Prior to beginning work on this assignment,

Prior to beginning work on this assignment,

Read

• Chapter 9: Managing the Marketing Effect, Sections 9.1 and 9.2 of the course text, Principles of Marketing

Watch

• How to Use SWOT Analysis (Links to an external site.)
• The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy (Links to an external site.)

This week, you will be creating components of your capstone marketing plan assignment. You will then finish your plan in Week 5.

Using the company you selected for your marketing manager internship, you will complete a situation analysis with the goal of identifying a new product/service to develop your marketing plan against.

+Describe the selected company and it’s brand. Include a brief history of the company.

+List the core products and services the company offers.

+Identify the key current competitors.

+Complete a SWOT Analysis

+Propose the product or service line you want to develop a marketing plan for.

+Justify your proposal with a SWOT-based argument for why it warrants marketing investment.

+Describe the core product, extended product, and the product concept.

+Explain how you plan to achieve competitive differentiation through creating customer value in four areas: branding, packaging, support, and quality

The Marketing Plan: Product Identification and SWOT Analysis paper

• Must be three to four double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA Style (Links to an external site.) as outlined in the Writing Center’s APA Formatting for Microsoft Word (Links to an external site.) resource.
• Must include a separate title page with the following:
  • Title of paper in bold font
    • Space should be between title and the rest of the information on the title page.
  • Student’s name
  • Name of institution (Ashford University)
  • Course name and number
  • Instructor’s name
  • Due date
• Must utilize academic voice. See the Academic Voice (Links to an external site.) resource for additional guidance.
• Must include an introduction and conclusion paragraph. Your introduction paragraph needs to end with a clear thesis statement that indicates the purpose of your paper.
  • For assistance on writing Introductions & Conclusions (Links to an external site.) as well as Writing a Thesis Statement (Links to an external site.), refer to the Writing Center resources.
• Must use at least one scholarly orcredible sources in addition to the course text.
  • The Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
  • To assist you in completing the research required for this assignment, view this Ashford University Library Quick ‘n’ Dirty (Links to an external site.) tutorial, which introduces the Ashford University Library and the research process, and provides some library search tips.
• Must document any information used from sources in APA Style as outlined in the Writing Center’s APA: Citing Within Your Paper (Links to an external site.) guide.
• Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA Style as outlined in the Writing Center. See the APA: Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.) resource in the Writing Center for specifications.