Group Marketing Plan
The marketing plan is a semester-long group project. Your group will develop a marketing plan and create sample creative materials (ads, promotional brochures, social media messages) as needed. To create your plan, you will choose from a list of different marketing plan topics for a business or a nonprofit organization.
Group Setup
Students will be randomly assigned to a group in Lesson 2. Once the groups are formed, your group should decide which marketing plan you would like to work on. Once the decision is made, have one of your group members as the group leader, submit the chosen topic on behalf of your group by the end of Lesson 3. The marketing plan selection is on a first-come, first-served basis. If your group is interested in a topic that another group has already signed up, you can negotiate to change the title. However, you will need to inform the instructor no later than the end of Lesson 4.
For both case analysis assignment and marketing plan project, I urge you to make use of databases available through Penn State Libraries. You can access these databases from your home and/or office. The most important databases for our purpose are PROQUEST and ABI-INFORM. For industry level analysis, consult the Economic Intelligence Unit reports. In both case analysis and strategic marketing plan development, you are expected to integrate concepts and techniques of strategic marketing in text body.
Also, to help you with the development of a strategic marketing plan, please consult with the Marketing Plan Worksheet (Ferrell and Hartline, 2014). This is a very useful framework to be used.
Marketing Plan Topics
There will be seven marketing plan titles:
- Development of a Strategic Marketing Plan to Re-vitalize Downtown Middletown Businesses
- Development of a Strategic Marketing Plan for Harrisburg International Airport (HIA) to Improve Performance
- Positioning Harrisburg-York-Lancaster Triangle as a Place for Investment
- Marketing of the Amish County as a Viable Tourism Destination
- Development of a Strategic Marketing Plan for Hershey Entertainment
- Development of Strategic Marketing Planning for Pennsylvania Companies after Covid 2019 Epidemic
- Investigation of Household Energy Consumption Behavior in the State of Pennsylvania
Once the groups have been formed, you can see the current groups where you are enrolled using the Global Navigation Menu. You can start discussions within your group in Canvas. I suggest that you first introduce yourself to your other group members. Provide a little bit of background information about yourself and your time availabilities.
Group Ground Rules
Group Ground Rules
Here are some general guidelines for working in groups:
- Set up ground rules. As a group, you should have a shared understanding of expected behaviors and attitudes and of how you would like to collaborate and interact with each other within the group.
- Successful group work relies on truthfulness. Each group member is expected to follow a strong work ethic; all the group members should be responsible for the entire finished product. Therefore, if there is plagiarism, everyone shares the guilt. Here is a resource for you to understand more about plagiarism and how to use information correctly without plagiarizing it:
- Try to distribute the workload evenly; do your best to make sure that everyone puts in the same amount of effort.
- For group discussions, be prepared, start and end on time, participate in the dialogue, keep notes of your engagement and the discussion, value the diversity of opinions, and be open to new ideas and perspectives.
- Constructive feedback is helpful to classmates, but be sure to restate the issue and compliment the opinion by keeping the exchange on a positive track despite differences (especially when you disagree).
- Expect differences. As you work on the course and case questions, you will naturally and regularly encounter different perspectives. This is a common experience. Many management teams regularly dispute the nature of problems, the plan for addressing them, and the expected outcomes.
- Regarding conflict resolution, review Conflict Management by iStudy for Success!
- Some uncontrollable and unforeseen situations may occur. How would your group deal with the following situations:
- What if some of the group members drop this course in the middle of the semester?
- What if some group members fail to submit their portion of the assignment on time?
- What if you find out that some of the group members submitted plagiarized work?
- What if it is impossible to balance the workload?
- What if you find that you are perceived as too demanding or not putting in enough effort?
- What if one of the group members fails to communicate an emergency situation in a timely manner, which affects their submission?
- What if you submit a post and wait for the responses from your group members, but no one responds in a day or two?
- What if you perceive an email from one group member as hostile?
- What if the Canvas system is down, and there is no way for you to communicate via Canvas?
Think about those guidelines and situations. Discuss some ground rules within your group regarding how your group will successfully complete all the group tasks throughout the semester, especially who will do what at what time and how. Please also discuss how you will communicate with each other and how you will manage possible conflicts, as well as the possible consequences associated with incomplete work.
References
Ferrell, O. C., & Hartline, M. D. (2014). Marketing Strategy: Text and Cases (6th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western, Cengage Learning. (Note: The marketing plan worksheet is adopted from the older edition of the textbook).
