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1 Marketing Management (MKTG5320.W01) Applied Marketing Assignment Total Points: 150. Due Date: Sunday, February 27, 2022 at 11:59 PM. Submission via Blackboard. This assignment is to be completed individually. Instructions • Page Length: minimum 4 pages including any images; excluding cover page and references. A cover page is required. • Citation Format: There is no specific format required but all sources must be listed including those for any images. For instance, if you use a graphic image from a source on the web, you must cite the source in your references. One way to format citations for this project is to use superscripts, e.g., The US economy grew at a rate of 3.5% during the first quarter.1 Or you can use footnotes. For images, you can simply cite the source at the bottom of the image. • Important – Students are required to meet the SafeAssign threshold of 40% content match or less. If your match percentage is higher than 40%, you will have the opportunity to take down the document and re-submit it until the due date. Due to the nature and scope of the assignment, the content match percentage has been raised. • Unless otherwise, late submissions may not be accepted or may receive partial credit only. If an extraordinary event prevents you from submitting your paper on time, please advise both myself and the academic coaches ahead of time or at your earliest. This activity relates to material covered in Module 5 and Module 6. Please leverage relevant information from the module to help you develop answers to assignment questions. Product Recall Campaign for Home Appliance Manufacturer Scenario As a publicly-traded company, you manufacture and market large consumer home appliances including refrigerators, washer-dryers, and dishwashers. These products are sold to consumers through a variety of indirect channels including home improvement retailers (such as Home Depot, Lowes, and Menards), consumer electronics and appliance outlets (such as Best Buy and other small appliance retailers), and other online retailers. These products are serviced through a variety of store-affiliated and independent dealers who perform repairs and warranty work. From a marketing standpoint, you 2 employ traditional and digital channels/platforms to promote or advertise your products to consumers across the US. One of your flagship products is a line of technologically-sophisticated, smart refrigerators which can be connected to the Internet through in-home Wi-Fi and range in price from 2,000 - $4,000 per unit. These smart refrigerators offer a variety of options to consumers including being able to program, monitor, and control the appliance through an embedded interface, (i.e., door-based, touch-screen which employs an operating system and a variety of apps) as well as a mobile app. Furthermore, smart refrigerators can provide users with a plethora of information including appliance performance, necessary part replacement alerts (such as water filters) while also providing insight into the contents of the refrigerator, i.e., being able to view food items, their temperature, quantity, etc. These refrigerators can also be integrated with other household devices such as door-bells or internal and external security cameras to provide users with greater visibility into various areas of their home. Within the refrigerator product line, these smart refrigerators account for a growing portion of your company’s revenue and profitability and are increasingly being sought by consumers for various reasons including their contemporary style and aesthetic appeal, convenience, state-of-the art appliance management functions, and many other key attributes. Recently, you were informed by the consumer safety agency that they have received hundreds of complaints from consumers regarding your smart refrigerators and that an inquiry is being opened which focuses on product reliability and safety. You were informed that they key issue pertains to the refrigerators automatically overriding the user settings thereby leading to food spoilage. Moreover, several users indicated in their complaints that their household members had gotten sick not knowing that the food they had just purchased and placed in the refrigerator had become spoiled due to random variations in refrigerator’s temperature. You have completed your internal investigation and found that the problem is due to faulty hardware, specifically a processor that would need to be replaced, an endeavor that would require expending time and financial resources. However, to avoid costly litigation and creating conflict with channel members (appliance retailers), you have decided to issue a product recall. The first step in that recall is to inform consumers and explain the need for replacing the faulty hardware/processor, the replacement process and what it entails, and a timeline. Q.1. Develop a consumer-focused email (minimum 1-page) which is to be sent to product owners who are affected by the recall i.e., those who own such smart refrigerators. Assume you have their contact information from when they purchased or registered the product. (50 points) The email should focus on accomplishing the following objectives: a) Persuades recipient to open the email. b) Provides information about the recall. 3 c) Prompts specific action such as visiting your website or clicking on certain links to schedule their product repair. Persuades customer to take the action now as opposed to procrastinating the repair. d) Creates reassurance about the brand/company. e) Minimizes the likelihood of consumers inundating retail stores with calls/inquiries. MUST HAVE ELEMENTS FOR THE EMAIL: 1. Subject line: A compelling/creative header (the goal is to cut through the email fatigue many consumers already face from getting inundated by email marketers) 2. Email Body: Mix of text and visual content, e.g., an image (the objective is to keep the audience engaged with the email). 3. Email Body: Call to action – e.g., some sort of an embedded button or an image with an embedded URL, etc., that consumers must click to schedule their product repair. Q.2. Develop a channel-focused email which notifies them about the issue, discusses implications for the channel partner, and provides information on remedies/support that they should expect from the manufacturer. (50 points) Q.3. Develop the following items: a) A direct mail piece that will be sent out to the product owners’ physical mailing address. The objectives for this direct mail piece are the same as the email, i.e., inform and persuade product owners. However, this piece must also contain a sales promotion/incentive to compensate customers for the inconvenience they may have to endure because of the product recall. In designing the promotion, please make sure that it is cost-effective for the company yet also perceived as valuable by the consumer. (25 points) b) Develop an in-store brochure that can be used by the channel members’ sales and customer support staff when responding to customer inquiries about the recall. (25 points) Answer Format: 1-2 pages. Please use a lay-out that mimics a brochure, flyer, etc., for both parts. These are typically foldable items. Please make any space/room for the customer’s mailing address, etc.