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MKTG 522 Week 8 Final Exam
1. (TCO B) What are the advantages of qualitative measurements when doing marketing research? What are the disadvantages?
2. (TCO B) Your colleague has been tasked to do market research for your company. Management is complaining that sales have not been where the company would like them to be (the sales are about 8% behind the projected goal). Senior management wants your colleague to find out why.
At a team meeting, your colleague shares that he has defined the problem, a critical “first step” towards doing market research. Specifically, he announces the Definition of the Problem as “Sales are down.”
Comment on the Definition of the Problem, as shared by your colleague. Do you agree or disagree with his Definition of the Problem? How would you restate the Definition of the Problem. (Points: 20)
3. (TCO C) The United States has been a “services” economy since the late 1980’s, at which time our GNP was focused more on providing services than the manufacture of physical products.
Marketers recognize that the marketing of services is different than the marketing of a product because of the different characteristics that distinguish them from physical products.
List these characteristics and demonstrate your understanding of what each means relative to services marketing.
What are some marketing strategies that might be employed with services to ensure positive results? In your answer, provide an example of a service to which your strategies would be utilized.
4. (TCO C) You are the marketing manager for Fujiwama Corporation, an electronics company (fictitious) that specializes in cellular telephones. Your company’s share of the cell phone market is 3.1% and you are listed as the #9 cell phone manufacturer in terms of overall percentage of the market. The market is dominated by Nokia (22%), Ericssen (20%), and Motorola (19%), with Samsung coming up fast from behind. You are considerably behind Samsung (#5), which has 11% of the market.
Your CEO has personally approached you and asked you to provide your personal counsel about how Fujiwama might capture greater market share with its product line. CEO Takano Chun is under the gun from the Board of Directors to show better profits.
“What do you suggest we do? The Board of Directors thinks we should be #5 by 2009. Is that doable? Come to my office next Monday with your recommendations,” says Chun.
As you go back to your desk to contemplate a strategy, what is the strategic reality of the situation in which Fujiwama finds itself? What strategic direction might it take with its product lines? To what risks might Fujiwama expose itself were it to go all out to gain that #5 market share position?
5. (TCO D) You are the product manager for a new disposable infant diaper (“Baby High Dry”) that absorbs better than any other diaper on the market. Normally, an infant’s diaper must be changed eight (8) times in a 24-hour period.
Your new diapers must be changed only four (4) times in a 24-hour period (We’re making some assumptions here, for final exam purposes. In this example, we are looking at the MATH…).
A comparison of the diaper manufacturing cost is as follows:
“Baby High Dry” diapers cost 40¢ each to manufacture and market. You need to determine a price that you would charge the retail store, as well as a suggested price they should charge their customers.
You estimate competing diapers cost about 25¢ each to manufacture and market. These diapers sell to the retail store for 55¢ each, and they sell them to customers for 75¢ each.
What price would you recommend charging the retail store for your diapers? What would you suggest be the “list price” per diaper to the customer? WHY did you select the prices that you did for “Baby High Dry”
What factors influenced your decision to set the prices that you did to the retailer and to the customer? (Remember that your channel members are in a position to promote your product. As you look at your pricing strategy, how does that strategy consider that which is important to your retailers?)
6. (TCO E) As the Marketing Manager for Cleanwipe Windshield Wipers, a manufacturer of replacement windshield wipers for automobiles and trucks, you are tasked with working with your channel members to help them promote your product.
The summer season is traditionally a “slow” season for windshield wiper replacement blades. What are some of the PROMOTIONAL “P” considerations on which you would reflect as you prepare for the upcoming summer season to help your intermediaries (i.e., channel members) move Cleanwipe products?
1. (TCO F) Edward Smeets is the new sales manager for Grunwald Instrumentation. He has just come aboard to head up a sales force of seventy sales professionals, all of whom possess at least a B.S. in a scientific field. Many have Master’s Degrees.
Smeet’s sales reps sell highly complex instrumentation systems that are used to analyze a variety of different materials in a variety of laboratory environments.
The instruments, sixteen in total, are used to analyze gases, liquids, and blood. Each product is very technical and customers expect their Grunwald sales rep to be very knowledgeable about the technical applications of their product to their analysis requirements of their laboratories.
Each sales professional covers an assigned territory which usually comprises about one-half of a state.
In some cases, the sales rep may cover two states, but 80% of the sales reps are within a two-hour drive of their home. The sales team has been divided into twelve teams around the country, with each team having its own sales manager and five to nine sales reps, all of whom call on a variety of customers.
Sales teams operate out of the same office, located in a major metropolitan area (e.g., Boston, Dallas, San Francisco, Atlanta, etc).
Sales rep turnover has been 15% annually the past few years and Smeets sees it as imperative that he do something about this.
Annual sales have been averaging a 3-5% increase each year over the past five years… but the corporate president wants more, complaining that your competition has been averaging 6-8% sales growth increases in revenue each year.
Analyze the sales force structure. What is the current sales force structure that is being used and what might be the limitation of the sales force structure that is currently employed? What changes, if any, would you suggest that Smeets consider to the sales force structure to effect increased sales?
2. (TCO H) New products fail at a very high rate, often greater than 75%. Demonstrate a graduate-level response that communicates your indepth rationale that accounts for why so many products fail upon their introduction.
Based on this, to what should marketers be sensitive when introducing a product that is new to the market? (Points: 20)
3. (TCO I) You have just become the marketing manager for a new line of DVD players. Your Fixed Costs (FC) for running your plant are $1,300,000 a month. This includes salaries, insurance, rent, amortized capitalization of equipment, etc.
Your Variable Costs (VC) per unit will, of course, vary. You have looked at your hourly salaries, your utilities usage, your raw materials used to make your DVD player, shipping, promotional programs, and other variable costs.
These Variable Costs (VC) average $1,634,000 per month.
Your plant is able to produce 76,000 DVD players each month (30 days per month).
Your price to your wholesaler distributor is $71.25. The retailer’s price (e.g., Best Buy) from the wholesale distributor is $94.70. Your suggested list price for consumers for the DVD Player at the retail store, e.g., Best Buy, is $129.99.
What is your Unit FC per DVD player?
Your Unit VC per DVD Player?
How many DVD Players do you need to sell each month to “break even”?
TCO J) The concept of a Marketing Audit is gaining acceptance within marketing circles, especially as a means to ensure that companies are seen as “above board” and “ethical” in their marketing practices.
Were you tasked with creating a Marketing Audit, what would be some things that you would want to consider to ensure that your Marketing Audit was well-structured and was “all inconclusive?”
5. (TCO G) As the advertising manager, you have limited funds with which to advertise. A critical promotional campaign is about to get underway and you are looking to maximize your advertising’s effectiveness.
You are considering two publications: Fortune magazine and Forbes magazine. Both will deliver the target market that you seek, i.e., the business professional, operations management or financial management, average income $90,000, college educated, and working for a Fortune 1000 company.
Fortune magazine has a paid subscriber list of 842,000 readers, with pass-along readership estimated at 2.16M. A full-color ad in Fortune will run $31,000 for publication in the edition that will hit the newsstand in two months.
Forbes magazine has a higher readership of 988,000 paid subscribers, but its pass-along readership is estimated at only 1.8M readers. A full-color ad in Forbes magazine sells for $35,300.
Money is tight. In which magazine would you advertise? Using that which you learned in your course, defend your decision and share how you came to your conclusion.
