1.

Take-Aways of the week: What are your two personal Take-Aways (TAs) about this
week's material? (for each TA, be sure to answer the What? Why? and How? questions
mentioned above)

TA 1

What: This week’s first take-away is the importance of a Total Demand Forecast, this consists of 4 steps:

1. Define the market

2. Divide total industry demand into its main competitors
3. Forecast the drivers of demand in each segment and project, how they are likely to
change
4. Conduct sensitivity analyses to understand the most critical assumptions and to gauge
risks to the baseline forecast (Barnett, 1988).

Why: I chose this point because while it seems on the surface to be a very simplistic approach,
the intricacies of it are so very important. Barnett states that “total-demand forecasting can be
important to strategy decisions” (1988). Utilizing his methodology builds better forecasts that
allow for a continued understanding of demand factors and potential risks. This allows those in a
decision-making position to have better more confidence in the data that they are presented and
are able to make informed decisions.

How: While this is not totally applicable to my current position, there are pieces of this that I am
able to take and integrate in my approach with it. Such as dividing demand into its main
competitors, I have many that I work with that look at our jobs as secure because we work for the
government, but I take the stand that we are in constant competition with private industry. It is a
possibility that the services we provide could be contracted out to non-profit group, or with
company that can provide the same services, so it is important to see that there is competition
and what we can do about it.

TA 2

What: The second take-away of this week was having a good solid knowledge of the political-
legal environment. This includes being aware of the current laws and regulations, being aware
of pending legislation and what impact that may have on your business, and especially having an
understanding of both the laws and regulations of your own country, but also those globally that
may impact your product.

Why: I chose this point because of how important it is and the great impact that is has on a
business. If one were to release a product and not be aware of the rules around naming a
product, they may be limited in how they could export that product. An example of this is
Champagne. The ability to call a sparkling wine Champagne is fiercely regulated by the French,
being “codified in national laws, European Union regulations, and international trade agreements
and treaties” (Milan, 2015). California Champagnes, while being produced since the 1860s, only
exist being named as such due to a loophole in the Treat of Versailles. Even in this treaty,
France included language limiting the use of Champagne to only those sparkling wines from the
Champagne region of France for all those party to the treaty. However, since the United States
only signed the treaty, but the U.S. Senate did not ratify it, we are able to still have California
Champagne (Milan, 2015).

How:

Understanding laws and regulations is critical to any position, especially mine. I have to balance
federal laws such as HIPAA and the ADA, state laws such as labor laws, and local ordinances
and how they impact the work that we do. When planning for new potential programs we have
to look at what could potentially impact it and how we balance these needs and requirements. I
find it very important to look at how these all work together as well. For example, HIPAA
requirements can be narrowed by a state to provide greater protections, but cannot be loosened.
It is so important to see the whole picture.

2. Marketing Debate: Do brands have finite lives? ('Brands cannot be expected to last

forever' Versus 'There is no reason for a brand to ever become obsolete'. Take a position and
be prepared to defend it if challenged by one of your classmates)

Brands have finite lives! While these words would make any company recoil in horror, it is an
unfortunate truth. The goal of the company is to preserve their brand and to make it last as long
as possible, but nothing lasts forever. An important distinction to make is the difference between
a brand and a company. According to Linton, the simplest way to distinguish between a
company and a brand is that “Company refers to the organization that markets or produces
products or services; brand refers to the image and “personality” a company applies to its
products” (2017). Brands and companies can overlap, examples of this are Microsoft, Coca-Cola,
and Nike, where the company and the brand are the same.

The brand life cycle consists of 4 stages: Introduction, Growth, Maturity and Decline, though
there are some that would argue that brands don’t always follow the product life cycle theory
(Liebermann, 1986). While looking at this curve, mathematically you could conclude that the
brand decline never truly reaches 0 and therefore the brand would be considered infinite, but at
this stage the company decides to end the brand because it is no longer profitable, thus brands are
finite. An example of this is The WB – A broadcast television network owned by Warner
Brothers, lasted 13 years from 1993 – 2006, posting a loss in its last year of $35 million dollars
(James, 2005).  The parent company goes on with its other brands, but once it hits not profitable,
there is no point to keep the loss going. 

3. Mini-case study: Read the Marketing Excellence case study about Intuit on page 124,
then answer this question: Why are consumer research and design thinking so critical
to Intuit’s success?

One reason why consumer research and design thinking are so critical to Intuit’s success is because of
the types of products they produce. A majority of their products deal with finance and taxes, which is a
sector of the market that deals with both irregular demand due to the cyclical nature of tax season and
to some aspects of negative demand, that people are willing to pay for program to avoid doing their
taxes manually, but are not fans of the program (Kolter and Keller, 2016). “Tax time has become a part
of our lexicon and Intuit continues to look at ways to make this easier and easier. Their embracing of
design thinking is the driving force behind their success. Through this process they were able to
understand what the consumer wanted, what they really wanted. It wasn’t just based on talking with
consumers and receiving feedback that way, but through careful observation and study. They meet the
consumer where they are at and don’t expect the consumer to come to them. Additionally this method
provides Intuit the ability to see where the gaps in the process are. With Intuit owning Mint.com,
Quicken and Turbo-Tax these programs are now all designed to feed into each other, making a
complicated process even easier (Cussen, 2020). Intuit continues to innovate to stay ahead of the curve,
if they can appear to anticipate the consumers need, instead of this being achieved through massive
amounts of research, they demonstrate why they are the value added product and continue to convince
us to buy a product to take care of something that we can do on our own, but no body likes to.

References

BARNETT, F. W. (1988). Four steps to forecast total market demand. Harvard Business Review, 66(4), 28–
38.

Bennett, R., & Rundle-Thiele, S. (2005). The brand loyalty life cycle: Implications for marketers. Journal of
Brand Management, 12(4), 250–263. https://doi-
org.library2.csumb.edu:2248/10.1057/palgrave.bm.2540221

Cussen, M. (2020, April 02). The Gloomy Future of the Tax Preparation Industry.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/040414/future-tax-preparation-industry.asp

James, M. (2005, December 10). WB Network Cuts Jobs as It Faces Losses, Falling Ratings. Los
Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-dec-10-fi-wb10-
story.html.

Kotler, P., & Keller, K. L. (2016). Marketing Management (15th ed.). Boston: Pearson
Liebermann, Y. (1986). The Advertising-to-Sales Ratio along the Brand Life Cycle: A Critical
Review. Managerial and Decision Economics, 7(1), 43-48.

Linton, I. (2017, November 21). Difference Between Company & Brand.

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/difference-between-company-brand-26198.html

Malin, J. (2015, June 29). The 100-Year-Old Loophole That Makes California Champagne
Legal. https://vinepair.com/wine-blog/loophole-california-champagne-legal/