1. Jacob Rhodes
BUS 338 Final Exam
December 3, 2015
Developing a Marketing Plan
1. Conduct a Situational Analysis
2. Determine Goals/Objectives
3. Begin STUP
4. Understand the Target Markets
5. Finish STUP
6. Make Marketing Mix Decisions
7. Forecast Financials
8. Determine Effective Controls
9. Identify Potential Difficulties and Risk
10. Implement plan and make adjustments as needed
Conducting a Situational Analysis (1)
 Start with the 5 C’s
o Company
 Evaluate what the company is doing well
 Understand what the company has as assets
 Figure out what the company is most known for
 What are the goals/objectives of the company? (2)
o Competitors
 Who competes with the company being evaluated?
 What is the competition doing well/what might they be doing better?
 In what way can the company expect competitors to react when a new product is released
to the market?
o Collaborators
 Evaluate who contributes to the company
 Understand who provides for the company and how the relationship with those
collaborators is going
o Consumer
 What are the needs/wants of the customers?
 Know the customers; follow up with customers
 What are the customer demographics, psychographics, behaviors, etc.?
 Evaluate customer satisfaction
 Customer Value Analysis
o Context
 Overall look at the economy
 Look at the trends being set in the market that the company can benefit from grasping
 Evaluate the spending activities of customers
 PESTNI Analysis
 Political
 Economic
 Social
 Technical
 National
 Industry

2.  Based on the information found from the 5 C’s, conduct a SWOT analysis
o Strengths
 What is the company doing well?
 How are they succeeding?
o Weaknesses
 What is the company lacking?
 What are they doing that is not working well in the market?
o Opportunities
 What opportunities are there in the market?
 What can the company use to their advantage in order to grow and create more strengths?
o Threats
 What stands in the company’s way?
 What competitors are holding the company back?
 STUP (3,4,5)
o Segment
 What are the various needs and wants that customers have that can be segmented?
 Identify a group of customers with similar needs
o Target
 What market do you want to go after?
 Consider market fit with what the company is capable of doing
o Understand
 Understand the target markets
 What motivates, what are the attitudes, and what sort of decision making are consumers
making?
o Positioning
 Where does the market stand in the consumers mind?
 Marketing Mix (6)
 Product
 Price
 Place
 Promotion
 Forecast Financials (7)
o Understand the company’s income, profit, expenses, etc.
 Determine Effective Controls (8)
o What does the company have at its disposal (assets)?
o Does the company have any investors?
 Identify Potential Difficulties and Risks (9)
o What could get in the way of the company from excelling?
o What difficulties face the company?
o What risks could get in the way of the company?
 Implement plan and make adjustments as needed (10)
o Identify what plans the company is looking towards and adjust those plans according to all
previous information gathered
Some things to think about when conducting a situational analysis;
 Use Complete sentences
 Don’t leave open headers
 Create a page break
o Make it look more formal

3.  Don’t ever put you in any writing that you ever do outside of an email
 Write the whole thing in third person
 Be clear with what you are comparing a company too
o Especially when you using the BCG
 Do not put ideas in a situational analysis
 Strategies and opportunities are different
o Has to be external
o Can apply to anybody
o Not things you can do
o Zero strategy in a SA
 Site your sources
o Just know what the source is and that they can find it
o Format does not matter, just be consistent
 Don’t be redundant in a professional document
 Every table, appendix… should have a name
 The table of contents should then be able to easily point to those things
 Everything should stand alone
 You have to write what tables actually mean
 Tell that there is a summary already done on a certain page
 Do not put the SWOT first because you have not talked about anything yet
 You have to talk about the finances
o Financial Analysis
 SA is data you analyze
 Have to do a customer value analysis
 Mention that you only did a sampling, not that you forgot
o State who you chose to evaluate competition and why
 Use headings
o Summarize
Becoming a more effective marketer
 Motivation
o State of drive
o What drives people to do the things that they do
o If you know what motivates people, marketing becomes very easy
o 3 facts of motivation
 Emotions
 Needs
 Felt deprivation
 Focus is always on a person’s primary need
 Specific needs:
o Need for arousal; need for stimulation
o Cognition; need for knowing
o Attribution; need to assign causes
 Psychographics
o Know who to influence and motivate
 Buyer, user, and payer is not always the same person
o Have a high tolerance for ambiguity
 Attitudes
o 3 dimensions of attitudes

4.  Cognition: One’s beliefs or knowledge
 Thoughts
 Affect: Feelings or emotions
 Feelings
 Conation: Fancy way of saying behavior
 Emotions
o Attitudes can be changed since there is consistency among the 3 components of attitudes
 If you change one of the components, you can change a person’s attitudes towards
something due to the consistency that the dimensions share
 Decision Making
o Figure out what people care about
o Figure out what each target the company is focusing on actually cares about
o Customer decision making process takes 5 steps
 Problem Recognition
 Every customer has to make decisions
 Problem develops when the customer feels any state of deprivation, discomfort, or
wanting
 Internal desire or motivation is not being desired
 Degree of discrepancy
o How you feel VS how you want to feel
 Motivation can be manipulated
 Information Search
 Mind is always searched first; which is a huge problem for marketers
 75% of the time, problems are solved without any external search
 Therefore, people have to be aware of a product and top of mind awareness needs
to be developed
 Past experience plays a huge part
 How will people search for your information?
 If extended problem solving is necessary, that is where marketers need to help the
customer
 You have to know where customers are searching and how motivated they are to
purchase a product
 Are customers using limited or routine problem solving, or is there more
involved?
 Alternative Evaluation
 What criteria is the target market using?
 Make sure that people are aware of the product you are selling so that it is at least
considered an alternative
 Know what criteria people are looking most at
o Certain criteria needs paid attention to more
 Purchase
 Just because it is intended does not mean that it happens
 Demand changes that
 After purchase; consumption
 Understand how the product is consumed
 Post purchase Decision
 Evaluation of the product
 Satisfaction is key
 Cognitive dissonance; post purchase regret
 If the customer is satisfied with a product, that leaves a great opportunity for
loyalty to be created

5.  If a customer is satisfied and loyalty is built, the next time a problem occurs, steps
2, 3, and 4 are skipped
Conducting Focus Group Research
 Never make a focus group quantitative
Focus Group Planning
1. Determining the purpose
 Most important: what does the client want?
 What are you going to use it for?
 What questions would you ask? Just brainstorming. Not literal questions
2. Identify Participants
 Develop appropriate screens
 The screens are the attributes, the criteria
o Always screen in the real world
 Look at the question and ask what is relevant to that
 Ask the client who they would ask and why they want those people
 The goal of the focus group is too get a wide range of ideas
 Never a random sample
o Do not apply stats to it
 Want diversity but not extreme. Not a polarized view
 A single category design is the easiest to do.
o 1 audience; Current customers
 The only time you will do more than one category design is when your goal is to see how these people
feel differently from these people. Just put them together if not.
 At least do 2 focus groups. 3-4 is the rule of thumb
o Do them until you reach saturation, until you reach the entire range
 Saturation is the key
 Ask the client who will be willing to participate
o Or go to an external research firm that runs screens on people willing to participate
3. Develop Questions
 Focus group should not last more than an hour and a half
o A 2 hour focus group generally includes 10 questions
 3-6 key questions
 Good questions should sound conversational and flow naturally
o Best way to know is to test them on people who does not know what you mean
o Clear questions
o Short questions
o Never do a follow up question in the question
o Say something really general and then start probing once they start talking more
o Always write out every single thing that you do for the client so that you have their agreement
o ASK OPEN ENDED QUESTIONS
o Start with an easy question for everyone to answer, look at people
o Focus group, not an interview
o Break the ice
 Categories of questions
o Opening question
 Do not give anyone power status

6.  Ask for facts, not attitudes
 EX.) Tell us your name and where you are from
o Introductory question
 Introduce the topic
 Get people to connect
o Key questions
 Most important
 The ones that you first develop and then backtrack
 Generally, 3-6 questions
 Allow 10-20 minutes for each question when they have a lot to say
o Ending question
o Bringing some sort of closure
o Summarize key things found
o Ask what you missed, not if you missed anything (Close-ended)
o Final question
 Ask for additional comments
 EX.) Stretch your brain, list 2 additional strengths that we have not discussed
today
 Additional questioning
o Use probes and prompts to elicit additional responses, on all questions
o No one usually wants to talk more so…
 Ask for examples
 Ask to understand
 Tell me more
 Try to get a story out of people
 Being naïve helps but do not be too naïve
 Brainstorming
o Write down everything
 Start phrasing
o Make the question right
o Read the question exactly as it is written
o Always read the question
o Avoid asking why
o Pre Test questions
o Keep questions simple
o Be cautious about giving examples
 You bias the question when you give examples
 Stand and stare at people until you make them feel uncomfortable and get them to talk!
 Only use examples after people have talked in order to prompt the questions and give
them the queue
 Sequencing
o Order the questions appropriately
o Ask general questions then follow with specifics
 Timing
o Estimate the time that each question will take
o Make sure that you do not have to many questions
o Your focus group should adhere to the time
 Always have back up questions but do not give them to the client
o You have them for a specific time
o Ask the questions that are most important first and if there is more time, ask more questions
o Give a buffer
 Not everyone is on time

7.  Reviewing
o Have the client look at them
 Testing
o Ask someone who has no idea what you are talking about and see if they respond in a way that
you intended
o If they say, "Do you mean…" you know that it is not clear and you did something wrong
4. Get participants to attend
 Ask the client
 Pay people
 Make it convenient
 Give an incentive
 Tell people way ahead of time
o Then always follow up the day before
Focus Group Moderation
 You have to record the entire focus group
 Use 2 or more devices so that it can later be transcribed
What to bring to a focus group…
 Discussion guide and guide for note taking
 List of participants
 Demographic survey
 Audio/video recorder and a back up
o Make sure it tapes 120 minutes and has enough batteries
 Pencils/paper
o Great way to get people to talk
 Name tents and markers
 Watch
 Refreshments (at least water)
 Coloring books/crayons
Everyone in the group should have their own note taking guide and a list of the questions
 Do a demographic survey
o Gender
o Age
o Occupation
o Year in school
o Ethnicity
 Focus group moderator
o Start with intro and easy questions
o Bring out quieter members
o Do not move on until you have enough information for that question
 Call people out
 Put the pressure on
 Moderation: Arrival
o Mingle with people
o Have survey filled out immediately
o Make them feel welcome
In discussion guide: FIRST THING
 Provide ground rules (3-5 minutes)
 Give your name and overview of purpose
 Tell them what you want
o Make sure to get everyone’s opinion on the matter

8.  Thank them for coming
 Say that it is being recorded
o This is completely anonymous
o Names will be removed
 Feel free to chime in
 I may call on people, I want everyone to participate
 I may have to let you have other people speak; make sure people speaking too much tone it down to let
everyone talk
 Manage the flow
 Encourage people to participate
o Do not rephrase the question or give example
o Be quiet
o Make things awkward
o Start calling people out after 5 or 10 seconds
o Do not feel like you have to say something
o NO ONE NEEDS TO KNOW HOW THE MODERATORS FEEL
o Let the focus group talk
 Say like ‘oh, okay’ or ‘tell me more, instead of saying ‘yes’ or agreeing
 Or say nothing
 Ideas to increase participation
o Ask people to make a list
o Have people rate the product
 Ask what people were thinking
o Ask them to choose upon alternatives
o Continue to call on people