Final Examination Questions - Assignment Example

Final Examination Questions

1. NIKE’s specific marketing efforts include a focus on a few products but with many options, premium pricing and the use of celebrities to promote its products (Bhutto, Brohi & Prithiani, 2016). NIKE is world-renowned for its sports shoes, clothes and equipment. For each of these products, the company offers variety to meet the specific needs of different sports. For example, the company produces and markets shoes for ice hockey, baseball, football, athletics and basketball among other sports. Thanks to its high brand recognition, the company is able to sell its merchandise at premium prices. The use of sports celebrities to advertise the products also facilitates the higher prices.

2. The traditional 4Ps of marketing are product, price, place and promotion but marketers have identified two additional Ps: people and performance. People are an important component of the marketing mix because they are the ones that consume a firm’s products. The firm must, therefore, understand and meet its customers’ needs through its product offering. Company performance is just as important because an underperforming firm may not be able to avail its product to the consumer no matter have good the product may be.

3. Of all the responsibilities and challenges of marketing communications, awareness is the most important as it is the beginning of everything. Until potential customers learn about a business and its product, the business cannot sell. But once awareness has been created, the company can start working towards getting the prospective buyers to buy.

4. According to the VALS theory, Chris is a survivor . He holds to the ideals of providing for his family and honoring his financial obligations. But he is low on resources. Hence, his resolve to work at two jobs to make ends meet.

According to the same theory, Bruce is a striver. Having been a successful restaurateur for twenty years, he believes in achievement though the loss inflicted on him by the hurricane has reduced his resources. Hence, his slow pace of recovery.

Based on the VALS test I took, I am a striver. I believe in personal achievement. However, given my age and resource limitations, I’m yet to realize my full potential. I aspire to be an achiever.

5. The gig economy is a term used to describe freelance workers and their employers. These workers are not tied to one employer and an official 8-5 work life. Rather, they move from one gig (or project) and employer to the next.

Some of the benefits freelancers enjoy are flexibility, greater work-life balance and variety of assignments . On the flipside, freelancers have to forfeit the benefits associated with traditional employment such as allowances and employer-paid vacations. Also, for most freelancers, work is seasonal.

Examples of jobs within the gig economy include web design and software development.

6. For you, the trendy youth,

Who wants to be the envy of your friends,

Our Samsung Galaxy is a smartphone,

That provides fashion and class and,

Unlike the iPhone,

The Samsung Galaxy is also waterproof.

7. Making a people’s shortlist entails listing a targeted market segment’s demographic and psychographic attributes with the aim of understanding them more intimately. It is an integral part of the segmentation-targeting-positioning process.

8. It is true that Copywriter and Art Director Will Garcia and Chris Avantaggio are good at what they do. Working together, they are able to conceive award-winning campaign concepts.

The visual cue in the introductory LL Bean commercial is a bored man looking for adventure outdoors. The background music in the Christmas commercial is done by the Gordon Goodwin Big Phat Band.

9. When Chrysler Corporation first introduced Jeep Liberty, a compact SUV, it was trying to appeal to the well-off, adventurous, middle-aged motorist. These people had likely owned an earlier Jeep model – the so-called “Jeep Enthusiasts”. Its rugged design lent itself to off-road driving. Unfortunately, by the then, the SUV segment of the automobile industry had become the most crowded with over fifty models. After analyzing its sales data, the company realized that the majority of the buyers of the car were younger, first-time SUV and Jeep owners.

10. Coca-Cola’s Dasani, a bottled water brand, is an example of a functional brand: it serves the purpose of quenching thirst. The Jeep Liberty, on the other hand, is likely an emotional brand, designed to appeal to “Jeep Enthusiasts”.

11. Occasion segmentation refers to the process of dividing a market into groups based on the occasions when they are likely to buy and use a product . For example, people are likely to buy more flowers for their loved ones on Valentine’s Day than at any other time of the year.

12. Apart from Valentine’s Day, demand for cut flowers is highest in the USA around such holidays as Thanksgiving and Mothers’ Day.

13. The Portland Harbor Hotel has three unique offers that make it stand out from its competitors: an Art Indulgence Package, BluFin Sunrise and Shopping State of Mind . Guests can visit museums, galleries and artists’ boutiques, all located walking distances from the hotel. BluFin Sunrise is the hotel’s name for their breakfast in bed. The hotel is located in a neighborhood renowned for its high-end shops carrying globally recognized brands.

A large online travel agent (OTA) can provide a hotel with the much-needed exposure, especially if the hotel is little known . OTAs can also enable a hotel to “sneak” opaque and bundled offers to the customer. Opaque offers are heavily discounted rates but ones that do not disclose the hotel offering them until after the purchase is made. In a bundled rate, the booking is offered as a package but the buyer only sees the total price. They have no way of telling how much each component of the package – such as accommodation, meals and transport – costs. Both strategies allow hotels to maintain occupancy rates in difficult times without diluting their brands. On the negative side, OTAs’ high commissions – 15-30% - can erode a hotel’s profit margins. Moreover, increasingly, OTAs’ are offering their loyalty programs, placing them in direct competition with hotels many of which depend on the strategy to maintain profitability.

14. As far as media habits are concerned, “forward leaning” audiences want to create and interact with content unlike their “back leaning” counterparts that are satisfied with just consuming information .

15. In 2012, Coca-Cola found an unapproved fungicide in one of its orange juices . At the time, the company had two orange juice brands: Minute Maid and Simply Juice. It did not close which of the two was affected. To control the damage, the company took to social media to assure its consumers that all was okay. It also briefed the federal government about the incident.

Aetna Inc., an American medical insurance company, is one of the many businesses reaching out to their communities and impacting them positively . Since 2002, the company has been implementing measures to address inequality in access to healthcare. For example, the company participated actively in the 2009/10 healthcare reforms that culminated in Obamacare.

16. Recently I took part in a consumer promotion run by a HTC dealer. HTC Corporation is the Taiwan-headquartered manufacturer of consumer electronics. I participated because the dealer was selling the HTC One (M8) smartphone at a heavily discounted price.

17. Land Rover’s Range Rover Evoque is an example of a unique brand that has been emulated. A Chinese automaker displayed the Landwind X7, the former’s copycat, at the Guangzhou motor show 2017 to the outrage of the original car’s enthusiasts . Chinese copycat cars have been around for some years now yet, like most Western automakers, Land Rover is still struggling to find a permanent solution to the problem. In the meantime, the company has resorted to holding back its concept cars for as long as possible to at least delay replicas.

18. I visited three HTC smartphone dealers in the city. No significant differences were discovered except that one of them was running a promotion. All the shops displayed the phones conspicuously thanks to glass windows. In all the shops, in-shop salespeople were on standby to guide customers through the wide range of the product.

19. Recently, I was exposed to a CIEE Road Show, a student hiring event targeted at large employers. The event was organized by the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE), an NGO that promotes international education and exchange. I did not learn much about the event or the CIEE brand as I was in a hurry.

20. ESPN’s recent lay-off of 150 staffers was necessitated by the company’s switch to digital TV and rising costs of covering live events . Also, in the last six years, the company has lost over 10 million cable TV subscribers, resulting in reduced revenue. Many of those subscribers have migrated to the free digital TV.