Strategy and Positioning Paper
Shalee Andrews, Tracy Coutee, Twana Davis, Mitchell Guidry Samantha McHugh
MKT/421
12-15-14
Professor William Mc Intyre
W3/LTB 2,865 words
Learning Team – LTB - You seem to be reasonably well organized and have come together as a team although 1 team member did not contribute and 2 others only their sections which is not acceptable for teamwork. Each successive week working together as a team should come much easier - initial “ground rules” are sometimes difficult to get in place. Remember in the coming weeks that each team member is expected to contribute “equally” to the team effort. Just FYI …, this is not an assignment where a student can simply write his section and do nothing more for the team, and each week I will be specifically watching for this. I expect full team-work in reviewing every section, and helping to put together the final submission. Please pay close attention to this, so that I don’t have to mention this again. This is your official notification of my intended “participation” requirements for team-work. You must do more than simply submit your assigned section to not suffer a point downgrade. Although I will certainly admit that number of posts alone, does not necessarily indicate quality of effort, but it usually does indicate quality of teamwork. And I’m not at all specifically suggesting that any team member, leader or not contribute less …, every team needs a leader and usually this person does “post” more, that’s certainly OK. Everyone must contribute.

The general overall plan here is to follow the assignments for the marketing plan and add sections each subsequent week based upon the text readings for that week. In a sense then, each weeks assignment gets “rolled” into the final plan, it starts to “build” the important sections of the plan. BTW …, please make the suggested changes each week (particularly the GPST errors) to eliminate the possibility of getting hit for the same error on the final paper.

The primary assignment for W3 was to write about 8 definitive topics. This equates to 12.5% each topic as a percentage weight from 10 points (full credit).
1. An overview of the organization
2. A description of the product or service
3. A SWOT analysis of the organization and offering
4. A competitive analysis of the organization and offering using Porter's five competitive forces model
5. The criteria you will use to segment your market and select your target market including geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral factors
6. A description of your target market
7. Needs that cause your target market to buy including emotional and logical drivers
8. A written positioning statement that identifies:
Your target market
The needs that drive purchase
Your organization's industry category
How your organization solves the target's needs
Your organization's competition
What makes your organization different from its competition
Include sources of secondary research that support your analysis.

Some comments about the paper, and to think about going forward …, in general your paper was good for your 1st team effort, but still plenty of time to work even better together and generate a super paper going forward. You were right at the min of the word count guideline (2,865 of 2,800 to 3,500), and this is just fine provided that you covered each section in adequate depth of analysis. The word count guidelines are there so that you can judge whether or not you have covered the required sections in enough depth, or conversely have simply used too much material that may not be germane to the specific subject. Use them. Brevity in business writing is critical. You should continue to pay attention to this so as to not have to expand and/or control length for roll-up into the W5 final.

Strategy and Positioning Paper you can delete this heading
Overview
Beginning to Present of Current Finances and Products
In 1895, Post