Chapter 2 – Strategic Planning & The Marketing Environment
2.5 Discussion Questions and Activities
REVIEW QUESTIONS
- What factors in the external environment are affecting the “Big Three” U.S. automobile manufacturers?
- What are some examples of Walmart’s strengths?
- Suppose you work for a major hotel chain. Using Porter’s five forces model, explain what you need to consider with regard to each force.
- How do product development strategies differ from market development strategies?
- Explain why some strategies work for some companies but not others.
- What factors do companies entering foreign markets need to consider?
- How do franchising and licensing strategies differ?
- What different levels of planning can organizations utilize?
- Give an example and explain how a corporation that wants to help protect the environment can do so at its corporate, business, and functional levels.
- How would you classify a product that has a low market share in a growing market?
- What does it mean to hold market share?
- What factors are used as the basis for analyzing businesses and brands using the BCG approach?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- Explain how a marketing objective differs from a marketing strategy. How are they related?
- Explain how an organization like McDonald’s can use licensing to create value for the brand.
- How has PepsiCo employed a product development strategy?
- Discuss how conducting a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis helps a company (or an individual) develop its strategic plan.
ACTIVITIES
- Outline a strategic plan for yourself to begin planning for a job after graduation. Include your value proposition, targeted organizations, objectives, strategies, and the internal and external factors that may affect your plans.
- A mission statement outlines an organization’s purpose and answers the question of how a company defines its business. Write a mission statement for a campus organization.
- The Web site “My M&Ms” (http://www.mymms.com) allows customers to personalize M&M candies with words, faces, and colors and select from multiple packaging choices. Identify and explain the product market or market development strategies Mars pursued when it introduced personalized M&Ms.
- Explain how changing demographics and the social and cultural environment have impacted the health care industry. Identify new venues for health care that didn’t exist a decade ago. (Hint: emergency care services are available outside a hospital’s emergency room today.)
- Select an organization for which you would like to work. Look up its mission statement. What do you think the organization’s objectives and strategies are? What macro and micro environmental and internal factors might affect its success?
- Break up into teams. Come up with as many real-world examples as you can of companies that pursued market penetration, market development, product development, or diversification strategies. Explain what the company did and how successful you think each strategy will be.
