MARKETING STRATEGY COURSE ASSESSMENT 1 The final date for submission of this assessment without penalty is 8 September 2009

Assessment will be accepted and sent for marking 14 days prior to the due date Late Penalty System 1. Assessment submitted up to ten days late will be penalized by 5 marks. 2. Assessment submitted from the 11th day will be penalized by an additional 1 mark per day. 3. The cutoff date for this assignment with a maximum of 10 marks is 23 September 2009. * Please note if the assignment is not received by the cutoff date you will automatically be deferred from the module and a deferral fee will be charged. This module is being delivered through the Manchester Blackboard virtual learning environment. All assessments must be submitted through Blackboard at: http://blackboard.manchester.ac.uk/. If you have any technical difficulties using blackboard, please visit our support pages at: http://www.studentnet.manchester.ac.uk/blackboard Submitting your Assignment 1. Assignments should be typed, 10 or 11 point font size (Times Roman or similar if possible) double spaced with a 4 cm margin on the right side of the page with the page size specified as UK A4. All pages must be numbered. 2. MBS Worldwide uses MS Office 2003, therefore any submission from a newer system should be saved using an appropriate format. 3. No more than 3 files may form part of any assignment submission. 4. Assignments may be uploaded once only; substitutions are not permitted and students should therefore ensure that the version uploaded is their final submission. 5. Please ensure you include your student number and the assignment reference in all submitted assignments and that assignments are paginated. Failure to do this may lead either to a grade not being assigned or being wrongly assigned IMPORTANT: ALWAYS RETAIN A COPY OF YOUR ASSIGNMENT WARNING: once submitted no substitute assignments will be allowed.

Your Task:
Part A: For the first part of the assignment, you are asked to examine the scope and activities of your own country of residence, or one that you are very familiar with. (1) Identify and examine the key social-cultural trends, including demographic and lifestyle developments that have taken place within your chosen country over the past decade. (25%) (2) Consider (a) a manufacturer and (b) a service organisation. From your answer to (1) above, choose one example of change for each provider and examine: (i) How this change has affected demand for the existing product / service. (ii) How the provider has reacted to this change in demand (for example, adapting its marketing mix for existing products / services, developing new product / service offerings, moving into new markets, etc.) (35%) Part B: For the second part of the assignment, you are asked to consider the organisation that you work for, or one that you are very familiar with. (1) Examine the activities (formal and informal; internal and external) that your chosen organisation undertakes to scan / monitor its marketing environment. (20%) (2) Using relevant examples, evaluate how successful the organisations environmental scanning strategy is. Suggest how this strategy can be improved. (20%) (Figures in the brackets indicate relative weighting or marks for all parts.) Useful References: The following provides some initial readings for this assignment. Remember, you will need to support your answers with a range of academic and industry sources. Albright, K.S. (2004) Environmental scanning: radar for success, Information Management Journal, May-June, p.38-45 Costa, J. and Teare, R. (2000) Developing an environmental scanning process in the hotel sector, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 12, No. 3, p.156-169

Brownlie, D. (1994) Organising for environmental scanning: orthodoxies and reformations, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 10, p.703-722 Kotler P. and Keller K.L. (2009) Marketing Management, 13th Edition, Pearson/Prentice Hall, Chapter 3. Levitt, T. (1960) Marketing myopia, Harvard Business Review, July-August, p.45-56 Pol, L.G. (1986) Marketing and demographic perspective, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Winter, Vol. 3, No. 1, p.56-64 Please Note: (1) You are required to write concisely to transmit the information and your analysis. The overall word count for this assignment is 3000 words maximum in length. Note: an overly lengthy submission will be penalised in the marking process. (2) The word count does not include the Title Page and the Reference List. (3) You must adhere to the formatting requirements as indicated in Point 1 on the first page of this Assignment Task. (4) Please note the marks for each of the four parts and ensure that the length of your answers reflects the relative weighting, as indicated. (5) In your answer, make full use of the range of material available in this module (including academic and industry sources [plus market reports and government data]). Also, provide appropriate examples to illustrate your points. We would expect to see a minimum of 6 academic references outside of the core textbook. (6) You will be required to reference the sources used, both within the text and to provide an accompanying Reference List (on a separate sheet). For guidance regarding referencing, please refer to the MBS Citation and Referencing Guide, a copy of which is available for you to access on Blackboard. Assessment Reference MS/July 2009/1 Please ensure that your name, student number and this reference number are detailed on the submitted Assessment.