MKT 4000 Marketing Management  Fall 2009
 

Suggested Steps for Analyzing Marketing Cases:

(Note: The section II in the textbook contains some valuable suggestions with regard to how to analyze marketing cases. The following five-step approach represents a slight variation of the approach suggested by the textbook authors. It is focused more on the analysis and justification than on the description of the cases, and is recommended for use in the MKT 4000 class.)

1. Company/Case Overview

- Company's background
- Current situation and case scenario

2. Problem / Decision Identification (one or more of the following)

- What are the major problems that the organization is facing?
- What are the key decisions that need to be made?
- What is wrong with the existing marketing operation?
- What are the major objectives of the organization?

3. Analysis

-  What are the major forces shaping the organization's environments?
-  What are the causes of the problem(s)?
-  What does the organization need to do with respect to the identified decisions?
-  Are there any other factors that may have contributed to the problem(s)?

4.  Recommendations

- What course of actions does the organization need to take with respect to the problem(s)?
- What are the changes that need to be made to the existing marketing operations?
- Which strategy would you recommend to the organization given the situation that it is in?

4. Justification/Reasoning

- How can the recommended course of actions help solve the identified problems?
   (important: tie your recommendations to the underlying causes of the problems)
-  What financial impact (if available) will your recommendation have on the organization?
- Why aren't the alternative courses of actions recommended for solving the identified problems?  What are their
   drawbacks?