This is a semester-long team project focused on developing a marketing plan for an innovative, INTERNATIONAL product/service.

MARKETING PLAN

(Please see Template on Blackboard)

This is a semester-long team project focused on developing a marketing plan for an innovative, INTERNATIONAL product/service. Each team will come up with one innovative product/service and develop a comprehensive marketing plan, following the template provided in Course Content. Although individual team members may take on certain management and editing task, all team members are collectively responsible for understanding and preparing materials for this assignment. Peer evaluations will be administered at the end of the course.  There will be a powerpoint presentation expected, as well as, a 20 – 25 minute video presentation (all members must participate in the video presentation and be Professionally dressed) of the your plan required.  There IS NOT a paper required for this project for this is a Marketing course and therefore, needs to have a more creative flare of presenting your work (i.e. YouTube clips, commercials, advertisements, Public Relations events, etc.).

So, to sum it up, you and your group are looking at taking your new product International, and you have to create the marketing plan to support your proposal for doing so.  (Please see the sample Marketing Plan posted on Blackboard under “Course Information” as to what is expected of the project and your presentation.  Remember, this is only an example, not the guideline to follow).

Step 1: Coming up with Innovating Product/Service

In developing your idea for your team Marketing Plan for a NEW INTERNATIONAL product/service assume you are presenting your product/service idea to the New Product Development (NPD) department of “your” existing organization.  This is not an “entrepreneurial” exercise, but rather a “marketing management” one consistent with the course title, Strategic Marketing Management and Innovation.

The organization you choose may be one that you decide to create on your own or as a collective group, you may pick one of your own/currently employed by organizations (only for background history purposes), but it must be an existing, well-known, and easily researched organization (usually one can find more information on publicly traded companies).  The NPD Committee of the organization has asked you to come up with an innovative, imaginative idea that upon further review can lead to a new avenue of growth for the organization in an INTERNATIONAL setting.  You are only responsible for generating the idea, and proposing the implementation of the plan.  Although, it would be helpful for you to gain a perspective on how the NPD process would play out in any well-run organization.

Keep in mind that the products/services ideas have to come from one of the following categories:

1. New-to-the World (new products/services that create an entirely new market)

2. New Product/Service Line (new products/services that allow a company to enter an established market for the first time)  

The really creative, “premium”, new product/service idea should ideally come from the “new-to-the-world” category, but your particular organizational situation might warrant considering other categories.

*NOTE: Improvements and revisions of existing products/services, repositioning, or cost reduction alternatives should not be considered.

To successfully generate viable ideas for your organization, make sure you first know and understand the organization and its position in the marketplace.  Start your research by looking at the existing services and product lines related to your idea and what other organizations currently carry. Consider the target market for each product and service line while thinking of the proposed new offerings.  There is no need to report on this now as your proposed product/service idea will reflect your understanding of the company and environment it operates in.  Note that you will also need much of this information in the team Marketing Plan you will be developing this term. 

In addition to screening your proposed organization new product, ideas can come from interacting with various groups and from using creativity-generating techniques such as Attribute Listing, Forced Relationships, Morphological Analysis, Reverse Assumption Analysis, New Contexts, and Mind-Mapping.  Ideas can come from interacting with others such as customers, scientists, competitors, employees, channel members, and top management. 

Customer needs and wants are the logical place to start the search.  One-on-one interviews and focus group discussions can explore product needs and reactions.  Technically oriented organizations can learn a great deal by studying customers who make the most advanced use of the organization’s products and who recognize the need for improvements before other customers do.  Employees throughout the company can be a source of ideas for improving production, products, and services.

Organizations can also find good ideas by researching competitors’ products and services.  They can find out what customers like and dislike about competitors’ products.  They can buy the competitors' products and take them apart.  Company sales representatives and intermediaries are a particularly good source of ideas. These groups have firsthand exposure to customers and are often the first to learn about competitive developments.  New-product ideas can also be gleamed from inventors, patent attorneys, university and commercial labs, industrial consultants, advertising agencies, marketing research firms, and industrial publications.

Step 2 – Developing Marketing Plan for new product/service – semester long team project

Teams have to agree on product/service selection and confirm it with their faculty. For the rest of the semester, teams will be working on developing marketing plan for that product/service. The template of the marketing plan is posted in Course Content.  Each week your team is responsible for completing sections of the marketing plan.