Question Bank

MBA (Entrepreneurship & Family Business Management) Semester 3 Strategic Marketing

SECTION A

(2marks each)

1. What is the concept of strategic marketing?

Marketing strategy is defined by David Aaker as a process that can allow an organization to concentrate its resources on the optimal opportunities with the goals of increasing sales and achieving a sustainable competitive advantage.

2. What is the need of strategic marketing as opposed to the present concepts of marketing?
* Identify a gap that you can realistically fill assuming your research reasonably confirms that there is a market in the gap! Look at this from your customers view. * Take time and care in analysing your target audience. Exactly what are their wants and needs? * What are the competition offering? How do they position themselves? What are their marketing methods? * Ensure that what you are offering is crystal clear to your target audience particularly the benefits. Are they getting the message? * Avoid distractions. Focus on that particular gap in the market only. This approach should help begin establishing a foothold for your market position.

* Regularly review and monitor your strategy. Whats working well? What is not working? Are you effectively delivering on your promises? Do you need to make changes or adjustments?

3. Why is marketing so closely related to strategy and what are the distinct business advantages. Explain with examples from history.

Content Marketing Improves SEO Content Marketing Will Position Your Brand as a Leader Content Marketing Delivers Strong ROI Content Marketing Delivers Quality Lead Generation Content Marketing Fulfils a Desire for More Information 4. Enumerate the assets of Strategy and Marketing respectively. 5. How do you select business strategies? 6. What are the 4 Ps of marketing? Can you add any more elements to this, taking strategic outlook into consideration? 7. What are core competencies of a business?
The main strengths or strategic advantages of a business. Core competencies are the combination of pooled knowledge and technical capacities that allow a business to be competitive in the marketplace

8. Marketing strategy alone can make a success of any product the core competencies of a business can develop. Is this true? Explain with examples. 1. Critical to the success of a core business goal or objective. 2. Critical to the development or maintenance of a core competency or other source of competitive advantage. 3. Blocks a competitive threat.

4. Creates or maintains strategic choices for the firm. 5. Mitigates a significant risk to the business.
For example, if one partner believes the other is looking for revenue generation to achieve a core business goal, when in reality the objective is to keep a strategic option open, the alliance is not likely to survive.

9. Explain the terms Voice of customer (VOC), Customer value, and Customer relationship management (CRM). 10.Explain the terms Quality Function Development (QFD), Quality Management System (QMS) and Six sigma quality. 11.What does brand management signify in strategic terms? 12. What are proof points and strategic initiatives of brand identity elements? Give examples. 13.What do you mean by multiple brand identities of the same product? Give examples. (Not Got right answer) 14.What is product differentiation and product focus? 15.What is online marketing? 16.What is meant by datamining and data visualization? 17.Why is CRM and market research so very important in strategic marketing? 18.Write down a few CRM metric points? Start with the end in mind The importance of leading indicators Facilitate the buying process Align with corporate initiatives 17. What is segmentation in customer value terms?

SECTION B

( 4 marks each)

1. What are the market environment context elements a product faces while being launched into the market? Refer Notes : PESTEL ANALYSIS (External & Internal Analysis) 2. A close knit between Strategy and Marketing is the order of the day. Outline the elements of this close knit with a few examples. 3. You are planning to launch a new soap product to enter a market dominated by Hindustan lever and ITC. What are the key strategic and marketing elements you would consider for competitive analysis before you plunge into this business? http://www.jasbr.com/6-Key-Activities-for-Introducing-New-Productsto-the-Market.html 4. In the Product Life Cycle, outline the spend on advertisement in each phase through a graphic representation of increase / decrease. In case your co. and product is a dominant player would the above graph show a change? 5. Unique Global strategies are a must for any business who wants to operate globally. Explain with examples. http://www.bakermckenzie.com/doingbusinessglobally/ 6. What will be your general strategy when you want to compete in the market? Competitive Marketing Strategy will teach you how to:

Use new tools to analyze competitors and their reactions to your marketing actions Leverage your strengths from your customers perspectives Understand and analyze the competitive landscape for your products or services 7. What are brand assets? How do you increase brand awareness and brand loyally in a product. http://adsolutions.yp.com/small-business-marketing-center/localmarketing-articles/increase-local-brand-awareness http://www.forbes.com/sites/womensmedia/2013/04/16/10-ways-tobetter-brand-recognition/ http://www.technicallymarketing.com/index.php/2013/03/21/6steps-to-build-brand-loyalty-stay-top-of-mind-with-your-customers/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/yec/2011/10/25/7-tips-for-buildingbrand-loyalty-in-a-discount-obsessed-market/ 8. How do you classify competitors while doing competitor analysis for a given product range? http://faculty.babson.edu/gwin/indstudy/ 9. What should the outcome of competitor analysis? 10.What are social networking sites?
A social networking service is a platform to build social networks or social relations among people who, for example, share interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life connections 11.

What is an e-mail campaign? How effective is this form of marketing?

These campaigns contain appealing content concerning your product, and are targeted at a specific market. Electronic marketing is directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It usually involves using email to send ads, request business, or solicit sales or donations, and is meant to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness.

12. A websites utility is closely related to SEO (search engine optimization). Explain. 13.What are meta tags in SEO (search engine optimization? 14.How do Google Ad Words and AD Sense work in the marketing arena? 15.How can you make your passenger car website more effective and attractive? 16.What is payment gateway on a website? A payment gateway is an e-commerce application service provider service that authorizes credit card payments for e-businesses, online retailers, bricks and clicks, or traditional brick and mortar. It is the equivalent of a physical point of sale terminal located in most retail outlets. Payment gateways protect credit card details by encrypting sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, to ensure that information is passed securely between the customer and the merchant and also between merchant and the payment processor. A payment gateway facilitates the transfer of information between a payment portal (such as a website, mobile phone or interactive voice response service) and the Front End Processor or acquiring bank.

17.Product selection for development is closely related to core competencies and marketing. Explain with examples.
18.

What does Mc Kinseys 7S stand for?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKinsey_7S_Framework

SECTION- C

(10 marks each)

1. Airtel has appointed you to do a business analytics of their mobile services and suggest both internal and external environment improvement measures to effectively compete and dominate the market. How would you go about this task? No exact measures are required. The answer should be able to bring out the methodology and analytic procedures used for the above. 2. Bhima jewellery with nearly 35 showrooms in South India has recently acquired capabilities in platinum diamond jewellery integration so as to cater for the emerging trend in India while also eyeing exports to Western countries where this trend is the in thing. Formulate a market strategy and marketing plan in conjunction with the newly acquired core competency for India as well as for export. 3. Mary Ann is a talk show expert on the popular TLC TV. She has now received an assignment to create awareness among women in India on the legal and physical counter measures available to prevent molestation and harassment of women in work places. The market awareness campaign should be effective enough to attract advertisements for covering the cost of the talkshow with a little profit, and all this without damaging the brand value of TLC TV. You as the TV show facilitator has been tasked with helping out Mary in planning the product management and marketing of the talk show. Your market

4.

5.

6. 7.

planning strategy can consider online strategies also. How would you go about this? Enumerate the positive and negative effects on strategy of the following environmental drivers on a cosmetic co.: - An aging population. - Multiple income families. - Globalization. - Increasing per capita income. - Increasing health chemical control regulations. What is a strategic Balanced score card? Using the BSC method forecast the popularity of some prominent mobile brands like Apple, Samsung, Micromax, Google Nexus and Sony under the following strategic elements: - Brand value. - Technology. - Cost structure. - Entry/exit barriers. SWOT analysis is the concluding part of competitive analysis. What are the main considerations that will make SWOT more effective? While marketing a product a choice of weightage towards conventional and online media has to be made. In a typical case of marketing personal insurance instruments, how would you choose the right levels of the above. Also how do you use social networking sites, web sites and online web Advertisements to further your sales taking the peculiarities of the personal insurance business?

8. Hindustan Lever and its products are enjoying a dominant share in the market. What is the best strategy they should use to : - prevent competitive products coming into the market. - Ensure minimum spend on continuous market research and marketing. - Launch new products with the least product failures.

8. Product selection for development is closely related to core competencies and marketing. Explain with examples. 9. How can Facebook and Twitter be used for marketing products? 10.What are the components of an organizations internal analysis? How does it relate to customer value and marketing strategy? 11.For an MNC thinking globally and working locally poses a number of hurdles. Explain. 12.What are the common value propositions ( customer value benefits) with their supporting strategic elements used in business?

SECTION- D Mandatory: 1. Tata Nano

(20marks)

The Tata Nano was launched with great fanfare and it managed to get 2 lac bookings. However the initial success of advance booking was short-lived and all the bookings were cancelled. This predicament was almost accurately assessed and conveyed by Prof padma kumar to Tata Motors one year before the booking for the Nano commenced. Even after 04yrs of the Tata Nano being in the market it is struggling for volume sales. You would appreciate that during the initial phase of market survey and project assessment the right questions were never asked. In short the complete market strategy datamining and visualization structure crumbled. You are the Business analytic advisor for Cyrus Mishri, the new Tata Chairman. You have been tasked with analyzing as to what went wrong in the project

assessment phase. You set out to create a complete business analytic framework answering the following: a. Is there a customer segment for the Nano? b. If so who are these customers? c. Do they have any peculiar customer preferences which would enable customization of the product? d. What is the competitive position and market attractiveness of this product? e. What is the product support structure and CRM requirements to enable the continued preference of the product? f. Also suggest measures how this product can be relaunched? Note: You are expected to use a combination of analytic tools like Porter 5F, PESTEL, Ansoff growth model, etc to

2. Nokia Microsoft took over Nokia basically to acquire the brand value. The other obvious reason is the global SCM expertise which Nokia possessed eventhough Microsoft was in the mobile market for over two decades under the Windows Mobile brand name where they made no gains. Analyse the following: - What do you think are the elements in Nokias brand management which helped in building up a Global brand while at the same time reverse the whole process? - Put in your recommendations to Microsoft to build the earlier brand image in terms of brand awareness, brand loyalty, brand assossiations, brand relevance. You may start the analysis by explaining the brand and core identity including the brand personality. - With the above analysis can you make out the brand position and examine ways of improving it?

- Examine the elements in brand management for Nokia which could clash with the core identity while pusuing an all segment product strategy?

3. Starbucks Corporation
is an international coffee company and coffeehouse chain based in Seattle, Washington. Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse company in the world, with 19,763 stores in 59 countries, including 12,848 in the United States, 1,264 in Canada, 973 in Japan, 778 in Great Britain, 621 in China, 441 in South Korea, 350 in Mexico and 269 in Taiwan. Starbucks is widely known for rapid innovations in coffee beverages and related food varieties to suit demographic customer values. Starbucks now plans to enter in India and they have asked you to find the feasibility of their entry. Starbucks has asked you to analyse the following: - Percentage of beverage customers who prefer coffee with demographic preferences. - Segmentation of coffee drinkers with their unique customer values. - Competitive analysis of the present players (Caf day, Barista, etc) and the competitive position which Starbucks can achieve. - Suggested exact customer value proposition taking Starbucks track record of innovations into consideration. - Suggested brand management plan to establish brand awareness, brand associations for brand identity, core identity. - SCM systems available and which needs to be created. (Suggest a few supply chain specialists in India).