Marketing Plan a

Guidelines for Marketing Plans A and B

Marketing Plan A

Assignment 3 – Marketing Plan A is the external part of a marketing plan - what's normally referred to as situation analysis where you employ standard business frameworks to collect the relevant (to your designated firm) data or information and present it in a structured manner to act as a template for further analysis ( mostly in assignment 4).

So ideally after the vision/mission statement, you would apply the frameworks that identify key information on:

the macro-environment - applying PESTEL

the meso-environment - competitor and industry analysis: competitive arena (p61) and Porter's 5 forces (p63)

the external half of the micro-environment - opportunities and threats of a SWOT

Customer Analysis - STP and the rationale for the firm's decisions relating to why they picked their STP arrangement.

Also the PLC is useful in this section.

The analysis at this stage focuses on trying to identify key environmental changes that will affect your firm. The issues you identify then link - translate - coherently to the opportunities and threats and ultimately to marketing plan B. Referencing is needed when you discuss key environmental changes.

Marketing Plan B

Assignment 4 – Marketing Plan B then explores the internal environment of the firm..... Capabilities, core competencies etc.... or the internal part of a SWOT: strengths and weaknesses....... are they in alignment to deliver competitive advantage with your findings in assignment 3 - the external environment? Or do they need to be realigned?

Assignment 4 also analyses the current strategies employed to deliver competitive advantage......more specifically do they maximize the strengths? Minimize the weaknesses? Optimize taking advantage of the opportunities? And overcome potential threats...or do they need realignment in a changing environment?

Also do these strategies fulfil target market, target segments and positioning considerations?...