Exam 8: The Marketing Plan

Which of the following statements is (are)not true?

Telephone surveys have the poorest response rate.

When making decisions about pricing strategy,the entrepreneur should consider only costs directly associated with the product and ignore overhead.

A focus group should consist of:

All marketing goals and objectives should be quantifiable in physical units,time units,or price units.

Identify,in order,and briefly explain each step of conducting market research giving examples where appropriate. 1.Defining purpose or objectives - The most effective way to begin is for the entrepreneur to sit down and make a list of the information that will be needed to prepare the marketing plan.For example,the entrepreneur may think there is a market for his or her product but not be sure who the customers will be or even whether the product is appropriate in its present form.Thus,one objective would be to ask people what they think of the product or service and whether they would buy it,and to collect some background demographics and attitudes of these individuals.Other objectives may be to determine the following: How much would potential customers be willing to pay for the product or service? Where would potential customers prefer to purchase the product or service? Where would the customer expect to hear about or learn about such a product or service? 2.Gather data from secondary sources - The most important purpose of reviewing secondary sources is to obtain information that will assist the entrepreneur in making the best decisions regarding the marketing of a product or service.Some examples include trade magazines,newspaper articles,libraries,government agencies,and the Internet can provide much information on the industry market and competitors.The Internet can even be used to gather informal primary data through chat groups.Before considering either primary sources or commercial sources of information,the entrepreneur should exhaust all free secondary sources.Other specific source examples may come from table 8.2. 3.Gather data from primary sources - Information that is new is primary data.Gathering primary data involves a data collection procedure-such as observation,networking,interviewing,focus groups,or experimentation-and usually a data collection instrument,such as a questionnaire.Interviewing or surveying is the most common approach used to gather market information.It is more expensive than observation but is more likely to generate more meaningful information. 4.Analyzing and interpreting results - Depending on the size of the sample,the entrepreneur can hand-tabulate the results or enter them on a computer.In either case,the results should be evaluated and interpreted in response to the research objectives that were specified in the first step of the research process.Often,summarizing the answers to questions will give some preliminary insights.Then data can be cross- tabulated to provide more focused results.For example,the entrepreneur may want to compare the results to questions by different age groups,sex,occupation,location,and so on.

Generally speaking,entrepreneurs see the external environment as:

The management team and the venture's company mission are examples of external environmental factors.

The first step in preparing the marketing plan is to define the target market.

Marketing information that already exists is called secondary data.

Which survey method results in the most in-depth information and the best response rate?

The number of goals and objectives in the marketing plan should be:

Unrealistic goals are a common reason for failure of the marketing plan.

Identify the 4 major considerations in distribution channel selection.

Management needs to look at the marketing plan as a guide for implementing marketing decision making and not as a generalized,superficial document.

In establishing goals and objectives,it is important to:

The __________ is the specific group of potential customers toward which a venture aims its marketing plan.

Market segmentation is the process of:

Networking can be used as an informal method of gathering primary data.

Russell Rothstein is the founder of SaleSpider.com which is a free social networking site designed to assist small businesses.