Select a topic for the marketing plan you will develop throughout the term. It must be a single product or service, not a system or process. Research your concept before you finalize your choice; be sure you can find adequate data to inform a marketing plan. Look for data about customers, markets, competitors, and distribution channels.  

 

the annotated bibliography to the end of your paper.  See the rubric for more information.

When you write your paper, address the following questions, in detail:

1. What is the problem/need the product/service solves or addresses?

2. Who is the customer, in demographic terms?  Be specific.

3. What is the customer’s psychographic?  Be specific.

4. Where is the customer located — what is the geography? Pick a place, be very specific, by zip code so that you can easily pull data. If you go wide, like a region, a state, a county, a country, you must pull data for this entire area.  Drilling down into zip code, or even a neighborhood within that zip code is preferable.

5. Describe the 5 Ps (product, place, promotion, price, people) at a high level.  You will further develop the marketing mix later in the term, but you need a sense of how this will look before you proceed. 

6. Did you find adequate data to inform your annotated bibliography? If not, rethink your topic.  You must have at least ten examples of solid data that proves your topic is viable for market planning in your annotated bibliography.

7. How is your product or service innovative? What does it do that makes it innovative? Note: your product or service must be an innovation or a major improvement of something that already exists.