Marketing: Real People, Real Choices 9th Global Edition by Greg W. Marshall Solution manual

 
MyMarketingLab for answers to Assisted Graded Questions.
 
1-21.      Critical Thinking The marketing mix consists of four interdependent sets of tools that brands use in combination to obtain a desired response from targeted consumers. Think about two or three key competitors within the same industry (such as fast-food outlets, fashion retailers, food/snack brands, and so on)—do these firms (or brands) structure their marketing in a similar or different ways? That is, for each of their four Ps, outline what you see as similar in their approaches and also highlight where you see clear areas of difference in their marketing mix elements.
 
This is a good exercise for students new to marketing as it makes them think beyond advertising and/or product offering and gives them a better sense of the scope of marketing. The challenge for the instructor lies in ensuring that students do not provide quick, superficial responses but critically examine the subtle differences between the marketing mix offerings. To initiate this process, the instructor should raise questions to the students. Which brands have more products (or more new products)? What is the scope of media that they have chosen to use? Do they have different retailers? Do they deal directly or online? Do they have different approaches to sales promotions and discounts? The answers to these questions should ideally progress into a discussion on how the various aspects of the marketing mix are interrelated. (Note: This will be more easily achieved if the competitors reviewed are quite distinct in their offerings or target different market segments.) Finally, the discussion can be extended to how different target markets might be more or less responsive to different marketing mix combinations.
 
1-22.    Critical Thinking Many consumers are concerned about the environment. They demand 
green marketing activities and more green products. Still, most do not buy green products because they are a few cents more expensive. How do you explain this? What are marketers doing wrong? Should government intervene? What are your suggestions for successful green marketing?
 
     Students can share ideas for successful green marketing to include ways to make others buy
     green products.
 
1-23.    Critical Thinking Consumer-generated commercials seem to be part of a broader trend  
      toward consumer-generated content of all sorts. examples include MySpace, Flickr
(where users post photos and comment on others’ pictures), blogging, and video- 
sharing sites like YouTube. Do you think this is a passing fad or an important trend? How
(if at all) should marketers be dealing with these activities?
 
     MyMarketingLab for answers to Assisted Graded Questions.
 
Ethics The American Psychological Association does not yet recognize Internet  
  addiction as a problem. Should it? Why and why not?
 
Student answers will vary. You can set up this discussion by surfing the APA website and typing in addiction terms in the search engine—articles and publications will pop up because of your search. Solicit suggestions for search terms related to addiction from students.
 
Ethics Crowdsourcing has a lot of upside—for the company initiating the crowdsourcing anyway. The company gets to generate buzz among its fans as well as generate new product ideas and inventive advertising campaigns for little to no investment. Is there an upside to crowdsourcing for the customer, or are companies exploiting their users?
 
Students can role-play this question, taking opposite sides on the value of crowdsourcing.
The “Wisdom of Crowds” perspective (from a book by that name) argues that under the right circumstances, groups are smarter than the smartest people in them are. If this is true, it implies that large numbers of (non-expert) consumers can predict successful products. . Marketers rely on crowdsourcing when they outsource marketing activities to a large group of people, often through a social networking community.
 
 
uMini-project: Learn by Doing
 
The purpose of this miniproject is to develop an understanding of the practice of marketing and the importance of societal marketing and sustainability to different organizations.
 
This task needs to be undertaken by a student team (with up to five students) and at least one student in the group should know a contact person in a business (the firm may be large or small). Step one in this task is to schedule an appointment with your contact and arrange for your entire group to both visit the business’s premises and discuss how the firm undertakes its marketing activities (please refer to the next step in this project below for a list of possible questions).