MARKETING & NEW MEDIA STRATEGY
WEEK 3 & 4
Week 3 Discussion Board
Discussion question assignment (40 points): Post Topic questions to the discussion board by 11:59 pm, CST on Day 5 (Friday). In addition, respond to two peers by 11:59 pm, CST on Day 7 (Sunday). You must create a thread in order to view your fellow students’ posts. Responses to discussion question topics should be a minimum of 250 words.
A large, Boston-based consulting agency frequently conducts segmentation studies for its clients. The following are segmentation data to assist their advice to two different clients. Each is a Venn diagram describing some demographic and psychographic findings. Figure A depicts the proportion of a recent sample of shoppers at a national grocer who indicated interest in a new gourmet Lean Cuisine product. Figure B depicts the proportion of owners of a game console (obtained from registration cards of the base system) who indicated interest in a new game.
Please review the Segmentation Data. If you worked at this consulting agency, which segments would you suggest each client target, and why?
Please review the Chapter 05.ppt presentation. If you were to create a perceptual map for the product category of watches, what two “key” attributes should you include to illustrate both the similarities and differences among the brands? Make sure to include a minimum of 4 brand name watches in your chart and your analysis.
Find a company that is struggling. Why do you think it is struggling? Where is it in the positioning matrix? Could the company be more successful if it changed any of its Ps (e.g., to head to the low/ low/ low/ low or high/ high/ high/ high cells)? Why?
Write a position statement for yourself to convince your favorite company to hire you.
Week 4 Discussion Board
Discussion question assignment (40 Points): Post Topic questions to the discussion board by 11:59 pm, CST on Day 5 (Friday). In addition, respond to two peers by 11:59 pm, CST on Day 7 (Sunday). You must create a thread in order to view your fellow students’ posts. Responses to discussion question topics should be a minimum of 250 words.
A classic Sloan Management Review article by Schlesinger and Heskett, titled, “Breaking the Cycle of Failure in Services” teaches us that customer satisfaction depends on a number of things, including employee satisfaction. They basically say, if you were smart to be selective in hiring, and you try to enrich your employees by training them well, and keep them happy by paying them well and giving them other perks, they’ll stay with your firm. Their staying is important because they know the company and the brand, and whenever customers have questions, the employees can answer them fully. Similarly, if the customer has a problem, the employees are better able to help the customer and fix the problem. The customer service is good, and the customers go away happy, which also makes the employees happy, etc.
In contrast, imagine a “cycle of failure”… if you hire people without much screening, train and pay them minimally, they’re not likely to give a hoot about your brand or customers. The customers will pick up on this attitude. The employees are also going to be less likely to be motivated to “go above and beyond the call” to make the customers happy, and indeed, the customers are likely to leave being dissatisfied, or at least unimpressed.
QUESTIONS
What if you are in such a “cycle of failure”, how do you break it?
Imagine you are the Chief Marketing Officer for a chain of department stores whose reputation for service is very poor. How do you intervene? Do you start paying your people more, hoping to make them happy? (But they were hired haphazardly and may not be “worth” it.)
Do you fire your current employees in order to start over (could be a potential lawsuit or social media nightmare)?
Below is a simple version of the cycle. Where would you break in to fix it?