Assignment: I Can See the Four Ps of Marketing

Preparation

For this assignment you will write a product report focused on a single product of your choice. Your submission will follow the formatting and address the questions/issues specified in the Product Report Outline.

Go to the store where your product is sold. This can be your local grocery store, Walmart, Target, or wherever your product is sold and displayed alongside competing brands and products. When selecting your product or good, keep in mind that in this assignment you will be analyzing the product based on the four Ps of marketing.

Your Task

Gather the information necessary to complete your Product Report. Among the information you will need to collect is the following:

  • Name of product and company: Use the proper corporate name, not a nickname. For example: Tide Pods by Proctor & Gamble. Include pictures if you’re handy with uploading/inserting images.
  • Product description: Briefly describe the product you’ve selected along with any relevant history that led you to choose this product/brand.
  • Describe the key marketing strategies behind your selected product. You should base your evaluation and report on what you can observe about how the four Ps are applied to the product you chose.
    • Product: Describe the want or need your product addresses.
    • Placement: Describe the physical location of the product among its closest competitors (a quick picture of the shelf would tell a good story!), and describe what this placement says about the marketing strategy.
    • Pricing: Describe the pricing strategy. A good description would include observations about the closest competitive product and its relative pricing.
    • Promotion: Describe how the product is being promoted. You could include any obvious physical/in-store promotions seen on the shelf, as well as flyers, coupons, social media, online advertising, etc.
    • Other factors: You might notice other important factors about your product that lie outside the four Ps. You can include them in your report here. One example might be a unique distribution system for your product.

When putting together your assignment for submission, it should follow the format and organization shown in the Product Report Outline provided below.

Product Report Outline

Your Name

Introduction to Business Marketing Report

Date

TITLE

Company/Product Name Here

Name of product and company: Use the proper corporate name, not a nickname. For example: Tide Pods by Proctor & Gamble. Include pictures if you’re handy with uploading/inserting images.

Introduction

Briefly describe the product you’ve selected along with any relevant history that led you to choose this product/brand. Minimum of three, maximum of five sentences.

Four Ps of Marketing

Describe the key marketing strategies of your selected product. You should base your evaluation and report on what you can observe about how the four Ps are applied to the product you chose. You should write a minimum of three sentences about each aspect.

  • Product: Describe the want or need your product addresses.
  • Placement: Describe the physical location of the product among its closest competitors (a quick picture of the shelf would tell a good story!), and describe what this placement says about the marketing strategy.
  • Pricing: Describe the pricing strategy. A good description would include observations about the closest competitive product and its relative pricing.
  • Promotion: Describe how the product is being promoted. You could include any obvious physical/in-store promotions seen on the shelf, as well as flyers, coupons, social media, online advertising, etc.
  • Other factors: You might notice other important factors about your product that lie outside the four Ps. You can include them in your report here. One example might be a unique distribution system for your product.

Conclusion and Recommendation

In this section you should draw a conclusion about the proven or possible success of your selected product. How has the company used the four marketing Ps to try to ensure the success of your selected product? This should be a minimum of three, maximum of five sentences.