Strategic Marketing

Marker Comments

Grade: 20
Thank you for your submission. You need to follow the format of the assignment brief you are
presented with going forward, as for example here you do not include an Executive Summary which is
a requirement of the brief. Please also check your spelling and grammar for accuracy. Additionally,
you need to ensure that you adhere to AU Harvard referencing standards and need to visit the study
skills section on ilearn as a matter of urgency in order to familiarise yourself with this. The level of
referencing here is not appropriate for a course of this nature and at this level of study. You present
little evidence for your assertions as regards for example consumers demanding more bespoke
holidays online, and whilst this might be the case, you need to invest your time in researching and
referencing the actual facts related to this. Finally, in this aspect, you ideally should be talking about
something a little more original and expansive than Expedia providing a collection service for hotel
stays, as I am pretty certain this is a thing in the options for most organisations isn't it (including the
hotels themselves) and in any case is not really any major innovation which will draw new customers
in so you might want to think again on the level of innovation here.

In terms of your situational analysis, again you present little by way of referencing and therefore do
not really back up your academic underpinnings or stated facts. The stated observations needed to be
better rooted in specifics that relate to the organisation, as this is not always the case. Too many
factors appear to have a loose relationship with your proposal, and again little to back up your
discussion in terms of referencing both at a macro and micro level. Following on from this, you fail to
contextualise the internal core competences of Expedia specifically and instead give a more
generalised answer.

Whilst you discuss the SMART mnemonic, you do not really set any specific marketing objectives
here and instead talk about marketing tools and activities such as contacting customers. Objectives
need to be succinct and SMART. You need to revisit this. Following on from this section, your
discussion of segmentation, targeting and positioning along with the marketing mix is too vague and
not sufficiently directed towards your proposal, and the same can be said of the remainder of the
assignment.

The work makes a start here, but at this level of study you need to be much more widely read and far
better detailed in presenting your evidence. For example, you only have 2 references within your
bibliography and this is unacceptable when studying a course at this level. Overall, there is little
evidence of a thorough knowledge base here or of particular understanding of the discipline, and as I
say you will need to present much stronger evidence at this level of study. Please contact me for
further support on and I would be happy to advise you further.