Assignment 2: Marketing planning and mix development for the DSO

Description/Focus: Client evaluation and marketing planning.

Value: 60% of unit total
Due date: Sunday, Week 12
Length: 3000-3500 (max) Words

General focus
The assignments for MKT502 Clients & Markets involve a real life case study, which will enable you to apply your newly acquired understanding of marketing and customer behaviour to the development of appropriate marketing strategies and marketing initiatives, in both business to consumer (B2C) and business to business (B2B) contexts.

The Darwin Symphony Orchestra
During the unit the teaching team has provided you with insights into the Darwin Symphony Orchestra’s (DSO) marketing situation, its significant B2C and B2B customer segments, and some of the challenges that it faces.

Assignment description
In Assignment 1 you identified a specific B2B and a specific B2C market segment for the DSO to target. Assignment 2 continues on directly from Assignment 1 and moves to the positioning and marketing mix planning stages of the market segmentation process.

In Assignment 2 you are required to describe the behaviour of your chosen segments in detail using the psychology concepts and theory covered in the unit. You are then to make recommendations for the marketing mix that clearly build upon this understanding of buyer behaviour.

More specifically the assignment will:

• Develop understanding of the relevance of psychology, buying behaviour and marketing theory
• Help you appreciate the practical application of theory and its relevance to designing an effective marketing mix
• Require the concepts discussed in the course to be related to the marketing mix in order to achieve appropriate marketing objectives
• Help you to distinguish between the various internal and external influences that affect buyer behaviour and explain the likely responses to different marketing stimuli by customers in a specific marketing situation

Specific assignment tasks
In middle weeks of this unit (lessons 4 to 9) you are introduced to the key areas of psychology that influence and explain buying behaviour, with the last three lessons reiterating the application of this buyer behaviour understanding to effective marketing mix development.

This assignment seeks to reinforce your learning about the theories and concepts covered, understand their relevance to describing customer behaviour and apply them in B2C and B2B marketing contexts.

The assignment is flexible in that you can also choose which particular aspects of theory and the marketing mix elements that you wish to focus on. For example, you may take themes from all the core theoretical areas and illustrate an application from each, or you might choose to focus on just one or two areas in more detail. Furthermore you may decide to make recommendations for all, or just selected elements of the marketing mix.

More specifically this assignment requires you to complete a customer behaviour evaluation and make marketing mix recommendations for your:

• B2B target market (approx. 1500-1750 words max)
• B2C target market (approx. 1500-1750 words max)

To do this effectively you will provide a detailed description of the buying behaviour associated with your target customers using the key concepts and theories covered in the unit, namely:

• Buyer decision making processes and models
• Customer motivation
• Perception and the attention gate
• Customer knowledge and learning
• Group and social influences
• Personality, self-concept & emotion
• Customer attitudes

You are also required to make recommendations for the marketing mix that are clearly linked to and build upon an understanding of buyer behaviour.

Assessment format
To successfully complete this assignment, you should prepare a report that:

• Is a Microsoft Word document and not a pdf.
• Includes:
  o Title: “as per the assignment heading on page 1”
  o Student name(s) and ID number(s)
  o Unit title and code
  o Tutor name
  o Date
• Is well written and properly spell-checked and proof read.
• Follows the assignment instructions closely and uses the same headings. (If it does not specifically ask for an Executive Summary don’t include one).
• Indicates the number of words written in each section, as well as the total word count.
• Uses a recognized business journal style of referencing format such as Harvard or APA.
• Is 3000-3500 (max) words long (excluding figures, appendices, bibliography – please note that appendices do not contribute to the marks). There is a considerable amount to cover, so it will be important that you write clearly and concisely.

Submission & mark allocation
The assignment must be submitted on time via Learnline.