment for the product concerned 2) Brief description of competing products available in the market

3) Demand estimation for the product/service

4) Segments, your basis of segmentation with reasoning

5) Decision on target segment (with reasoning) & positioning compared to competitors

6) Your channel decision (with reasoning) compared to competitors

7) Your physical distribution decision (with reasoning) compared to competitors

8) Your promotional mix decision (with reasoning) compared to competitors

9) Learning from the marketing plan assignment

Please come to any of us for any clarifications on any count.