Module 5 First Assignment

When we are discussing finding market opportunities for a company we are specifically examining possible strategies that involve a combination of either exploring new customer opportunities versus building with existing customers and developing new product or market opportunities versus working in existing product markets. These combinations lead us to one of four strategies:

Finding opportunities with customers is exploring new product opportunities with existing customers. Developing markets among current customers is expanding sales of current products with existing customers. Acquiring new customers is finding new customers to purchase your existing product offerings. Finally Developing a research program is done to create new products to sell to new customers groups, also called diversification.

For the first three of these four strategies that starting point for finding opportunities is looking at your current customer base to determine your best customers and then identifying key characteristics about those customers or that customer relationship that make it successful.

1. Why is this a very good starting point in creating business opportunities?

2. How can a company go about identifying their best customers? By that I mean what are the variables that determine whether someone is a best customer for your company? Is it just based on most money spent?

3. How is identifying best customer characteristics useful for exploring new product opportunities with existing customers?

4. How is identifying best customer characteristics useful for expanding current product sells with existing customers?

5. How is identifying best customer characteristics useful for generating sells of current products with new customers?

6. Finally the last type of opportunity exploration is developing a new research program which would often involve survey research. What is the best starting point to pursuing this strategy?

Module 5 Second Assignment

Related to the last assignment question, to create a new research program which is often necessary when we are trying to explore new product opportunities or new customer opportunities, we often create some type of research survey to help us identify answers to important questions.

One popular type of research survey that most companies conduct at some point is a customer satisfaction survey. It is important to understand what our customers like and do not like about us as we pursue long term relationships. Additionally it is important for us to structure those questions in a way that we ask the right questions about meaningful things that we can actually change within our company.

To have a better understanding of the right types of things that a company should ask, I would like for you to create an outline of a customer satisfaction survey for MTSU.You should use exhibit 16 - 10 from the textbook as a guide to understanding how to create this outline.

First, you need to tell me, who are the customers that MTSU should be surveying?

Second, state what your overall satisfaction question would be for this survey.

Next, list at least 5 important areas or factors that should be evaluated in the survey. For example, parking could be a factor.

Next, list at least 3 attributes or ways you will measure each of the 5 factors you have just listed. For example, to measure parking you could use numbers of parking spots, convenience of parking spots, paid versus free parking.

Finally, state at least one loyalty question that you would end the survey with. Understand that we ask to loyalty questions to measure future behaviors (like would you repurchase, would you recommend to a someone) so we have some understanding of the degree of satisfaction that customer has for us. Someone that would repurchase our product probably is more satisfied with us than someone that would not repurchase our product.

Module 5 Third Assignment

Integrated marketing communications (IMC) is the strategic planning of all of an organizations communication efforts around some central message strategies. It is become more and more important to successful marketing as the number of communication outlets through which we try to communicate with customers has increased. Gone are the day where a large corporation might show national advertisements on TV and in magazines that were highly coordinated and often completely connected and then they just had to match the salespeople message to those advertisements. Today marketing communications come in a huge variety of forms and target a multitude of different customer groups. Therefore it is critical to have a consistent communication strategy that integrates all these efforts across all the potential outlets and potential target market groups.

Related to this the complexity of organizational structures has increased to accommodate different employee skill sets and organizational needs. In the past there may have been a Marketing Department that handled all marketing tasks, but today there are typically multiple departments (research, sales, advertising, public relations, distribution) that handle a piece of the marketing tasks. Therefore a typical large corporation today may have an organizational hierarchy that includes and Executive Board, including Chairperson level employees, then under that organizational level would be departmental Vice Presidents, including for example, Finance Vice President, Sales Vice President, Research Vice President, Advertising Vice President, Public Relations Vice President, Distribution Vice President. Then under each of those departmental Vice Presidents would be the employees of each of those specific departments.

Does this current move to integrated marketing communications (IMC) require organizational structure changes to produce the best marketing efforts?

If you think changes are needed, tell me what those changes are and tell me how they would help to improve the marketing communication efforts.

If you think no changes are needed, how can the organization create a consistent marketing effort with the current structure that is communicated effectively throughout the entire organization?