BA5702: Marketing Management

PROJECT ASSIGNMENT

The purpose of this project assignment is to provide you with an opportunity for hands-on
experience in analyzing and evaluating marketing strategies of a multinational, international,
national, or local product or service company. For this purpose, select any company that
interests you as an organization, sector, or both. The project assignment will have the
following mandatory sections of a typical marketing plan. Therefore, your company selection
must consider the project requirements realistically. That is, select a company about which
you can learn deeply enough to produce useful and substantive project report sections as
described below.
1.

Industry Analysis
In this section, you will analyze the industry of the company you selected. For
example, if your company manufactures detergents, you must provide an analysis of
the detergent industry.
The Industry Analysis section, at minimum, must include (1) definition and size of the
industry, (2) names and market size of the key competitors in the industry, (3) a
discussion of any differential advantages and liabilities of key competitors in terms of
product lines and/or marketing strategies as well as other major industry analysis items
as described in the text and discussed in the class.
Note that this major section of your project basically corresponds to the uncontrollable
and environmental analysis section of a typical marketing plan. Therefore, the section
must have a comprehensive and informing coverage of all the relevant macroenvironmental issues, market analysis, competitor analysis, and other related material.
Trends, opportunities and threats of the industry must be carefully outlined and
analyzed in this section.

2.

Company Background
This section will present an assessment of the company being studied. At minimum,
you must include a review of the company history, historical sales data, company size,
complete description of product lines and brands, etc. This section corresponds to the
internal marketing audit section of a typical marketing plan and your presentation
must deeply and critically assess the internal strengths and weaknesses of your
company.
Many companies have multiple product lines. It is your job to restrict the topic to a
workable level. For example, Sony sells over 100,000 items; you must limit your
project to a workable level such as a single product line like "TV sets for the
household use".

Middle East Technical University

Department of Business Administration

Dr. al
Spring 2003

3.

Marketing Strategy or Problem

In this section, you will prepare an analysis of a marketing problem facing the
company or a marketing strategy. An issue that involves strategy or any of the 4P's in
the marketing mix will work - a price issue, a new product introduction, a
segmentation or positioning issue, an advertising or promotion strategy, and the like.
You must present your analysis using the technical approaches described in the text
and in class to describe and demonstrate the marketing strategy or problem.
Make use of all the data sources that you can access to in identifying your marketing
strategy or problem, in elaborating on it, and in developing suggestions or solutions.
Your text, various case studies (in your text or elsewhere), business and marketing
journals and magazines (local, national, international), trade and industry journals,
company visits, the internet, etc. are some of the data sources that might be useful in
your inquiry.

The Methodology
You are required to establish teams of about 3 students for the project assignment. All
team members are naturally expected to contribute to the project assignment equally
and significantly. Different contribution levels of the team members may be reflected
in differential grading of the individual members.
The project assignment consists of producing a written report and presenting the
project in class.
The written report should have enough depth and be clearly written in order to
usefully inform the reader as you would strive to do in a report to stockholders,
investors, or management. You may use the traditional marketing planning document
format or create your own original format as long as it serves the purpose. The report
must be typed. There are no minimum or maximum number of pages. The length of
the paper will be determined by the substantiveness of the project topic and depth of
your analysis.
The presentation must be detailed enough to inform the audience (the class) and
provoke thoughts. You are requested to take about 45 minutes to present your project
and allow for the remaining 30 minutes for student remarks and questions. Be
prepared to react to remarks and answer questions. Use audio-visual aids as needed to
support your presentation.
Project assignment performance will be evaluated for the minimum criteria (as stated
above), added information above the minimum criteria, creativity and usefulness of
the presentation, performance in defending the recommendations on logical grounds,
quality of the bibliography, etc.
Project assignment presentation schedule will be determined and announced later.

Middle East Technical University

Department of Business Administration

Dr. al
Spring 2003