Sunday, October 17, 2010

Week 9 Journal

Read the online case article “Applying global trends: A look at China’s auto industry” Discuss in small groups what are the impacting factors that can impact on business. Student should apply these to their own live case project. Strategically and operationally. Write this up in your journal and make comments.

1. Establish the reference frame
"right frame of reference - a specific problem statement and a clear sense of the industry context for long term shifts."

The UC Refectory could use this by asking questions such as how much of the market share will competitors such as Sizzles and Mizzuna capture in the future? How will this reflect the refectory in terms of profitability?

Because the refectory is re-branding itself it may take time to create consumer loyalty which will make the business think carefully about competing on aspects such as price and value.

2. Expand the solution space
"broaden the potential solution space by challenging conventional wisdom through the lens of global trends."

UC refectory needs to keep an eye on trends. This can be done by gathering data on information such as regulations, macroeconomics and demands.

3. Define scenarios
"quadrant crunching allows planners to generate extreme but plausible scenarios quickly by reversing their underlying assumptions to arrive at a number of different potential states of the world."

By creating scenarios, UC refectory will be able to work with any potential trends. E.g. if sales are down due to the GFC the refectory could already have a number of potential strategies to help them overcome the problem in the case of the GFC, the refectory may introduce marketing strategies such as new customer loyalty programs, discounts etc.

4. Quantify industry impact
"Delphi technique: systematic forecasting method"
keeping an eye of profitability and finances are an important part of trend watching and business success.


Discuss how you will evaluate and measure the success of your promotional activity and how will you use this in improving you recommendations and plan :

In order to evaluate our promotional activity we will be providing a quick survey sheet that will allow participants to quickly rate the activity. This information will be useful as it will help us rate the success of the activity, as well as give us an indication of how many people we get to participate.

The survey will have a space for comments and suggestions which will be useful for future promotional activities.


Week 9 Blog
The business and marketing plan templates provided on the business.gov are a good source of information for anyone who is creating a new business or is expanding an existing business. These templates compared to others found on the internet are more informative with links and explanations about what is exactly needed in order to complete each section of the plan successfully.

In terms of the live case study, the marketing plan will be very useful in order to see what information we need as the UC Refectory does not currently have a marketing plan.

No comments:

Post a Comment