BUS 620 Ashford WEEK 1 (DQs & Assignment)

Week 1 – DQ 1: What is Marketing?

What is Marketing? Marketing has often been defined in terms of satisfying customers’ needs and wants. Critics, however, maintain that marketing goes beyond that and creates needs and wants that did not exist before. They feel marketers encourage consumers to spend more money than they should on goods and services they do not really need. What is your understanding of the role of marketing and the marketing management process?

Week 1 – DQ 2: Marketing Strategies

Complete the “Think About It” activity in Section 1.2 of the text:

Week 1 Assignment – The Future of the New York Times

Select a consumer product of personal interest—one that you have purchased within the past six months. It can be anything, just as long you are familiar with the product and generally understand how it is marketed. Using the matrix model of marketing management in Table 1.2, fill in the cells of the matrix as completely and thoroughly as you can for the brand that you purchased. Be sure that your entries correspond to your perspective as a customer for this brand. In short, you are the target market. You may wish to create one or more positioning maps to help illustrate how you perceive the competitive playing field. Once you’re done, examine the intersection of each cell.

1. How do the elements of the marketing mix align with the four strategy categories in the left-hand column?

2. Does every one of the 4 P’s contribute to each of the strategic objectives established in the left-hand column?

3. Do you see room for improvement? How would this assessment be different for other types of customers?

Read the article: The Future of the New York Times, BusinessWeek, January 17, 2005, 64-72 (Also Posted in the Announcement page).

Readership through circulation and news quality are key ingredients to profitability in the newspaper business industry. In a 2-3 page paper, examine what Arthur Sulzberger can do to revive the failing newspaper whose “financial performance is lagging “. Can New York Times, with its journalistic pride compete with the digital media and still deliver the best news?

Paper must be in the correct APA writing style and include a minimum of 2-3 resources, in which one resource must be peer reviewed.