Marketing Plan: Product Identification and SWOT Analysis
What to Do
This week, you will be creating components of your capstone marketing plan assignment. You will then finish your plan in Week 5.

Using the company you selected for your marketing manager internship, you will complete a situation analysis with the goal of identifying a new product/service to develop your marketing plan against.

How to Do it
Create a minimum 750 word APA style formatted Word document that includes at least 1 scholarly resource from Ashford’s online library in addition to the course text.

The Scholarly, Peer Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources table (Links to an external site.) offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.

Your document should contain paragraphs that cover the following topics:

· A description of your selected company/brand

· The core products/services they offer

· A brief history

· Key current competitors

· A SWOT analysis

· The product or service line you want to develop a marketing plan for and a SWOT based argument for why it warrants marketing investment

Please see our sample situational analysis (completed for McDonald’s) for more details, including minimum lengths by topic.

What Should I Market?
The focus of your marketing plan can be a new product/service idea of your own or an existing product/service that you think deserves its own dedicated campaign. Just don’t pick something that you’ve already seen being actively marketed.

For example, after completing a SWOT analysis for McDonald’s, one might propose marketing new concepts like a McVeggie burger or an adult happy meal. Further afield, one might propose a whole new chain of pay to visit indoor McPlayground Centers. Or, relative to existing offerings, one might suggest a dedicated marketing campaign for say “burgers at breakfast” or after midnight snacking via the drive thru.

Lean about your brand and then let your imagination run wild. It can be a big idea that will appeal to many of their customers or a very targeted effort. You decide. You can always adjust your idea after getting instructor feedback.