Question 1

Guided Response:

1. Re-familiarize yourself with the three main pricing strategies

• Review section 5.2 in the text as needed.
• Research actual pizza pricing

• Visit each site, identify your location and simulate an order.
• Price out a medium cheese or pepperoni pizza.
• Proceed to payment stage, observing the selling process.
• Record your pizza choice and final price (minus tax).
• Execute your purchase as you see fit.
• Note: One brand doesn’t offer online ordering. Poke around their website for an online menu or consult fastfoodmenuprices.com (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site..
• Create a forum post that includes the following:

• A brief description of the three pricing strategies (from least to most expensive).
• Your research driven price strategy classifications of the five brands.
  • For any pricing strategy where you have multiple brands, rank them from least to most expensive.
  • Include the kind of pizza you priced out, your recorded prices and any other pertinent notes.
  • Your classifications may differ from others. That’s okay.
• Your answers to the following questions:
  • Did your perception of these chains’ pricing strategies change based on this exercise? If so, how?
  • Based on this exercise, identify three factors that complicate price comparisons.
  • For you, which of these chains represents the greatest value and why? Explain how each of the Ps contributes to your answer.
• Reply to and pitch your peers.

• Price-value perceptions vary by individual. Respond to three of your peers, including one who selected a different chain as offering the best value. Customize your “pitch” to try to change their mind.

Question 2

IMC Campaign Stories

One Message, Many Media: Integrated Marketing Campaigns

In this interactivity, to examine integrated marketing in action, you’re going to tell the story of a particular campaign from your internship brand across multiple media. We want to know what unifies the campaign and how the unique nature of each medium is being utilized (or underutilized if you feel so). And we want to hear if you think the campaign is effective or not and why then answer a few related questions. So let’s dig in!

Guided Response:

1. Identify a significant marketing campaign from your internship brand.

• Find one that was supported across multiple media (e.g, TV, print, website, banner ads, etc.).
• How to identify and research major marketing campaigns?
  • Search the web or major advertising publications (Adweek (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. or AdAge (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.) for articles about your brand’s advertising campaigns.
  • Check your brand’s Twitter feed for recurring ad messages.

2. Find campaign executions for at least three different media

3. Create a new post containing the following elements:

• Title and subtitle
• Headings for the three media you’ve found
• For each medium, a brief description of how it is being used, focusing on what it can do that other media cannot.
• A final paragraph summarizing what unifies the campaign and whether or not you think it’s effective and why.

4. Post this information to the forum below

5. Provide feedback to three of your peers

• Do you agree with their assessment of the campaign’s effectiveness? What previously unmentioned factors contribute to your assessment?

Question 3

Finding and Targeting Your People

Geodemographic Segmentation: Finding Your People

Geodemographics is a common and effective means to segment potential customers. Leveraging both demographic (e.g., gender, age, income, marital status) and psychographic (e.g., habits, hobbies, spending habits, values) data, households can be classified into segments and the relative attractiveness of these segments for your product or service can be determined.

In this interactivity, you’re going to take a geodemographic system (Prizm Premier) and determine which segment best describes you. Then, exploring map data, you’ll assess how common your segment is for where you live and where you could live amongst more people like yourself! Finally, with knowledge of your segment’s profile, you’re going to suggest a promotion for your internship brand targeted specifically to your segment.

Guided Response:

1. Begin by perusing the Prizm Premier interactive tutorial (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site..

• You’ll note there are 68 segments. Fortunately these are broken into 11 lifestage groups that provide a more manageable starting point.

2. Visit the Prizm Premier Lifestage Groups page (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. and determine the following:

• The lifestage group and segment that best matches you
• How common your segment is where you live
• Where you could move to find more of “your people”
• How to do all that? Our step by step Prizm Premier Tutorial (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. reveals all.

3. Create a promotion from your mentor marketer to target your segment.

• Imagine you’re executing a targeted promotion. Tell us the product or service and deal that you will pitch your segment and justify its appeal.
• Feel free to package products or services together.

4. Publish a post to the forum below containing the following…

• Your Premier Prizm lifestage group
• Your Premier Prizm segment and the characteristics driving your choice
• The “popularity” index of your selected segment where you live
• The high indexing area for your segment that you’ve chosen and its value. Tell us what town is in your county that we might have heard of (or any other attraction).
• Your segment specific targeted promotional offer and rationale

5. Provide feedback to three of your peers

• Find peers who picked a different segment than you. Argue why their identified product/service would be more, equally or less appealing to your segment. Peruse their segment’s summary page as necessary.

Question 4

Green Marketing or Greenwashing?

As a means of demonstrating their social responsibility, many companies engage in cause or green marketing efforts; however, such efforts can backfire. In recent years, the terms greenwashingand cause washing have emerged to refer to marketing efforts that capitalize on the goodwill associated with environmental or charitable causes but reflect minimal commitment.

What to Do (and How to Do It)…
In this interactivity, you’ll read about Patagonia’s “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign and the cause washing phenomena. Then you’re going to decide if you judge this to be green marketing or greenwashing and how it impacts your likelihood to purchase.

• Learn about the Patagonia campaign.
  • In 2011, on Black Friday, the most important retail sales day of the year, Patagonia rocked the marketing world by running the “Don’t Buy This Jacket” ad in the New York Times and on the homepage of their website.
    • To learn more, read the “Don’t Buy This Jacket” Adweek article. (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
  • Was this a corporation putting their environmental principles ahead of their financial goals? Or was this just a brilliant way to grab Black Friday headlines and sell a lot of full-price product? Or was it both?
• Learn more about values-based shopping (and cause washing).
  • Read this Forbes contributor article: “Truthiness and Consequences…” (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
• Share your opinion on the Patagonia campaign with a forum post that answers the following questions:
  • Do you judge this campaign to be more green marketing or greenwashing? Why?
  • Would this campaign make you more or less likely to buy from Patagonia. Why?
• Respond to three of your classmates.
  • Find at least one person who has a different opinion than you on one of the questions and attempt to convince that person of your position.
  • Later on, in our optional Week Five Polling Place, you’ll have the opportunity to tell us how much more (if any) you’d be willing to pay for a Patagonia jacket versus a similar item manufactured in a less environmentally responsible manner.

Question 5

Art or Science?

Let’s be honest, the “art” side of marketing gets most of the press. Everybody likes to talk about that cool new ad they recently saw; however, this is not true when it comes to big data and the advanced analytics being used to evaluate marketing effectiveness and drive marketing planning. In other words, nobody is writing TV shows about a couple of quirky marketing data scientists.

So in this interactivity, we’re going to give marketing analytics its fifteen minutes of fame. Then, we want your take on whether marketing is more art or science and which side appeals more to you.

What to Do (and How to Do It)…

• Learn more about big data, marketing analytics, and successful integration
  • Read the Forbes article “Marketing Analytics Cheat Sheet for CEOs (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site..”
  • If you want to go deeper on the analytics discussed, peruse the optional Harvard Business Review article “Advertising Analytics 2.0 (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site..”
• Post to the forum below, answering the following questions:
  • Based on everything you’ve learned in this course thus far, do you think marketing is more art than science, or vice versa? Defend your point of view.
  • Does the art or science side of marketing appeal more to you? Why?
• No peer response required.