Students explore positioning and the importance of differentiation by reviewing 10 competing restaurants in the same geographic market. Each restaurant has a unique positioning and students need to evaluate which ones will be more successful, as well as identifying an opportunity for a player in the market.
The Importance of Differentiation Review the Teaching Activity
The Marlboro Man advertising is one of the most famous and successful marketing campaigns of all time, which every marketer should know about. In this mini case study, students explore how the Marlboro Man came to be, especially after the brand was initially targeted at female smokers, and review the marketing challenges that they faced along the way.
Classic Case Study: Marlboro Repositions for Success Review the Teaching Activity
This activity delves deeper into customer journey mapping and considers how to overcome the consumer’s pain points. Students look for ideas and then consider how valuable it is to reduce pain points and indeed, can we compete on that basis?
Overcoming Consumer Pain Points Review the Teaching Activity
Students advise a company that has created too many segments how to best combine them (using counter segmentation). A good exercise for students to understand the purpose of segmentation and to consider the trade-off between segment size and viability.
Counter Segmentation Review the Teaching Activity
This activity builds upon the existing Bud Light case study but focuses on the psychographic segmentation approach used by Bud Light. The exercise is designed for students to have a better understanding of what psychographic segmentation and how it can be used.
Bud Light and Psychographic Segmentation Review the Teaching Activity
Students are presented with 10 mini brand personas for the hotel industry. Their task is to choose a buyer persona and map out their customer journey. A starting example has been provided as a guide.
Buyer Personas and their Customer Journeys Review the Teaching Activity
Students are presented with 10 buyer personas for a hotel chain. Their task is to identify which of the buyer personas are most suitable to be the target market for the chain to pursue? Students also discussed the value of by personas versus traditional target market profiles.
Which Buyer Persona Should We Pursue? Review the Teaching Activity
In this simple, but quite challenging, exercise students classify ads into the categories of informative, persuasive, and reminder advertising. This is a great task to help students distinguish between these somewhat confusing differences. The “need” for reminder style advertising is also explored.
Informative, Persuasive, or Reminder Advertising? Review the Teaching Activity
In this task students explore the gap between the consumer’s actual and desired states and its role in triggering need/problem recognition. A series of 8 print ads are used and the exercise also provides introductory information and also touches on low and high purchase involvement.
Desired vs Actual States Review the Teaching Activity
This activity is all about drilling down on consumer needs to explore the range of underlying motivations for behavior. Students are presented with a series of consumer statements and their task is to look beyond the top-level and to dig deeper into a fuller set of motivations and needs.
Digging Deeper with Consumer Motivation Review the Teaching Activity