COB.300  timeline   -  Spring.2000

COB.300D - The Marketing Dimension

Mr. Bob McMillen

Office 446

568-8780

mcmillrm@jmu.edu

Office Hours: T/TH 10:45 - 12:30; T 5:00 - 6:30 and by appointment.

Required text  BASIC MARKETING: A GLOBAL-MANAGERIAL APPROACH, 13th ed by Perreault & McCarthy (IRWIN/McGRAW-HILL: Chicago, IL, 1999).

Welcome to COB.300, the most exciting and most challenging academic component of your education generally and your business education specifically while at JMU. We’re glad you’re here. You’ve made a very wise decision to enroll in this experience during the summer. It's a major equity investment in yourself.

Purpose  We’re going to build on the economics courses you’ve had recently by making application to business. Marketing is very applied: applied economics, applied psychology, applied statistics, etc. It also draws heavily on the fundamentals of accounting and finance.  And the marketing process must be managed well.  This will begin to seriously deepen your understanding and appreciation of how business works in our economy, which is, for the most part, a market economy.

Objectives There are three very important objectives we need to achieve over the course of this fall semester.

1. You need to learn and use the vocabulary that business people use to talk about business generally and marketing practice specifically. This is true for finance, management, and operations content areas as well. The vocabulary is the professional jargon. For marketing, much of it is intuitive, but much of it is not, and we need to learn it all so that we’re speaking the same language when we talk business.
2. Second, you need to learn and be able to apply marketing’s basic conceptual tools, just as business people use those tools. We’re talking about tools such as segmentation, target marketing, positioning, the product life cycle, breakeven analysis, ratio analysis, etc.
   
   Equally important, you need to understand how and why people with marketing responsibilities use information technology (IT) to think about and practice marketing more effectively.  We'll talk about this phenomenon a lot in this course, and you'll get some taste of how this is done.
3. Finally,  you need to understand and come to appreciate that the business disciplines in this course, finance, management, marketing, and operations, are interdependent. That is, marketing is practiced effectively in the long term only when it draws on tools from the other disciplines. People with marketing responsibilities must be able to prepare budgets, pro forma financial statements, calculate NPVs, work with statistical techniques, exercise interpersonal skills, understand how the organization operates, etc.

Process  COB.300 is a unique learning experience. We believe that you’ll share this judgment. There are lectures, and we make them as interactive as possible. But that can only happen if you’re prepared when you come to class, a feature of life discussed next.

Timeline  The marketing specific schedule of assignments can be found on the COB.300 timeline.

Responsibilities   You and I have important responsibilities related to our joint participation in this course.

    yours      This is perfectly straight forward: You need to do the work that’s expected as called for on the timeline and described in class. That work needs to be ready to submit or use as otherwise indicated at the time called for, not later, and usually not earlier. In other words, be prepared by doing what’s expected of you.

    mine      I’m here, and my colleagues are here, to help you learn.  That’s difficult if not impossible to do when the people we’re trying to help aren’t interested in learning or helping themselves to learn.   Business is exciting, challenging, and fun. Even when it’s not fun, it’s always challenging, and almost invariably interesting.  We want you to enjoy our experience together this semester.  We’re here to help you learn about and understand business.  Please help us to help you.  You’ll be pleased with the results.

Evaluating Performance    Exhibit 1 below depicts the composition of your grade for the 80% of this experience attributable to pure marketing. Exhibit 2 depicts the grades I’ll assign to your marketing work.    Exhibit 3 depicts the grade ranges for your final grade in marketing.

DELIVERABLE GRADING BREAKDOWN:

5% BENCHMARK #1  ASSUMPTIONS W/ SOURCES   DUE 3RD WEEK

5% BENCHMARK #2                                                               DUE 6TH WEEK

5% BENCHMARK #3                                                               DUE 9TH WEEK

85%      FINAL PAPER AND PRESENTATION

Professional Behavior   You’re a student of business.   Business people behave professionally because business depends on trust and confidence.   Your instructors work very hard to fulfill our professional responsibilities to you.   We expect the same from you.

Guidelines for Deliverable #1 The Business Plan

Guidelines for Deliverable #2

Potential topics for consideration:

1) Compare the two organizations in question.

Identify the Marketing mixes of each organization. Be sure to discuss the specific types of products/ services that each firm has to offer, looking for product overlaps (cannibalization of sales) and product complements. How does each company distribute and promote their products? Does one firm have a superior distribution system? How does each company promote their products? (Use of media, customers targeted, consumer image) How does each company price their products/services? Could this potential merger do harm to the image of one of the firms(positioning)? Be sure to consider all mix elements. Also, need to decide which products, distribution, pricing strategy ect... to keep or design a new combined strategy.

An exhibit depicting the company's product mix would be helpful. Include an identification of the various popular brands(brand equity).

How does each organization compete? Identify competitive advantages. Create a graphical representation of market share for each organization.

2) What is the intent of the merger or acquisition?

Is this a merger of equals, an acquisition? Which company is larger or in the dominant position? Reason for the merger/acq. - Is this a growth strategy or a way to fend off increasing competition?

3) Potential outcomes

What will the new organization "look" like? Provide a breakdown of the "new" products/services - which brands/ products were kept and why? Which markets were kept, expended, eliminated? Why? Provide a graphical analysis of the combined market share against the rest of the industry. Key question to be addressed - Will this merger/ acq. work? Why or why not?

4) Integrative

Provide numerous attempts to integrate the project across disciplines. Create "tie-ins".

5) Presentation of Information

The easiest five points to earn. Organize the report- Provide a professional appearance to it. Proof read for errors both grammatical and errors of fact!

GUIDELINES FOR DELIVERABLE #3    Global Business Plan

1) Market Analysis

Identified and discussed the nature of demand, prospective customers, and the size of the market, in quantifiable terms. Discussed the reasoning for market segments and target markets. Identifed market conditions and trend that support customer interest.

2) Competitive Analysis

Identified the nature of your organizations' advantages including added customer value, product technology, service, distribution network, ect... Discussed the competition and their advantages.

3) Product Description/ Positioning Strategy

Constructed a marketing mix(s) which fits the needs of the targeted markets. Properly positioned the product(s) with regard to the nature of the market (demand).

4) Global Marketing Section Write-up

Successfully integrated disciples and analyzed the impact on marketing by performance in other areas. Provided convincing documentation that the business would be a good idea based upon a country specific analysis.

5) Presentation of Information

Presented in a clear, concise manner without grammatical error. Well organized.