Reference no: EM132573470 , Length: word count:3000

MBA7003 Marketing - Gulf College

Company - Shanfari group of companies

You are required to prepare an individual essay of 3,000 words which Critically analysis in both theory and practice the role market segmentation and marketing research plays in a strategic marketing. This should be undertaken with respect to a real/imaginary company of your choice located in the Middle East.

a) A critical analysis of marketing theory concerning market segmentation and marketing research.
b) A critical review of how your chosen company could employ marketing research to develop appropriate market segmentation, targeting and position with its customers in the real world.
c) Coherency and referencing

You are required to use at least 10 academic references and use Harvard referencing.

Part A - Market Segmentation
• Choose a company (you can make one up sensibly)
• A little bit of background to the company
• What is segmentation - brief definition plus the importance of segmentation
• How does your chosen company segment its market currently?
• Discuss the various methods of segmentation
• Evaluate different segmentation approaches and see if your company should adopt them, and if not, why not?
All the above, in red, should be underpinned with theory (references)
• Provide a summary/short conclusion. Tell the reader what you are doing next, i.e. Marketing Research

Part B - Marketing research worth
• Discuss your proposed research approach - what type of research design (exploratory, descriptive, or causal - or a mixture of two or more approaches) you feel would be appropriate.
o Discuss descriptive research if you want to understand consumers' attitudes for developing segments.
o Discuss exploratory, qualitative, research if you want to understand consumers' feelings and motivations
Add one or two references from marketing research literature.
• Discuss your proposed targets (customers of the company)
o Discuss how you intend to select respondents for your research (sampling issues: talk about random or non-random sampling methods briefly and suggest how you should select the respondents).
Add a reference about sampling here from marketing research literature.
• Discuss your proposed questionnaire you want to use to gather data on customers
o What kind of scales you are going to use to ask attitudinal, behaviour and demographic questions?
Add a reference about questionnaire design here from marketing research literature.
• Discuss, briefly the important issues of validity and reliability here.
Add a reference about validity and reliability here from marketing research literature.

Part C - Coherency and referencing
Please note: You are NOT required to do any research or data collection. You are simply required to propose what you would do and how you would do it if it was a real study.