Detailed Guidelines for Marketing Project MM1

The purpose of this project is to provide the students with an opportunity to understand the
decisions behind launching a new product in the selected category. The concentration will be in
the field of product and promotion and will touch in brief on pricing and place. The product
need not be new to the world but is surely new to the company. The products/services have
already been assigned as per excel sheet attached.

PART 1
Industry/Competitive Analysis
o Define the industry in which you compete. The groups will start with overall industry FMCG,
Durables and will then move to their sub-category and finally to the project. Example FMCG to
Personal Care to Cosmetics OR Durables to White goods to Fans. The overall industry will be
reviewed for last five years, moving on to sub-category and then to the project category. Each
group should work out the year on year growth and CAGR on their own. Sources should be
questioned and students will put down their source next to the table and state their
assumptions. For services the overall category is the category itself. These groups may like to
look at sub-categories like Up to 3 stars, 4 and 5 stars for hotels.
o The forecast then has to be done for at least three years only for your category stating why you
are taking the growth.
o Market share of organized and unorganized for last year and projection for next three years can
then be done.
o A PESTLE Analysis and a Porters Five Forces Analysis will help you to understand the nuances of
the industry.
o Market share of Top Five players in the last two years should then be carried out with a
reasonably detailed study of their 4 Ps for FMCG and durables and 7 Ps for Service industry. This
will help you in understanding competitive strategies before you attempt to draw up your
strategies in the second part.
Performance Review
o Past performance of the existing products and promotion of the chosen company as also brief
financials to see the scope for launching the new product.
Consumer Decision Process
o The learnings from the Consumer Behaviour assignment can be put in here to see how the
customers buy the particular product in terms of consumer, decider, influencer and the whole
process from need identification to post purchase dissonance.
Market Analysis
o The learnings of drawing up a Perceptual Positioning Map has to be done putting down very
clearly the criteria that customers use to perceive the different players and rationalizing the final
choice of the axes. Please remember that we cannot take Price as one of the axes. This will help
in finding possible points of entry of the new product.





PART 2
The Process of New Product Selection
o Each group will then explain briefly as to the process of selecting the new product line/category
Objectives
o These have to be stated very clearly in terms of volume, revenue, market share and any other
relative measurement over the next three years. This will reflect the volumes and revenues that
the group expects to achieve for the next three years for the planned product/service.
Marketing Strategy
o All groups will develop a positioning statement for the planned product by identifying the Points
of Parity and the Points of Differentiation. The target segment has to be identified very clearly for
the new product.
o A brief review of the overall marketing strategy based on the study of the industry, competition
and the positioning statement will then have to be laid out. Serious groups may attempt a Brand
Positioning Bulls Eye as laid out on page 250 of the text book.
Action Plans
o Groups will then lay out the product strategy in terms of line extension, variants, packaging,
labelling, warranties and guarantees. Groups doing services industry will look at people, process
and physical evidence and not bother about packaging and warranties. FMCG will look more at
packaging while durables may look more at warranties and guarantees.
o The next portion will look at how brand equity can be built for the new product through the use
of the brand elements. It is not necessary to go into the Brand Equity models.
o The communication strategy will then be drawn up starting with the marketing communication
mix explaining the thrust across the major modes of communication. It will then move to
development of effective communication through the steps shown in Figure 16.3.
o Finally it will get into the 5 Ms of Advertising as per Figure 17.1.
This portion should specify the specific actions, when the action will be engaged in, which parts of the
country and the budget for each action.

The final plan will start with a one page Executive Summary which can only be prepared when the two
parts are ready. It will also provide an idea of the period in which the desired objectives will be met. The
final document should be a minimum of 16 pages and a maximum of 24 pages exclusive of the cover page,
acknowledgements and Annexures. The preferable font is Arial or Calibri (11 size) with single spacing.
All groups will be making power point presentations in the last three sessions. The presentation will be of
20 minutes with 10 minutes of question answers.

Total Marks 15
Deadline: Part I Beginning of Session 7
Part II Beginning of Session 14
FINAL Beginning of Session 17