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2.1 Every country has a set of core values and beliefs. These values may vary somewhat from region to region of
the nation. Identify five core values for your area of the country. Clip magazine advertisements that reflect
these values and bring them to class.
2.2 Give an example of component lifestyles based on someone you know.
Student answers will vary.
3.1 Baby boomers in America are aging. Describe how this might affect the marketing mix for the following:
• Bally Total Fitness: May increase demand as boomers try to avoid aging, but then it may decline if we give up
3.2 You have been asked to address a local Chamber of Commerce on the subject of “Generation Y.” Prepare an
outline for your talk.
The outline should include the following elements: Generation Y consumers are skeptical, having been bombarded
3.3 How should Ford Motor Company market differently to Generation Y, Generation X, and baby boomers?
Generation Y: Gen Yers have grown up in a media-saturated, brand-conscious world and love customized
products. So, Ford should develop a car that is just for this generation alone and provide customized features
4.1 Go to the library and look up a minority market such as the Hispanic market. Write a memo to your boss
that details the many submarkets within this segment.
Student answers will vary. Students should be invited to look at Web sites, as well as at traditional books or
Chapter 4 ♦ The Marketing Environment 4-13
4.2 Using the library and the Internet, find examples of large companies directing marketing mixes to each major
5.1 Explain how consumers’ buying habits may change during a recessionary period.
An economic recession is a phase when income, production, and employment fall, and together reduce the
5.2 Periods of inflation require firms to alter their marketing mix. Suppose a recent economic forecast expects
inflation to be almost 10 percent during the next eighteen months. Your company manufactures hand tools
for the home gardener. Write a memo to the company president explaining how the firm may have to alter its
marketing mix.
Inflation is a general rise in prices resulting in decreased purchasing power. Inflation generally causes consumers to
6.1 Give three examples of how technology has benefited marketers. Also, give several examples of how firms
have been hurt because they did not keep up with technological changes.
Students’ answers will vary widely. For example, they may mention that the new technology in artificial sweeteners
7.1 The Federal Trade Commission and other governmental agencies have been both praised and criticized on
their regulation of marketing activities. To what degree do you think the government should regulate
marketing? Explain your position?
Governmental regulation that directly impacts marketing includes: 1) pricing regulation; 2) advertising
7.2 Can you think of any other areas where consumer protection laws are needed?
7.3 What topics are currently receiving attention in FDA News (http://www.fdanews.com)? What effect has the
attention had on market share?
8.1 Explain how the nature of competition is changing in America.
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Competition among corporations in America goes through cycles. During certain periods, competition can be
cutthroat and result in mergers or acquisitions that are hostile and threaten fair trade (think: 1980s). During
8.2 Might there be times when a company becomes too competitive? If so, what could be the consequences?
Companies can certainly become too competitive. When this happens, they may be either engaging in illegal
Supplemental Exercise: Group Work
Review and Applications
Review and Application Questions 1.2, 2.2, 3.1, 3.3, 5.1, 6.1, 7.2, 8.1, and 8.2 lend themselves well to group work. For
APPLICATION EXERCISE
Purpose: The purpose of this exercise is to allow those students who have had only minimal exposure to cultural
Setting It Up: If your college or university is in a larger metropolitan area, you will probably have a greater variety of
ethnic restaurants nearby. If, however, you are in a more remote location, you can adapt the exercise for the Internet.
Simply have students search for a variety of ethnic restaurants in a larger city, like New York, Atlanta, Chicago, or Los
Angeles. Push students to look for restaurants outside the most common (Italian, Chinese).
This application exercise is based on the following Great Idea in Teaching Marketing:
Mark Andrew Mitchell
University of South Carolina—Spartanburg
THE GUIDE TO ETHNIC DINING
Introduction
Chapter 4 ♦ The Marketing Environment 4-15
student’s appreciation of other cultures and their understanding of coupled global markets.
Purpose of the Project
The purpose of this project is to expose students to other cultures by examining the foods typical of that culture.
Students identify and profile ethnic dining establishments in their local service area. Further, descriptions of each ethnic
dining category are written to develop the student’s appreciation of the differences in diets and dining habits among
Student Application
This project can be administered in a Principles of Marketing, International Marketing, Consumer Behavior, or
Marketing Research course. This class provides professional services to area Chambers of Commerce, Travel and
Tourism personnel, hospitality marketers, and university personnel.
Proposed Process for Successful Completion of Project
The following is an action plan to guide the preparation of “The Guide to Ethnic Dining” in your market:
·Identify ethnic dining categories for analysis.
·Profile ethnic dining habits within each category.
Information Collected
As noted earlier, the guide is meant to be descriptive and not comparative. The following information is
suggested for inclusion in your guide:
·Name of establishment
·Translation of name (if applicable)
After you categorize the types of ethnic dining available (i.e., Mexican, Italian, Greek) in your service area,
develop a list of applicable restaurants. (You can use the ethnic dining categories to construct specialized teams to
conduct the project.) Each student is then assigned responsibility to contact particular restaurants to secure the desired
information. This process allows you to avoid duplication of effort. Students submit the collected information using a
common word processing software package supported by the institution. The student’s collective works are then
compiled for printing and electronic distribution.
Chapter 4 ♦ The Marketing Environment 4-17
ETHICS EXERCISE
1. Is Gary targeting a “vulnerable” market?
2. Does the AMA Statement of Ethics address this issue? Go to http://www.marketingpower.com and
review the statement. Then write a brief paragraph on what it contains that relates to Gary Caplan’s
marketing decision.
The AMA Statement of Ethics does address this issue when it states “we will recognize our special commitments to
MARKETING PLAN EXERCISE
Purpose: Students will use the following exercises as a guide for the next part of the strategic marketing plan.
1. Describe how your company will handle privacy concerns.
2. Scan the marketing environment. Identify opportunities and threats to your chosen company in areas such as
CASE STUDY
DAIMLER/BMW: A New Breed of Driver
1. Discuss environmental factors related to population that are changing the way certain people approach car
buying and are thus creating new market segments.
One of the primary factors is growth in major urban areas. Population growth in cities like New York, Tokyo, and
ownership.
2. Describe the values held by this emerging group of drivers, which incline them toward car sharing programs.
3. How are automakers using car-sharing programs to cater to customers’ component lifestyles?
Flexibility is one of the major advantages of car-sharing programs for those with component lifestyles. Car–
sharing programs offer different types of vehicles, where a car owner would be limited in choice (namely to the
4-18 Chapter 4 ♦ The Marketing Environment
LESSON PLAN FOR VIDEO
Company Clips Method—Entering a Crowded Market
Segment Summary:
Companies large and small, new and old are all participants in the market, and as such, they are all subject to the forces
that act on each entity in the marketplace. The same is true of Method. As you’ve already seen in the Company Clips
from chapters 2 & 3, Method has been attentive to the customer, analyzed the competition, focused on social change,
and identified economic factors that have affected how it does and will do business. Review the Company Clips from
chapters 2 and 3 to hear founders Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan and CEO Alastair Dorward describe several factors in
the external environment that have influenced how Method entered the market and the success the company experienced.
1. Method’s founders and CEO repeatedly reference the role of competition and consumers in their
assessments of the company’s external environment. Is there a hierarchy to the environmental factors
discussed in this chapter? Explain.
Students’ answers will vary but there really is not a hierarchy of external factors in the external environment.
2. Should other companies imitate the emphasis Method gives to certain factors in its external environment?
Why or why not?
Students’ answers will vary. Method is a small company competing against many industry giants. Each company
3. Does Method’s assessment of its external environment seem to be lacking anything? What?
Supplemental Exercise: Video
Company Clips
These teaching notes can be assigned for students to prepare before class, in-class before watching the video, during
class while watching the video, or after students watched the video.
Chapter 4 ♦ The Marketing Environment 4-19
Pre-Class Prep for You:
• Review the Company Clips video segment from Chapters 2 and 3. This exercise reviews concepts for LO1, LO2,
and LO3
• Review your lesson plan.
• Make sure you have all of the equipment needed to show the video to the class, including the DVD and a way to
project the video.
Video Review Exercise Activity
• Warm Up – Begin by asking students: “How do businesses go about researching and determining a target market?”
• In-Class Preview
o Segue into a discussion of demographics.
• Follow-up
o Send students back to Method’s Web site at http://www.methodhome.com. Have students write a brief
paragraph about how Method entered the market and the research and external factors that allowed them to
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GREAT IDEAS FOR TEACHING CHAPTER 4
James S. Cleveland, Sage College of Albany
DISCUSSION BOARD TOPICS TO ENCOURAGE PARTICIPATION
Discussion board questions provided to students to encourage them to engage in thinking and writing about the
content of the Principles of Marketing course usually take the form of a provocative statement to which students are
asked to respond. An example of this would be: All PR is good PR.
I have developed, therefore, a series of discussion board questions to use with experienced, adult students. These
questions are designed to encourage them to use their experiences as employees and consumers as doorways to better
understand the course material, and to make their own responses more interesting to themselves and to the other students
in the class who will read and comment on them.
Each question has three parts:
1. First, there is a sentence or two from the students’ textbook introducing the topic. By using the text author’s own
2. Second, there is a reference to text pages the student should review before proceeding. Since the goal of the
3. Third, there is a request for the student to think about or remember some specific situation in their experience to
which they can apply the text material, and a question or questions for them to address in their reply.
Here are additional such discussion board questions. Each is written to fit the same text cited above but could easily
be rewritten and revised to fit another text.
Series A
1. Research shows that the large percentage of people who say they never have enough time to do all that they
need to do keeps inching up. It is estimated that over 80 percent of the working population is worried about
Series B
1. The minority population of the United States in 2011 reached 110 million. About one in three U.S. residents is
3. Then describe how this trend affects the ads you see and the products you buy.
Felicia G. Lassk, Western Kentucky University
UTILIZING AN INTERNET PERSONALITY TEST
IN THE CONSUMER BEHAVIOR COURSE
An interactive assignment that integrates personality testing and the Internet is the use of the Kiersey
Temperament Sorter in a class presentation on personality. The Kiersey Temperament Sorter is located at
Chapter 4 ♦ The Marketing Environment 4-21
Kim McKeage, University of Maine
STUDENTS PRACTICE MAKING
MARKET/PRODUCT GRIDS ON THEMSELVES
This in-class project has students use a segmentation scheme that they have already studied. This could
include:
• VALS
• Lifestyle
• Price Sensitivity
• Quality Sensitivity
If students wish to use VALS, I instruct them ahead of time to get on the internet and access the VALS survey
online so that they can determine their type.
On the day when we do this exercise, students form groups of 5–8 persons. The group is instructed to pick a product
category. I recommend the following categories to them as items they might be familiar with:
• Automobiles (cars, trucks, SUVs, etc.)
Students then have to describe which market segments are represented in their group according to the segmentation
scheme(s) they choose to use. They must also develop a market/product grid to describe how to target different products
(within their chosen category) toward the different market segments represented within their group. The product
positions can be for existing products or imagined products (especially if no existing product fits a position they want).
Rosa T. Cherry, Williamsburg Technical College
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR ASSIGNMENT
To illustrate and emphasize the decision process, use this assignment. Choose two goods or services that you or
your family has purchased recently—one costing less than $25 and one costing more than $125. Explain the decision-
