MKT3001 Marketing Research Assignment 1
The first assignment will assess your selection, use and presentation of digital research in relation to an “underperforming brand”.
The assignment is due 27th March 2017 and will be marked out of 100.
Assignment weighting is 25% of your overall grade.
Our Assignment is on LENOVO BRAND compare with any performing brand in same industry
Word Limit:1500words + 10 References
Table 1 shows you three markets. From this table you may select one market for your assignment. Please choose from the Computer Market, the Soft Drinks Market or the Luxury Market.
The underperforming brand (i.e. Lenovo, Sprite or Dior) is the focus of your assignment. Table 1: Markets and brands suitable for Assessment in MKT3001
Market Underperforming Brand (or new entrant to the list) Performing brand Performing brand
Computers Lenovo Apple Microsoft
Soft drinks Sprite Coca Cola Pepsi
Luxury Dior Louis Vuitton Gucci
Source: http://interbrand.com/best-brands/best-global-brands/2016/ranking/
Briefly, your task
Undertake digital desk research to provide information about a) the current market and b) make some recommendations to a manager about a way forward, which might help the underperforming brand perform better (or more successfully in the marketplace).
Present your findings to the manager of the “underperforming brand” (e.g. Lenovo, Sprite or Dior) in the form of a MS Word document (no more than 1500 words) + reference list or any other visual format that enables you to communicate digital information).
In your assignment, please use a mix of words, numbers, percentages, diagrams, graphs, pictures and illustrations to make your message, clear, concise, interesting, persuasive and informative.
In this assignment, we are judging you on how well you communicate your results as well as your numeracy skills, critically thinking and problem solving skills.
Suggestions on doing the assignment
Click on the hyperlink above and read about the brands in the above table. Choose a market and brand (i.e. Lenovo, Sprite or Dior). The market and brand you choose will be the same in Assignment 1 and Assignment 2, so please choose carefully.
Using the hyperlink, you will find your first source of information. You are to conduct digital research and locate other sources of information. How many you locate is up to you. You are the decision maker.
After locating several sources of digital information (data), you might like to differentiate, sort, compare and categorise the digital data to help you to make sense of the data and turn it into useful information. Doing this will help you to critically evaluate the data. Critically evaluating the data refers to deciding what is relevant and meaningful and what is key or unnecessary. Be careful to keep a list of where you find the information for your reference list. Once you have identified, sorted and prioritised the information you will need, the next step is to formulate and design a narrative that tells the manager a meaningful story about your findings . It might be easier to begin with describing about what is going on in the marketplace. Finish your discussion by presenting the manager with a solution or a way forward (to improve the brand’s position in the marketplace).
Some thoughts
It might be helpful for the reader (manager) if you present some kind of background about the market (product category). Let the reader know the size of the market, how the market is segmented, or how well the market is performing or anything else interesting you can find about the market that succinctly and clearly gives the reader a snapshot of the market.
Essentially, you are providing the reader with a brief overview of the current market. It might be of value to a manager (reader) if you compare at least two other brands (i.e. for the Computer Market that would be Apple and Microsoft; for the Soft Drink Market that would be Coca Cola and Pepsi, and for the Luxury Market that would be Louis Vuitton and Gucci). You might like to find out what the performing brands are doing that is helping them to succeed. You might also like to compare/contrast the market behaviour of the successful brands to the underperforming brand. Doing this might help to give you some ideas about how the “underperforming brand” can improve.
Your ideas on improvement for the underperforming brand (i.e. Lenovo, Sprite or Dior) should be evidenced-based. That is on the digital research that you have undertaken.
The recommendations (or way forward) should demonstrate that you have undertaken some critical thinking and problem solving to reach the recommendation(s) you are making to the manager. The recommendation(s) should be clear and provide direction for the company about how they might proceed to improve their current position in the market place. Please provide an evidenced-based rationale that will persuasively convince the
reader of your recommendation(s). One well-structured recommendation with sound evidence and a comprehensive argument for the recommendation is much better than providing many recommendations.
Part of the problem solving process is to look at the many options (recommendations) available, analyse each of the options, compare and contrast them to arrive at an option that best fits or addresses the current issues in the market place. Going through this problem solving process will help you to build a strong rationale that is evidence based for the recommendation(s) you are making to the manager.
It is important to clearly prioritise the “way forward” or “recommendations” that you are making to the manager (of the underperforming brand), because whatever you decide about the way forward will form the basis of Assignment 2, in which you are to develop a research proposal.
How you present your assignment and what headings you use in your assignment is up to you. Making decisions about headings, how much information to write, whether to use words, numbers, graphs, illustrations or pictures are decisions that you are going to have to make when designing, creating and developing your assignment. Making these decisions will help you to develop further your critical thinking, problem solving skills and communication skills.
In this assignment we are judging you on how well you demonstrate critical thinking, problem solving and communicate your analysis of numerical data and digital data.
Please ensure you check your assignment against the Marking Criteria when developing, constructing and editing your assignment, and again before submitting your assignment.
Please remember to reference all of your information using the Harvard AGPS referencing guide. You may contact the Library for help if you are having trouble on how to reference using Harvard AGPS. I have included the Library link as a reference point for you to use.
http://www.usq.edu.au/library/referencing/harvard-agps-referencing-guide
There is no limit on the number of sources for this assignment, though, I am expecting you to use at least six different sources of information, and probably many more, given this assignment is about you conducting digital research.
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.