BU1108

Assessment 1 Guidelines
Julian Cheong
Due: 1st Dec 23, 5pm.
Submit on Learnjcu
 Assignment 1Briefing (30%)
• ASSESSMENT 1: DESCRIPTION
• You are employed as part of the Market Research Team for Digital Marketing
Solutions (fictional) which is a company that specialises in digital marketing for food
and beverage service providers.
• The first phase of the project involves you and other members of the team to visit
different nominated cafes and conduct a mystery shopper analysis of its operations
from a customer perspective. You are to interact with the employees while
undercover, in order to gather specific information about the products and services
offered.
• You will assess the café’s performance with respect to the 8 Principles of the
Marketing Mix (Product, Place, Price, Promotion, People, Process, Physical Evidence
and Partnerships). You are to produce a blog not exceeding 1,200 words.
• The blog should successfully do the following:
• Reflect on your mystery shopper experience in the context of the 8 Ps by showing
your understanding of the 8 Ps and their inter-related functioning
• Highlight an incident which can be good, bad or neutral
• Note: You may use the free online tool Canva (https://www.canva.com/) to produce
your blog or you may use Word.
 Assessment 1-Marketing Blog Elaborated
 Marks allocated - 30%
 Individual blog
 Word limit: 1200 words
 Imagine that you are a ‘mystery shopper’, conducting a form of audit/research
on the product offerings and assessing the performance (from a professional
context) given the 8P’s – Product, Price, Place Promotion, People, Processes,
Physical Evidence and Partnership
 For Assessment 2 & 3 Preparation
• You might experience several issues/incidents during your visit in terms of
people, processes or physical evidence or product etc – record as many issues
for each marketing mix as you can while at the café in ways that could be
positive, neutral or negative.
• Does this incident align with product, process or people? (For example, the
incident could be about food hygiene, this is a product issue)
• Did this incident affect other customers too?
• Can the café improve on their sustainability efforts?
• Can the café develop an app to enhance customer experience?
• Your records will also be useful for your next Assessments.
Marketing Blog: Additional Pointers

Writing style
• The blog should be written in a professional manner, not as a personal blog.
• Familiarities, jokes, clichés, contractions (eg don’t, can’t) are not acceptable.

• It is possible to format your posting with bold, italics, colour etc, but keep these to a
minimum to ensure a professional presentation.
• The marketing blog should be written in first person using “I”

How to get started

• You will be assigned/select the service product ‘Café’ that you will be required to
experience

• Once again, a substitute service product firm name will be used to label the blog (that
is the ‘café’). This is very important and NO direct reference should be made to the
café . Use only the substitute (pseudonym) service name.
 Marketing Blog – Additional Pointers
 It should also state the date and time of the day you experienced
the service.
 To make things more interesting, you can have a satisfaction
rating for:
* Service Marketing Elements/critical incident point
(1 very dissatisfied–5 delighted)?
* overall service experience (an overall final rating)?
 Critical expertise must show good use of marketing terminology
to substantiate your critique
 It is strongly recommended that you remember or take (subtle)
notes during the service product experience and within a couple
of hours document the experience in more detail, identify the
critical point and then over the next few days prepare the
marketing blog entry.
 Take photos but go easy on the photos too! (It’s not a magazine!)
 Next, presenting this semester’s choice of establishments…

5
 Café EXPERIENCE - SERVICE ESTABLISHMENTS
BU1108 Blog & Marketing Report Cases

Business Pseudonym Address Cuisine

Singapore
Toast
Toastbox https://toastbox.com.sg/locations/ Style Breakfast
Square
& Coffee

American
Swen & Mains, Ice-
Swensen’s https://swensens.com.sg/singapore/
Sons cream &
Coffee

Indian-Muslim
Springfield
Springleaf Prata (Halal) http://spplace.com/outlet Spicy Food
Prata
and Beverages
 Café EXPERIENCE – Selected Café ESTABLISHMENTS
BU1108 Blog & Marketing Report Cases

Business Pseudonym Address Photo/Cuisine

Erm…ice-
Licker’s Ice-cream Lick it https://lickers.com.sg/ cream…(and
coffee)

(Local Western
Jay’s https://www.jacksplace.com.sg/
Jack’s Place food and
Place locations/
beverages)

(Vietnamese
Little 511 Guillemard Road #01-26
Little Vietnam Mains and
Saigon Grandlink Square S399849
Coffee )
 If there a no Critical Incidents, please do
not create them!
• Do not pretend you cannot speak English
• Do not pretend to be very health conscious and demand
to know all the ingredients or recipe
• Do not be Fickle-minded and change orders a few times
• Do not slap the waitress for being slow
• Do not pretend to choke and die
(We don’t want to bail you out from prison or get you killed)
On a more serious note, grading/marking criteria in the next
slide
 Grading Criteria- Marketing Blog
(Extracted from Subject Outline)
• 1. Reflection of the Service/Product (30%)
• Outline the marketing issues addressed in the blog, application of knowledge
applied to the mystery shopping experience like the manager used the
servqual model well in pleasing customers
• 2. Applications of the 8 marketing mix elements using marketing terminology
in the service product context (25%)
• 3. Overall evaluation of the service product experience including incidents, if
any (25%)
• This can include the use of appropriate criteria to evaluate the café; e.g.
ambience in an up-market café, efficiency in a more affordable one
• 4. Convey information clearly and fluently (20%) (structure, style, syntax and
mechanics)
 Any Questions?

Email: julian.cheong@jcu.edu.au
If you have any questions