Updated 18.3.

2019

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MKTG 1418
Marketing Intelligence
Assessment 2 – Individual Assignment
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Due date to be handed in: No later than 12.00 midnight on Sunday of Week 6
Submission: Upload soft copy to Canvas and Turnitin

Form of assignment submission: Powerpoint Slides. Limit: 8 Powerpoint slides (plus or

minus 2 slides)

Weighting/Contribution: 30% of final mark

Learning outcomes covered: CLO2-CLO3

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PURPOSE

The purpose of this assessment is to require students to demonstrate competence in course

learning objectives CLO2-CLO3, by completing an individually prepared recommendation for
the most effective design of a research project that will address a management decision
problem assigned to each student by the instructor. It is due for completion no later than the
end of week 6 of the course, and contributes 30% of the total marks available for the entire
course.

TASK/ASSIGNMENT
Marketing research is typically conducted in response to a wide range of management
decision problems, and across an equally wide range of business activities. The nature of
those problems will often be impacted by five moderating characteristics:

 The size of the organization

 Its competitive positioning in its marketplace
 The nature of its product or service
 The nature of its customer market segments
 The nature of its management/marketing decisions to be made

In order to assign a unique assignment task to each student in the class, your instructor has
presented you with an individualized profile of the management decision problem to be
addressed, and the moderating characteristics that will need to be considered as you
develop a response to that problem. The profile assigned to your assignment requirements
is as follows:

Note to instructor & student: a range of alternatives is supplied under 2 tables, and these
can obviously be added to if instructors wish to emphasize any particular element of
management decision making. The scenario for each student depends on that student’s ID.
Thus, each student will have a uniquely designed scenario. Any student who cheats or
wrongly provides his/her scenario according to their student’s ID, will receive 0 mark for
this assignment.

Check the second from last digit of your Student ID. It will assign you one of the
following industries/brands:

Industry, Organization & Offerings (Product/service)

The second from Your allocated industry/company/brand is

last digit of your
Student ID is
0 Cosmetics/Sunsilk (a brand of Unilever) (www.sunsilk.com.vn )
1 Fast food/Jollibee (www.jollibee.com.vn )
2 Household Electronic appliances/ Kitchen-Aid electronic
appliances (https://www.kitchen-aid.vn/ )
3 Fashion/Zara Vietnam (www.zara.com/vn/en/)
4 Beverage/ (Sai Gon Gold) (a product of Sabeco)
(http://www.sabeco.com.vn/en-US/saigon-gold-1 )
5 Apparel/An Phuoc Pierre Cardin
(https://www.anphuoc.com.vn/san-pham/san-pham-pierre-cardin)
6 Bank/Techcombank (www.techcombank.com.vn)
7 Confectionery/ Henk chocolate (http://henkchocolate.com )
8 Pharmacy/ Slaska – a cough syrup – a product of the top
pharmaceutical company in Vietnam - Traphaco
(http://www.traphaco.com.vn/en/product/61-slaska.html )
9 Packaged food/ Mi 3 Mien instant noodle (a product of Uniben)
(http://www.unibenfoods.com/en/thuong-hieu/3-mien/)
Table A. List of industry, Organization and brand

Check the last digit of your student ID. It will allocate you one of the following
research problems/questions:

The Management/Marketing Decision problem

The last digit of your Your allocated research problem is

Student ID is
0 The company/brand wants to find suitable marketing
communication channels to reach Vietnamese young adults.
1 The company/brand wants to further segment their Vietnamese
target market into sub-segments so that they can offer more
differentiated products/services.
2 The company/brand wants to develop new products/services for
middle-aged consumer in Vietnam.
3 The company/brand wants to find appropriate distribution
sites/outlet sites for business development in Vietnam.

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 4 The company/brand wants to understand the customers’
perception of their brand positioning in Vietnam.
5 The company/brand wants to find out how an increase in their
prices will affect customers’ intention to purchase their products
in Vietnamese market.
6 The company/brand wants to expand into Myanmar, which is a
new and potential market.
7 The company/brand wants to evaluate the service quality in their
stores or outlets that sell their products/services in urban/rural
areas of Vietnam.
8 The company/brand wants to better understand why sales are
declining for one of their key offerings in Ho Chi Minh City.
9 The company/brand wants to measure the effectiveness of their
most recent social media advertising campaign in Vietnam.
Table B. The management Decision problem

For example, if your student ID is 12345678 , first check Table A, row number 7, you would
be assigned the industry/brand of “Confectionery/Henk Chocolate”. Second, check Table
B, row number 8, and the research question you get is “The company/brand wants to
better understand why sales are declining for one of their key offerings in Ho Chi
Minh City”. Thus, this student’s scenario is: “Henk Chocolate (in confectionery industry)
wants to better understand why sales are declining for one of their key offerings in
HCMC”
Given your scenario, by your student ID, prepare a Powerpoint slide to submit for your
lecturer/instructor to resolve the first few stages of the research process (See Assignment
Structure in page 4 for more details). Provide key points/bullet points of your answers in
your Powerpoint slides. Do not provide too long essay answers in your PPT slides.
Prepare a concise and industry-like PPT slide.
In order to do this assignment, you need to do some preliminary researches on the company
and its industry. You should know more about the following information before you complete
your assignment:
 The firm’s size
 Its products and services and their current performance
 The firm’s customers (B2B) and (B2C)
 Its market share or its competitive positioning in the market.

GUIDELINES
 This assignment is to be prepared by each student working alone, and no collusion
with other students is permitted. The assignment is due for submission no later than
the date and time shown on this briefing sheet.
 Comments made in the assignment should be supported by appropriate and relevant
literature references where necessary. Students are encouraged to use the RMIT
library services to make their own choice of resources that can be used in support of
their Powerpoint slides.
 The assignment should be electronically submitted to the Canvas site, and to the
relevant TurnItIn location, by the due date and time. Late assignments will be grade
penalised according to the conditions stated in the course outline and on Canvas.
 The assignment will be graded by allocation of a percentage mark, and contributes
30% of the final course grade. It will be graded, and results made available through
the Canvas site, within two weeks of it having been submitted.

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  The assignment will be graded as if it were a document to be presented in the
context of a legitimate business relationship, so its presentation needs to be succinct,
well argued, and supported by appropriate evidence. It must be typed and accurately
referenced, with supporting evidence drawn from textbooks, journal articles, and
supplementary readings.

 Grades will be adversely affected by poor formatting, layout, grammar, spelling and
any perceived lack of professional impact.
 You should then review the course resource materials that were discussed during the
classroom meetings from Weeks 1 to 5, and identify the key lessons to be learned
from those resources. You are to then use those lessons as a basis for a research
design proposal, prepared in accordance with the structure identified in this briefing
sheet and the guidelines presented below.
 Follow strictly the following submission and formatting instructions:
A. Name your PPT file before you submit as:
“YourCampus.YourClassGroup.Yourfullname.A2”.
- For example: “SGS.G2.NguyenVanManh.A2” or “Hanoi.G1.JohnUber.A2”
B. Formatting for your file: Font size = 12; Font = Times New Roman; Margin: =
Moderate.
C. The first slide of your PPT file should include the following information :
a) MKTG1418_ ASSESSMENT 2_INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT
b) Submitted to: your lecturer’s full name
c) By: Student’s Name: …………………………… Student ID:…………………
d) Your given scenario, by: Copying & pasting the relevant line from the above
specification to the following rows to indicate what allocated industry/brand, research
questions, and combination of research method you got based on your ID number:

Second digit from last digit – Industry/brand Example: 7 - Confectionery/Henk

Last digit – Management Decision problem
chocolate (http://henkchocolate.com )
Example: 8 -- The company/brand wants to
better understand why sales are declining
for one of their key offerings in Ho Chi Minh
City.

ASSIGNMENT STRUCTURE

Introduction & background: (approx. 1 slide)

This section should “set the scene” for the recommendations to follow, by providing an
overview of the specific situation that marketing research is being asked to address, the
company and its current situation that it is facing and some preliminary information that
student has searched about the firm and the industry. This overview should be based on all of
the relevant conditions as provided by the individualized assignment briefing assigned to the
student, and any additional data that is believed to be influential – in the absence of
necessary data, it is permissible to make reasonable assumptions of what may be the case.
The section should conclude with a clear and unambiguous statement of what is believed to
be the management decision problem.
The Research Questions & Research Objectives (approx. 1 or 2 slides)

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This section should provide a clear and well justified translation of management/marketing
decision problems into an equivalent research problem. The identification of research problem
should then be followed by a statement of objectives and research questions – what is it that
the research design will seek to achieve – and a supporting set of specific questions that the
proposed research will answer.
The Research Philosophy (approx. 1 or 2 slides)
This section should build on the research objective and questions identified in the previous
section, and firstly comment on whether this project might be categorized as exploratory,
descriptive, or causal research – this comment should be supported by a well-argued
justification. The section should then propose a research design based on either a qualitative
or quantitative philosophy, and provide a rationale for the approach thus selected.
The Data Collection (approx. 1 or 2 slides)
The final part of your report should clearly identified the process that will be used to gather the
data necessary to answer the research questions – what methods will be applied, in what
order will they be applied, and why has this approach been suggested. As this project will be
further developed through the requirements of Assessment 3, the report can finish here, with
no summary or concluding remarks required.

Grading Guideline & Marking Rubric

The work submitted in response to these requirements will be graded according to the
framework shown below. For each section of the required PPT slides, the assessor will award
a mark that reflects one of the five quality alternatives shown against that section. The
assessor may choose to award a mark that lies “in between” marks available for any quality
alternative. For example, where “good” work would merit 4 marks, and “excellent” work would
merit 6 marks, the assessor may choose to award 5 marks to reflect an overall judgment of
work quality.

Introduction & background

 Very Poor work omits any significant reference to the foundational elements assigned to
the student in the assessment briefing.
 Poor work fails to adequately describe the foundational elements assigned to the student in
the assessment briefing.
 Marginal work provides a minimal interpretation of the foundational elements assigned to
the student in the assessment briefing.
 Good work provides an adequate interpretation of the foundational elements assigned to
the student in the assessment briefing.
 Excellent work provides a well-developed interpretation of the foundational elements
assigned to the student in the assessment briefing.

The Research Objectives

 Very Poor work fails to identify a valid research problem and subsequent objective.
 Poor work incorrectly identifies the research problem and/or subsequent objective.
 Marginal work makes some reference to a realistic research problem and subsequent
objective, but description lacks adequate detail.

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 Good work provides an adequate identification of research problem, and a reasonably
effective statement of research objective.
 Excellent work provides an accurate identification of research problem, and a well-
developed statement of research objective.

The Research Questions

 Very Poor work contains questions that have little or no relevance to the stated objective of
research.
 Poor work contains questions that have limited relevance to the stated objective of
research.
 Marginal work contains questions that support some but not all elements of the stated
objective of research.
 Good work contains questions that adequately support all elements of the stated objective
of research.
 Excellent work contains questions that will clearly support achievement of all elements of
the stated objective of research.

The Research Philosophy

 Very Poor work omits any significant reference to either category of research or
subsequent choice of paradigm.
 Poor work identifies category of research, and subsequent choice of paradigm, but one or
both of those choices is inaccurate.
 Marginal work identifies category of research, and subsequent choice of paradigm, but
provides inadequate rationale for those choices.
 Good work identifies category of research, and subsequent choice of paradigm, with an
adequate rationale for those choices.
 Excellent work identifies category of research, and subsequent choice of paradigm, with a
well presented and coherently argued rationale for those choices.

Data Collection Methods

 Very Poor work fails to clearly identify the proposed data collection methods.
 Poor work includes a data collection programme that will not permit an adequate resolution
of the research objectives.
 Marginal work provides an outline of proposed data collection activities, but does not
adequately justify that choice.
 Good work provides a clear outline of proposed data collection activities, and adequately
justifies that choice.
 Excellent work provides a comprehensive outline of proposed data collection activities, and
persuasively justifies that choice.

Presentation (of the slides) and Professionalism

 Very Poor work contains numerous spelling, keyboarding, and/or grammar errors, includes
frequent examples of faulty referencing and citation, and consistently fails to meet the
expected standards of presentation.
 Poor work contains frequent spelling, keyboarding, and/or grammar errors, includes
examples of faulty referencing and citation, and generally fails to meet the expected
standards of presentation.

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 Marginal work contains occasional spelling, keyboarding, and/or grammar errors, is not
always accurate in its referencing and citation, and does not entirely meet the expected
standards of presentation.
 Good work contains no spelling, keyboarding, and/or grammar errors, contains consistently
accurate referencing and citation, and generally meets the expected standards of
presentation.
 Excellent work contains no spelling, keyboarding, and/or grammar errors, contains
consistently accurate referencing and citation, and consistently meets the expected
standards of presentation.

Rubric/Grading Template

The work submitted in response to these requirements will be graded according to the
framework shown below. For each of the assessable items, the assessor will judge the
work to be of a quality level as indicated in the column descriptors. The Framework shows
the actual marks to be awarded to work that is classifiable under each of the quality bands
– assessors may choose to award marks that represent intermediate points between the
levels shown below.

Assessed Item Very poor Poor Marginal Good Excellent Mark

quality quality quality quality quality awarde
mark d

Introduction 0 2 3 4 6

The Research 0 1 2 3 4
Objective

The Research 0 1.5 3 4.5 6

Questions

The Research 0 1 2 3 4
Philosophy

Data Collection 0 1.5 3 4.5 6

Methods

Presentation Quality 0 1 2 3 4

TOTAL MARK 0 8 15 21 30