Tafero's Lesson Plan of Day - Marketing Management - Focus Groups - Ten

Lesson 10 – Focus Groups

1. Discuss the strategy of Home Depot – pg 310
Quality sales staff with practical experience gives Home Depot an edge in hardware. Quality is assured and loyal customers do not mind paying a few dollars more for the privilege.

2. Discuss the concept of positioning****-pg 311
A. Attribute Positioning – size, experience
B. Competitor Positioning – better than the competition quantified
C. Product Leader Positioning – Best product in the field
D. Quality or Price Positioning – Highest quality or lowest price in the field

3. Discuss the DiGiorno Pizza marketing strategy – pg 314
Digiorno markets itself the same as delivered pizza, thereby removing itself from its frozen pizza competition. Differentiation that works with a slogan, “It’s not delivery, it’s Digiorno!”.

4. Discuss the marketing strategy of General Motors – pg 318
GM uses the Onstar system which provides customers with a very real sense of security in case of an emergency. This added benefit also serves a differentiation from the competition.

5. Discuss the strategy of Cisco – pg 320
Cisco relies on its database for FAQ and is data driven for customer support.

6. Discuss the marketing strategy of Apple Computers – pg 321
Apple uses style to sell some of their products. Apple also has some superior internal engineering to Windows and easier navigation. Their only drawback is that they have a very small piece of the tech pie. Stores stock well over 90% of windows products. Innovation is the only edge Apple has in the tech market.

7. Discuss the marketing strategy of Black and Decker – pg 321
Black and Decker features superior design for tools. Added to the sturdy composition of all primary Black and Decker tools, the customer receives a very high level of quality for a very reasonable price. This creates a positive value for the customer. They primarily follow the Walmart principle in marketing (and are carried by all of their stores)

8. Discuss the marketing strategy of Rite-Aid – pg 324
Rite-aid has cleverly added strong customer support via its pharmacy build-up and bringing back the good old days when you could go to your pharmacist instead of a doctor to get medical advice.

9. Discuss the marketing strategy of Yahoo – pg 333
Founded in 1994 by web-surfing grad students, Yahoo started as a search engine. By 1998 it was worth over 9 Billion dollars. When the tech stocks crashed at the end of the decade, Yahoo lost over 75% of its worth. It has the strategy of taking current losses in the hope of future profits. A risky venture at best. Yahoo has been annihilated in the market by Google and Bing and will continue to lose market share for the rest of the decade. A weak attempt at creating content with Associated Content, a subsidiary of Yahoo, has resulted in some reclamation of the pie, but when Google and Bing eventually enter the content competition, Yahoo might go out of business for good.

ICA Homework – Essays – Lesson Ten

Positioning is Extremely Important

Write a paragraph on each of these essay questions:

1. How did Yahoo lose its market share?
2. Why does Black and Decker have a sound marketing strategy?
3. Why is the marketing strategy of Apple dangerous?
4. Why are the concepts of positioning important?

Internet Resources for this lesson:

General Reference Material For All Content

http://www.easternstudiesdatabase.cn

Yahoo’s Failure

www.gigaom.com/.../an-aol-and-yahoo-merger-failure-squared/

Positioning

www.marketingteacher.com/lesson-store/lesson-positioning.html