1. Choose a product with which you are familiar, preferably one in your industry, and explain how it might be repositioned. Indicate its current position in the market, a desired position, and how you would manage the repositioning effort. Explain the reason for positioning and repositioning products.

2. How do customer relationships fit into a vision for a given product and the overall organization? How does an organization use this relationship to meet customer satisfaction through branding and advertising? Provide a synopsis for your case and evaluation of your results, using a scholarly article found on EBSCOhost as your basis for your reasoning. Be sure to cite your source.

3. Pretend that you work for a marketing firm. Knowing that effective marketing is of increasing importance in today’s competitive environment, how would you advise your firm to more effectively market to organizations? Describe for us your firm, products, competition, and the organizations to which you will be appealing. As you make your case, back up your argument by citing at least one scholarly article pertaining to marketing management.

4. What are the various types and functions of marketing intermediaries? Which are more important for large businesses and why? Which are more important for the small business and why? How could additional marketing channel options help you better serve your target market? Provide a synopsis for your case and evaluation of your results, using a scholarly article found on EBSCOhost as your basis for your reasoning. Give specific examples and be sure to cite your source.

5. Discuss the pros and cons of using social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and online blogs as part of an integrated marketing communications strategy and define at least two advantages and two risks to using social media to sell computers to business customers. Give specific examples showing how this has played out with real businesses.

6. Analyzing outcomes from previous months is a helpful step in refining projections and a process. Discuss the importance of evaluating the competition and continually refining your position in the market to maintain an advantage. Provide a synopsis for your case and evaluation of your results, using a scholarly article found on EBSCOhost as your basis for your reasoning. Give specific examples from your source (and be sure to cite your source).

7. Remember, one of the most difficult marketing decision facing companies is how much to spend on promotion. Thus, it is not surprising that industries and companies vary considerably in how much they spend on promotion. Promotional expenditures might amount to 30 to 50% of sales in the cosmetics industry and from less than 5% in the industrial sector. There are four common methods that companies use to decide their promotion budgets. They are the affordable method, the percentage-of-sales method, the competitive-parity method and the objective-and-task method. Find a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal article (published within the last 5 years) on a topic of promotion budgets. Cite and summarize the article.