Nottingham Business School

BABM Joint Honours Level 3 2012/13

Contemporary Issues in Strategic Market Management (BUSI31138)

Assignment brief: group marketing audit

Introduction

For this assignment you are required to adopt the role of a team of marketing consultants hired to review your client organisation’s marketing situation and critique the current marketing strategy for one of its major product or service categories. Each team of marketing consultants should comprise a minimum of three and a maximum of four people and should select a product or service category provided by any organisation from one of the following industries:-

Pharmaceuticals Holiday/travel Automotive
Financial services Manufacturing industry Education/training
Advertising Leisure Media
Oil, gas, electricity Technology Telecommunications

The organisation that you choose can operate globally, regionally or nationally. However, in making your choice, the one thing that you must ensure is that sufficient material will be available from expert secondary data sources such as the Financial Times, MINTEL, and Keynote to help you conduct a comprehensive marketing audit.

Please note that this assignment is based on available secondary data. Direct and personal contact with your chosen organisation is strictly forbidden.

Task 1 (summative)

Your team is required to submit its findings in the form of a 2,000 word business report. The format of your report may include the following areas (although you can choose to adopt an alternative structure):-

• Executive summary (approximately 200 words not included in the overall word count) - a summary of the key findings from your report (NB do not confuse this section with an ‘Introduction’)

• Introduction (approximately 500 words) - short explanation of the task that you have been set - brief description of the approach taken to conducting the marketing audit with full critical evaluation of the analytical frameworks used - concise background details relating to your chosen organisation that will help provide a commercial context for your audit

• Marketing audit (approximately 1,000 words) - the key macro-environmental factors relevant to your chosen organisation - the key micro-environmental factors relevant to your chosen organisation - a critical review of the organisation’s mission statement - a critical review of the organisation’s current marketing strategy and marketing capability

• Conclusion (approximately 500 words) - future strategic directions open to the organisation - identification of the critical success factors

• Appendices - providing background and/or insight into the chosen organisation/product category and other useful descriptive material

Please note that the 2,000 word count for this report is an absolute maximum. There is no safety margin of +10%. So, you need to ensure that your report contains only the most important pieces of information. This is very much an exercise in developing your ability to focus on the key issues and communicate opinions clearly and succinctly. These are valuable business skills.

The above task constitutes a piece of summative assessment and equates to 40% of the assessment weighting of the CISMM module. In view of the fact that small group work is involved, all teams are required to maintain a workplan record of their progress throughout the assignment. This should be agreed, signed and included with your final marketing audit. Under normal circumstances, each member of the team will be awarded the mark that is given to the overall report. However, in situations where it is clear that one or more individuals have not made an appropriate contribution to activities, the module leader reserves the right to reduce the marks of the individuals concerned.

Submission