1. Many marketers try to differentiate their products 10 from those of competitors. However in some highly competitive markets, there are few gaps or opportunities to find distinct positions. In such cases it may be useful to select specific competitors to target, based on an understanding of their weakest points. Perceptual maps can highlight what attributes are associated with close substitutes and what points of difference among the substitutes are least relevant in influencing customer preferences.

Create a set of perceptual attributes for a product service of your choice that will help you as a marketer to find gaps, opportunities or distinct positions for your product or service. A minimum of 10 perceptual attributes need to be included.

2. You are the marketing manager at the NECC (National Egg Coordination Committee). The historical approach to promoting the sale of eggs is through advertising that does not appeal to any particular segment in particular. This includes advertisements with the theme "Sunday Ho Ya Monday, Roj Khao Ande", celebrity endorsements of eggs and the like. A serious segmentation study of the market throws up 4 distinct segments namely

• Disinterested consumers

• Casual egg users

• Health conscious egg users

• Enthusiastic users

And profiled across the following parameters

• Beliefs

• Attitudes

• Lifestyles

• Health/nutrition conscious

• Media habits

• Consumption habits

• Demographics

For each of the above mentioned segments elaborate on the following:

Positioning

Copy and Visual of an advertisement

3. In deciding your advertising budget for the current 10 financial year, you tend to follow the conventional. methods such as

• Affordable method

• Percent of sales

• Competitive parity method

• Objective/task method

Your top management is critical of conventional approaches and suggests that a model based approach that is more scientific and one that reduces wastage be used to arrive at reasonable estimates on advertising spend. This needs to be based on earlier responses to your advertising spend and responses to the same. Draw up a reasonable model and provide interpretations of the same.

4. This question has 2 parts

Explain the key characteristics of cost oriented pricing, demand oriented pricing and competitor oriented pricing.

Which approach, do you think, is best suited for monopolistic market structures

5. This question has 2 parts

Elaborate on the basic output of conjoint analysis.

Why consumer value assessment through conjoint analysis is useful

6. Elaborate on the possible business strategies guiding/underlying the new product development in an organization, using suitable examples of low investment versus high investment strategies. Use a maximum of 3 strategies each for low and high investment to elaborate.

7. Elaborate on the 3 broad phases used in the STP (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning) approach, using demand variables, behavioral variables and attractiveness variables for each step.

8. Explain as to why the standard inverse price-cost relationship may not work under conditions of monopolistic competition.

9. Elaborate on the concept of a payoff matrix and how it aids in the decision making process with specific reference to minimax, maximin and laplace criterion.

10. While models are the core of marketing decision making, explain the concept of a marketing model and elaborate on the various types of models used in decision making.