Marketing Report Topics

1. You are the vice president of marketing for a passenger airline that in the last few years has
experienced two serious accidents. Write a report to the CEO explaining how you plan to
reassure the public that your airline is safe and reverse the slide in revenues and profits.

2. You work for the division of student affairs at your college or university. This campus
organization is dedicated to the well-being of students by offering services that include legal
aid, services for students with financial problems, intercultural education, and much more.
These services are available at little to no cost to students. However, many of the services are
significantly underutilized. The director asks you to analyze the marketing of the
underutilized services and recommend ways to increase their usage.

3. Many corporations make personalized customer service an important part of their image. As a
marketing intern for a well-known national chain, you have been asked by your boss to
evaluate the possibility of your company delivering personalized customer service. What do
customers today expect? How are other national chains handling this decision? Evaluate what
your company’s options are, and offer recommendations to the company.

4. Knowing that you have just graduated from college with a degree in marketing, a family from
your hometown asks you to investigate the pros and cons of their investing in a franchised
business. The family wants you to recommend a franchise in which they can invest, to
explain to them the financial and legal implications, and to choose a location for the business.
Choose three locations and recommend the best franchise for each location. The franchises
are Subway, Pizza Hut, Dunkin' Donuts, McDonald's, or a franchise of your choice.

5. Your country’s premier news agency has reported that a pledge by fast-food companies to
fight childhood obesity has failed. Studies elsewhere have shown that less than 1 percent of
possible kids meal combinations at the major fast-food chains meet nutritional guidelines for
preschool children. The report also shows that the fast-food industry recently spent over $4
billion in advertising, much of it aimed at children. As an intern at a public policy institute,
you have been asked to complete your own study of fast-food nutrition and marketing to
children under 12. Your job is to confirm or refute that (a) most of the products that
companies advertise to children on TV and company Web sites are healthy and (b) that
companies are not using ways other than television and company Web sites to push their
products to kids under 12. Based on your findings, what conclusions can you draw? How do
your findings relate to the dramatic increase in childhood obesity in your country? Make
recommendations that are appropriate for a policy institute devoted to public interest issues.

6. What recent advertising campaign on a national level has been a failure? What campaigns
have been very successful? Select one or the other, analyze why the campaign failed or
succeeded, and offer recommendations to other marketers.

7. Are rebates successful? Your job, as the marketing director for a newly formed company, is
to evaluate how successful rebates are. What are their advantages and disadvantages to the
company and the customer? Prepare a report for the CEO.

8. Your company has a relatively large number of salespeople. However, management isn't
satisfied with the way the company is evaluating individual salespeople. One controversial
method in use is to tape sales transactions. Management finds this intriguing, but you're not
sure. What other methods are in use? Select companies similar to yours to determine what
they are doing. What are the pros and cons of each method? Which one, in your view, is the
best for your company?

9. Sales have been slumping at your small company, and the boss wants to determine whether
the company's advertising is responsible. She wants you to evaluate your advertising
campaign, but you are not sure where to begin. You decide it would be best to start by
analyzing the approaches of companies similar to yours. What works, what doesn't? Do
trends exist that you're not aware of? Make recommendations to your boss.
10. You have been asked to conduct a market study of your city (or another, if you choose) to
determine the best location for a given business (your choice). The company requesting this
study wants you to use basic demographic information (e.g., population, income, age, traffic
flow, and so on) as the basis for your recommendation.

11. A large chain where you work has decided to build its new store on a property in your city,
which is environmentally sensitive. Furthermore, many people in the neighborhood
surrounding the property are firmly opposed to the new store. As marketing director, you
must make this transition go smoothly for everyone involved. Your job is to map out an
approach and offer specific recommendations.

12. E-mail marketing is cheap and fast. However, most consumers hate receiving “spam.” Your
boss can't decide whether to use social media marketing or e-mail messages to increase your
company's sales. He asks you to assess the pros and cons of each from the standpoint of the
customer and the company and decide which one is better.

13. Because it has seen such a tremendous amount of growth in recent years, the company for
which you work faces the following dilemma: Should it establish an in-house advertising
department or use an agency? This type of decision is new to you, so you begin by
investigating what other businesses in similar situations have done. What are the advantages
and disadvantages of each? Which is the better choice for your company?

14. Given the fact that a brand name can be worth almost half of a company's value, the effective
use of brands is extremely important, especially in global marketing. What are some do's and
don'ts as far as brand management goes? From a marketing standpoint, what should
companies do to ensure that their brands are effective?

15. A new Web start-up company has asked you to help it decide the best way to market its
product. While advertising on the Web is a certainty, the company's partners want to know
about additional advertising methods, such as the local newspaper, magazines, and even the
local business-to-business directory. Certainly, cost is an issue; however, the main concern is
getting the best exposure for a reasonable price.

16. You work for a consulting firm that consults for a growing company that sells personal
computers, hardware, software and services to consumers and businesses. At this stage in
your client’s growth, the client’s management realizes that it is becoming increasingly more
costly to find new customers than it is to keep existing customers. For that reason, they’re
considering the implementation of a new business model, which is based on relationship
marketing. They have asked your firm to submit a proposal to conduct a feasibility study of
this issue. Your boss chooses you for the job.

17. The owner of the bicycle shop near campus where you take your bike for service wants you
to investigate the reasons for the significant decline in sales that he has been experiencing
over the last few years. Find out why his sales have been declining. Is the decline due to
competition, ineffective advertising, or both? What marketing strategies are his competitors
using? Are these strategies working? Write a report to the bicycle shop owner in which you
identify a course of action for him to reverse this decline in sales.