How will the various elements of the marketing environment impact on your plans? Where do you see your key markets and who would be your main customers? Who (and what) are your competitors, and which ones will be the most important?

Business management report

Read this part carefully and, if you don’t understand, ask your tutorial tutor to clarify what you need to do

There are two different briefs below.  Each brief has the same task.  You only need to answer one brief, not both.  You can decide which one you would prefer to answer.  Read the context for the case study, then answer the questions in that context.  If you submit answers to both briefs, we will only mark the first one and we will completely ignore the second one.

Brief one: The fountain of Youth (Answer this brief OR brief two, not both)

Note If you are concerned that the product in this assignment is unrealistic, so were the students in a previous version where the product was a device which translates speech between 26 languages in real time.  Such a device is now available on Amazon for around £60 ….

One of the difficulties facing universities is that we are trying to prepare you for jobs that don’t exist selling products that aren’t yet available, so the subject of this assignment fits right in with that requirement. 

The context for your assignment (For the purpose of this assignment, assume that what follows is factually real)

For centuries mankind has been trying to find the secret to eternal youth, the elixir of life, the key to turning off the aging process.  Con-merchants have sold all manner of potions claiming to do just this and in the seventeenth century arsenic was used as make-up and led was dropped into the eyes to make them appear brighter!

You are the marketing team for a cosmetics company which, while working on a new face cream formula in 1999, made a very fortunate mistake and achieved what con-men and scientists have been dreaming of: they accidentally developed a substance which will actually stop the aging process in its tracks.

This breakthrough has been kept quiet for the last fifteen years while the Chief Geneticist used herself as a guinea pig.  She has bathed twice daily in a bath into which the substance is added, much as you would with bubble bath.  Not only does she not look a day older, but at a genetic level she is exactly the same age now as she was fifteen years earlier.  Other than this, the cream has had no ill effects.

The Board is ready to go public with the product, subject only to achieving clearance from various health and safety agencies, which they are certain will happen.

Brief two:   (Answer this brief OR brief two, not both)

You are the worldwide marketing director for Apple.

You are launching a new mobile phone.  It isn’t much different from the previous few versions of the iPhone, but you can reasonably expect people to buy it anyway, simply because it’s the newest version.

Your task for whichever brief you decide to follow  (Only answer brief one OR brief two: not both)

These tasks apply to whichever brief you decide to answer.