MKT3001 Suggested Guidelines for Assignment 1 Assignment weighting: 25% of overall grade Word length: 1500 words + reference list Submission date: March 27, 2017 Assignment Task: Undertake secondary/digital research to provide information about the current market scenario and provide recommendations to the manager for the chosen “underperforming brand” for it to become more successful. Suggested Approach 1. Select the market that you wish to do the assignment on. You need to select only one market out of the three. For example, if you have chosen the soft drinks market, you will then be doing the assignment on Sprite. 2. You will look at the market and the chosen brand from a global perspective. Please choose the market and brand you wish to work on wisely as that will be the same that you work on in Assignment 2. 3. You need to click on the link http://interbrand.com/best-brands/best-global- brands/2016/ranking/ to access preliminary information about the ranking of the brands. This link appears on the assignment sheet as well. 4. Conduct secondary research on the chosen market. There are no limits of the type of information sources that you may use. You may use websites, journals, magazines, books, etc. You need to use at least six sources for information. Again, there is no limit on the nature of the source of secondary information. 5. The objective of the assignment is to see if you can conduct preliminary secondary research to find out the market scenario, make some preliminary recommendations on the basis of those findings, and present that information in a professional manner. In your document, you may use numbers, diagrams, pictures, etc. to support the narrative. How you present the information is entirely up to you. This is where you need to demonstrate your problem solving, critical thinking, and presentation skills. 6. In terms of presenting the market scenario, some obvious approaches are using growth rate figures, sales figures, market size, etc. You may use any other indicators if you wish. This is where you need to demonstrate your analytical skills. The quantitative and qualitative information that you present must provide a strong foundation for your recommendations. 7. In terms of your recommendations, you need to suggest a way forward for your chosen “underperforming brand”. You only need to give an overall guideline on what approach your chosen “underperforming brand” needs to undertake. For example, if you choose brand X and you find out that in a certain market segment X has no presence whereas its competitors do, then you may suggest that X needs to cater to that segment as well since it is a viable segment. This is something that you would support with the findings of secondary research where you might have information on market size. 8. Please limit your recommendations to a maximum of five (even one will suffice as long as it is backed up with justification). Prioritise them and only list the one(s) that is (are) the most important. The key is to link the recommendations with the findings of your research. 9. Please use the correct referencing style (Harvard AGPS) as that is a key component of the assignment. Reference provided towards the end of the assignment should match with those that are provided throughout (in-text references) your assignment (for online sources, web links can be incorporated). 10. If you think that the content that you are trying to include in your assignment is exceeding the word limit, you can provide this content (graphs, tables, pictures, etc.,) in appendices (I am happy to go through them) towards the end of your assignment after the references. Material included in the appendix will not be taken into consideration in the overall word count. 11. Please include a cover page that has your full name, student id, course and assignment number. The aforementioned information is just a suggestion relating to the structure and content of the assignment. However it is up to the individual student to make a decision about whether to follow these guidelines or not.