CASE QUESTIONS
You have to make some product strategy and most likely some tactical marketing mix decisions. From the strategic perspective, you need to decide if L’Oréal should introduce Synergie and/or Belle Couleur.
Section 1: To start off you need to give an outline of what is going on, bring out relevant information from the case here. Show me you understand what the situation really is. This is not a simple sentence or two section, it is where you tell me the relevant facts of the case to demonstrate you can identify important aspects of a situation. Be detailed. Tell me all the important issues you found when reading the case.
Section 2: In this section you will do an Environmental Scan, SWOT and Porters 5 forces model analysis (at minimum) to help you answer the case question. I would also like you to write up a comparative analysis of the competitors for each line. This doesn’t mean just listing the names of the competitors, think 4 P’s here. What is a comparative analysis? You compare the competitions products to our products based on the 4 P’s.
Section 3: I have given you the 4 possible alternatives below, so I want you to recommend which one you chose and support your decision based upon the information in the previous sections. You should use other analytical tools from the book that may be useful beyond the SWOT and Porters model etc. Write this section as if you are assuming the reader (your boss) has jumped right to the recommendation section and ignored the previous sections. In other words, be detailed. Remember, your boss doesn’t care about your “opinions”, they want fact-based suggestions that are derived from the strategy models utilized.
Alternative 1: Introduce both lines.
Alternative 2: Introduce Synergie only.
Alternative 3: Introduce Belle Couleur only.
Alternative 4: Introduce neither line.
1. So your first section should be the outline of what is going on. This is not just a simple restatement of the decision to be made, show me you understand the details of what is going on here.
2. Your next section will be clearly labelled discussion of the models you are using to help guide your answer. Your competitor analysis for both product lines needs to be put in this section.
3. Your next section will be your suggested alternative choice, backed up with supporting information. Just listing your alternative is not enough! Also describe why you didn’t pick the other alternatives. You cannot suggest choosing more than 1 of the alternatives.
Section 4: Your last section will be a conclusions section. Think implementation here. What needs to be done now that you have made your choice of alternatives.
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General formatting guidelines.
Use headings for each section and for all models
Point form inside of a model is fine and in fact this helps the reader to visualize things quickly, however you need to fully explain in sentences/paragraphs everything in the model.
Type using a 12 font
Double space
Indent paragraphs
Spell and grammar check the document
Cite any work. I don’t care about citation style, just show when work is not your own. Given that I told you all you need is in the case, citations will be rare.
You don’t need to do any outside research, just use the case information.
Failure to follow these simple instructions will reduce your grade by at least one letter grade even before I have graded the content of your submission.
You MUST use the following headings in your paper. Section 1 – Overview, Section 2 – Strategy models, Section 3- Recommendation, Section 4- Conclusions.
This assignment is worth 300 points, treat it like it is important. Screwing up on this assignment will jeopardize graduation! Don’t let it get to that point; amaze me with your detail and rigor.
Do not ask me how many pages it needs to be, that is a freshman question. It needs to be as long as it needs to be to thoroughly answer the case. If you seriously think you will pass with a page or two answer (or even 3 or 4…) you are fooling yourself. Again, this is worth 300 out of 550 points and you need a total of 383/550 to pass the class. Screwing up this assignment will come back to haunt you. I am giving you a week to do this assignment, that is the equivalent of 7 weeks of class time in regular semester. Hand in an assignment that is similar to what you would hand in for a 7-week long assignment.
If you have questions about the course models, I can answer them. However, I will not look at your case study before the deadline and give you feedback. Your boss won’t do this either. They hire you to do a job, if you can’t do it on your own, they will find someone else that can.