Sales promo Article 1

AC 222 – Article or Research assignment #1

General Requirements:

You will be required to select and bring into class an article. You must be prepared to discuss it and hand in a two page, plus cover document. Articles must relate and be relevant to the materials handed out in this course. The articles can come from on-line, magazine or newspaper sources, and they should contain enough information to address the points stated below.

Specific Requirements

The article must relate to how sales promotion is used/applied by marketers as part of an overall Marketing Communications campaign/IMC

For example: The selected article should be discussing plans a company is making in regards to sales promotion and how it will be/is integrating SP in the promotion or marketing communication mix. : ”Isolated” examples of sales promotion are not appropriate.

Based on the article that you have selected, you should be try to find out more about the various marketing communications elements that they use for the campaign or the communication plan related into the article. That way, you will be able to establish a good foundation for your own analysis of the article.

How to submit:

. Sign in into your Microsoft SkyDrive Account (Create one (if not done already) at

http://explore.live.com/skydrive

) – This will give 25Gig Free of Cloud Storage.

. Upload your submission as a
WORD Document
under My Documents Folder onto your SkyDrive Account

. Once uploaded, select the document and click on Share on the right side of the screen

. Click on “Get A Link” on the left and then “Get A Link” under “View and Edit”, on the right

. Copy this link and past it into the textbox of your DropBox for this assignment into Angel

. You are all set!

. Your grade for this assignment will be communicated on Angel (in the appropriate DropBox on Angel) and the comments of your professor will be directly indicated onto your document in SkyDrive.

IMPORTANT: No paper or Angel DropBox upload or email attachments submissions will be accepted – Submission has to be in MS Word (No PDF, No Google Doc, No Open Source format. No Apple format).

Press releases are not acceptable

Recommended sources:

www.prnewswire.com

www.ddimagazine.com

www.instoremarketer.org

www.promotionlink.com

www.reveries.com

http://www.bizjournals.com/

http://www.theipm.org.uk/Home.aspx

http://promomagazine.com/

http://www.couponinfonow.com/coupons/

Formatting requirements:

Each article or research analysis should follow this format and include the following items if you wish to receive full credit:

A) Article summary (1 page)

Main purpose of this article:

What is the author intent in writing this article? What is the author trying to accomplish?

The key question that the author is addressing:

The most important information in this article:

What the key information that the author uses, presupposed, in the article to support his/her main arguments. You need to look for facts, experiences, and/or data the author is using to support his/her conclusions

The main conclusions in this article:

You want to identify the most important conclusions the author comes to and presents in the article

The key concepts we need to understand in this article:

You need to identify these marketing, marketing communications and sales promotion ideas or concepts or principles that help to understand the line of reasoning of the author.

The main assumptions(s) underlying the author’s thinking:

What is the author taking for granted? The assumptions are generalizations that the author does not think he/she has to defend. They might be unstated.

The main point of view presented in this article is (are):

What is the author looking at, and how is he/she seeing it?

B) Your own assessment/opinion (1 page):

Formalized/additional background information:

Background information on the company and the industry environment.

Briefly describe the company’s product-line or services offered, its marketing activities, its key competitors, etc. as appropriate (additional research may be required for this)

Marketing strategy:

State and describe what marketing target(s), what marketing objective(s), what value proposition do you think the company has (additional research may be required for this)

Sales promotion:

Describe the SP offer in question. State and describe what role the Sales Promotion plays in the IMC campaign, what sales promotion objective(s), what sales promotion target(s), what sales promotion desired result(s) and what sales promotion technique(s)

Your assessment:

Assess if this Sales Promotion was properly conceived and integrated into the IMC campaign that you looked at? In the end, how would you rate the effectiveness of this Sales Promotion? Why?

Propose any adjustments to the SP component of the campaign to make it even more effective, if appropriate

ARTICLE:

Attach the magazine, newspaper or web site article to your 2 pages

summary, with cover page.

IMPORTANT:

At the instructors’ discretion, students will be selected to lead the class with

their current event article.

The assignment will be graded with the “AC 222 Rubric based- Article analysis” grading guide lines

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