Marketing Mix

Marketing Mix
Assignment
Now, you will take the position of that company’s Chief Marketing Officer: the highest ranking Marketing executive in the company and seated, together with the CEO, in the Board of Directors. As Chief Marketing Officer you are required to develop the company’s Marketing Strategy for the next five years and identify the key elements of the future Marketing Mix required for implementing that strategy!
In your assignment you use the following structure:
1. Introduction
Here you provide a brief description of your company and the products/ services it offers. Be sure to include:
• Company name
• Mission
• Overview existing products/services and a brief description of their customers
If your company offers multiple product lines (see lesson week 1) you may choose to focus on one.
2. Marketing Strategy
In this paragraph you explain your Marketing Strategy for the company during the next five years. First you describe what you think might be key relevant developments for your company in the coming years:
• Are there any (new) technological developments related to the products your company offers?
• Do you expect new ways of solving the exact same problem that you are solving for your
customers (core value, see lesson week 1)?
• Do you foresee important changes in your customers’ preferences or do you think important new
customer segments are developing?
Explain these developments by providing clear examples and by using references to articles, news
channels or other sources (see Sources and referencing below). Your Marketing Strategy should address the following questions:
• What is the core value that your company should offer in the next few years? Should the company continue offering the current core value or do you think changes are necessary?
• Should the company keep its focus on the current group of customers or do you see new customer segments?

• What value discipline (Treacy & Wiersema, 1995; see lesson week 4) should the company focus on, and why?
• Which of the leader-follower strategies (Kotler, 2009; see lesson week 4) should the company select: Market Leader, Market challenger, Market follower or Niche player?
3. Marketing Mix
You may choose three of the four Ps of the Marketing Mix. Explain how you would implement these three Ps in order to realize the Marketing Strategy you developed and explained in the previous paragraph.
Product (/service)
What aspects of the existing products do you need to change in order to realize your Marketing Strategy? Do you need to develop new products in order to realize your strategy?
In your analysis, address the three product levels:
• Core product
• Actual product
• Augmented product
Price
What is the revenue model you use in your Marketing Strategy? Explain this by using the Revenue Model Framework (Meyer, 2019; see lesson week 2) and by answering the questions:
• who pays?
• what is paid?
• for what is paid?
• how is paid?
• how much is paid?
Explain what pricing strategy is central to you Marketing Strategy:
• Customer value-based pricing
• Cost-based pricing
• Competition-based pricing
Place
Describe what type of marketing channels (see lesson week 4) you would use to get the product to the customer:
• Direct distribution
• Indirect distribution
• Intensive, selective or exclusive distribution
Promotion
Now you have developed your Marketing Strategy and have designed the key aspects of your product and pricing, you need to think about how you are going to promote your product(s)!
Explain how you would promote your product(s) by using one or more elements of the Promotion Mix (see lesson week 3):
• Advertising
• Sales promotions
• Personal selling
• Public Relations
• Direct & digital marketing
Sources & referencing
It is important that your Marketing Strategy has a realistic connection to current and near-future events. You need to provide clear evidence of the existence of the developments that you describe. In the grading rubric (Appendix I) used to mark your exam, this is called ‘evidential grounding.’ Nobody expects you to produce a highly detailed strategic analysis that includes all relevant developments happening in the world in the next five years. However, it IS important that your Marketing Strategy is connected to actual relevant developments. You make this connection by identifying some developments that you deem important and by including references to the sources in which you found these developments.
You need to use the correct academic referencing style. See the Academic writing handbook and Plagiarism check policy file available in the assignment upload area.