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- QUESTION
BUSN115 Week 5: Lemonade Stand, Part II
Informal Business Report
Background
In part II of this assignment, we continue to outline various business aspects of our lemonade stand. As you continue to learn new concepts in this course, you have seen how a lemonade stand can help us understand and apply these concepts. In Part II of your lemonade stand we will incorporate concepts from previous weeks and apply these to your newly created company.
Scenario
In week 3, you created a lemonade stand that you opened in your local neighborhood; you created a name, developed a mission statement, outlined a CSR plan, and picked a pricing strategy for this new company. This week you will continue to develop your idea by writing an informal business report that will share your plans with a potential business investor. A report template is available in Doc Sharing to guide you through formatting of this assignment; however, the main prompts you should address in the report include:
– Branding strategy. In Part I, you decided part of the brand when you developed your pricing strategy. Continue with the other parts of the marketing mix (Place, Promotion, and Product), and discuss how the lemonade stand should be branded utilizing this marketing mix (Chapter 14).
– Opportunities for new locations. Your stand in your neighborhood has been very successful and you are considering expanding operations. In doing so, you will need to outline some criteria for potential new locations (Chapter 15).
– Promotion plans. You have a $ 10,000 budget to promote your stand in the local community. Please outline two or three ways you could promote this business (please include costs involved in these promotions) (Chapter 16).
– Employee Training. You have hired several people to run your lemonade stand, as you simply are too involved in the strategic aspects of the business. As such, you have seen sales drop. What are some ways you can motivate your employees to improve sales? (Chapter 10)
Activity
Once you have considered the points above, please provide responses and explanations using the template provided in Doc Sharing (titled “Lemonade Stand Informal Business Reportâ€). Utilize your textbook and apply the lessons we have learned in previous weeks to develop and support your plans. By offering support and developing your response, you must provide examples, elaboration, or justification, often in the form of information gathered from your textbook. When integrating support from your textbook, be sure to use APA style to provide in-text citations within the paragraph and a full end reference on a separate Reference Page after the Business Plan. Examples of APA formatting are included in the template.
You are to write roughly 500 – 750 words in answering all points posted above for your Lemonade Stand.This informal business report will be evaluated on how well you apply the concepts that are detailed in the textbook to a practical idea. In order to receive the highest grade, it is required that you review the textbook and cite specific areas of the text in your responses (taking care in citing these properly in APA style). Additionally, while this is not an English class and while the content of your ideas is most important, grammar and sentence structure will account for a portion of your report grade. Please be sure to write well-developed responses in complete sentence and paragraph format.
Note: For this assignment and other college writing assignments, please note that when you reference or cite a text, if you use words that are directly from a source, they must be in quotations and cited. If you are just referencing them and have changed the words, a citation is still required. One final point, when writing anything in college, you must adhere to the 80/20 rule: 80% of the papers should be in your own words, while 20% make up any citations you may add. Violation of this rule could result in a zero for the assignment.
Grading Rubric
Grading Rubric: Category Points Description
Criteria/Creativity 30 Demonstrates a strong grasp of the prompts by fully addressing required components with creativity, insight, and logical application.
Understanding 50 Demonstrates understanding of the course content by applying concepts from the lectures and text and showing citations from the text when addressing the prompts. The report clearly explains business plans to an investor as the audience.
Execution 20 Responses follow a clear purpose and are written succinctly using strong organization, development, and proper grammar. Citations and a Reference Page are correctly formatted using APA style. Word count for the business report should be between 500 – 750 words (not including the Reference Page or template information).
Total 100 A quality assignment will meet or exceed all of the above requirements.
Subject | Business | Pages | 4 | Style | APA |
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Answer
Branding Strategy
Place: Choosing the business location is the most important decision for the small lemonade business. It requires precise planning and research. This will involve analysing of demographics, assessing the supply chain, staying within the $20000 budget, scoping the competition, and understanding state taxes and laws. it entails determining the business needs including brand image, competition, local labour market, plan for future growth, proximity to suppliers, and safety (Jansson, 2004). The best location is the one that will provide exposure to customers. Another major consideration is the available finances as well as determining how business friendly the place is.
Promotion: Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook will be adopted to promote products in a more relaxed environment (Neves, Castro, & Cônsoli, 2010). The use of social media will help the lemonade business to connect with potential world of customers. It is expected that the new pool of customers that will not see the business as just trying to sell the product, rather, they will see it as a business that is in touch with people and on a more personal level. This will in turn lessen the divide between the business and the clients and present a more appealing and familiar image of the business.
Product: The product is already identified as sale of lemonades. The next step involves generating the sales. In order to achieve success, this will require a study of the competitors (Jansson, 2004). This will facilitate the decision to target the ideal customer. The business will focus on the prospects that will purchase from the business. It will also involve creation of a value proposition in order to set the business apart from competition. it is imperative at this stage to define the business’ marketing strategy and tactics.
Opportunities for new locations
Before undertaking this action, the business will first evaluate the current operations at the existing site as a basis for preparing a critical plan for expansion. According to Neves, Castro, and Cônsoli (2010), key factors to be considered in this decision include geographic markets to serve, labour quality and cost, site availability, and economic development incentives. These factors determine the suitability of a location for setting up the new stands for the lemonade business.
Promotion plans
The budget available for the promotion program is $10000. An estimated $4000 will be used to register the business with Google Places. This will make the business easily available on Google searches and Google Maps. Another very cost effective strategy will be the use of social media as discussed above estimated to cost $1000. Advertisements and offers will be tied on the business’ Facebook page. The business will also have a direct channel with the customers on Twitter. In addition, the business will start a blog and have followers as a way of connecting with customers and keeping them updated on the daily activities of the business. With the limited budget, it will also be helpful to sponsor a $5000 charity walk as a way of leveraging the local community in which the business will operate. The third cost efficient way to promote the business will be through offering of coupons. These are expected to generate return visits.
Employee Training
The company will focus on training new employees in order to instil superior skills in customer service. Since the business is focused on creating strong customer relationships, employees will be trained to act as link between the business and the customers by offering superior customer service.
References
Jansson, T. (2004). Promotional products : strategies and effects. Kungälv: New Wave Group. Neves, M. F., Castro, L. e., & Cônsoli, M. A. (2010). Marketing Methods to Improve Company Strategy : Applied Tools and Frameworks to Improve a Company’s Competitiveness Using a Network Approach. New York: Routledge. |
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