Assignment 3: Course Project 1—Modeling and the Learning Plan

Throughout this course, you will complete a project that follows the process you will use on the job to understand consumer behavior in relation to a product, service, or brand. You will then utilize that knowledge to reach and influence the consumer through a marketing plan. By following the process of learn, understand, interpret, and influence the consumer, you will not only have a thorough understanding of the meaning of consumer behavior, you will also be able to use those interpretations and insights to develop motivating and meaningful marketing and advertising. This will, in turn, influence the consumer by living in their minds and touching their hearts.

This project will allow you to immerse yourself in the world of the consumer—to see things as them, to react to things as they do, and to understand what causes their behaviors. During the project, you will observe and learn about consumer behavior first hand. You will also have the opportunity to determine the segments of consumers you will target.

This project will let you look at a target consumer with an opportunity to understand all the perspectives of consumer behavior as it relates to products—decision making and selection, advertising, and marketing of that selected consumer. Throughout the next five and a half weeks, you will be working on different steps that will come together to form a consumer profile, which will become part of a marketing plan.

Tasks

Part Two

Advertising students: The client assigned to you and your manager is a leader in the household products industry; they sell everything from laundry detergent to toothpaste. Aware of the so-called graying America, they want to capture the increasing population of older Americans living on a fixed income. The client wants to introduce a line of products priced to compete with generic brands, with the emotional connect older consumers feel for brands they used their whole lives but can no longer afford.

Think about who the target consumer for this product will be. Determine some of the demographics of this target, such as:

• What will be the age and gender of the person most likely to purchase this product? Why do you think so?
• What might be their income level?
• What is the selling price of this product and how necessary is it?
• What does their household look like?
• Are they married? Do they have children?
• Are they more likely to be of one ethnicity than another?
• Do more of them live in one part of the country than another?

Determine some of the psychographics of your target, such as:

• What do they do with this product?
• What do they think about using this product?
• How do they feel about this product?
• How does this product fit into their lives?

Create a learning plan; capture your model and hypotheses. In other words, capture the information and think about what this means in the context of the consumer’s life. During this step, you are building your model of the target consumer. The model is designed to show all the information you know about the consumer. Put this information in a table format, identifying the demographic and psychographic areas where your knowledge is complete.

After identifying all of the data you have on the consumer and some of the information you believe about the consumer, identify the gaps in your knowledge. Look for insights you will still need to learn or verify. These gaps are information that, as you review your knowledge, you identify as “missing.”

For example, you think you know the age and gender of the potential target, but you are not sure what income level may be the best to target. Alternatively, you may know age, gender, and income but not what the average household looks like. You may also know what the consumer uses the product for but not how they use it or how they feel about it. Capture these questions in points.

Group your questions or gaps identified above by the method you intend to use to gather the missing information, which is either primary or secondary research.

After completing the required areas, you would have completed part one, which comprises what you know (your model), what you need to know, and how you will go about gathering the missing information. Track how long it takes you to compile this information. Many tasks are billed to clients based upon the time to complete; this will start to make you aware of your billable hours.

Post the model and learning plan on the W1 Assignment 3 Discussion Area by Tuesday, February 21, 2017.

Deliverables

• Identify the target consumer.
• Determine psychographics of the target consumer.
• Post the target consumer model and hypotheses.
• Create a learning plan with objectives and identified knowledge gaps.
• Save your document as a Microsoft Word document and name it as AI_ADVA204_W1_A3_Lastname_Firstinitial.doc.
• Submit the Microsoft Word document to W1 Assignment 3 Discussion Area by Tuesday, February 21, 2017.