Eight, (8) statements are presented. Please select any five, (5). Is the statement true or false? Provide your answer, by writing out the words – True or False, and compose a response – your reaction to the statement to explain.
✓ Students are expected to provide an insightful response using marketing terminology, proper grammar and punctuation.
✓ Be sure to include at least five terms in your response.
✓ Be sure to follow the standards of formal business writing. Remove all personal pronouns!
✓ Each response must be in the form of a paragraph (more than three complete sentences).
✓ Type/copy the question and write your response under the question.

SAMPLE Statement:
The competitive environment of business and marketing is a particularly complex aspect of the external environment.

Response:
ANS. True.
Marketing management theory suggests that success requires strategic awareness. Thinking strategically requires decision makers to identify alternative strategic purposes and objectives and the ability to recognize critically different environments (macro and micro). Decision makers must think strategically and organize for marketing success. Marketing success translates into a clear understanding of the needs of the market, satisfying targeted customers more effectively and more profitability than competitors. In order to accomplish planned goals, firms must perform SWOT analysis, benchmark competitors, identify core competencies and once strategy is set, fully exploit competitive advantage. In addition strategic planning requires the ability to diagnose an organization in terms of various critical characteristics and to be able to shape characteristics so that the organization is best fitted to the environment. In short, strategic planning is a process (art and science) designed to yield innovative and creative market strategies.

Select any five (5), of the following:

1. Cause marketing can be a means for companies to productively link CSR to consumer marketing programs.
2. The marketplace is dramatically different from ten years ago, with new marketing behaviors, opportunities, and challenges emerging.
3. The major responsibility for identifying significant marketplace changes falls on the marketing manager.
4. Conducting marketing research and collecting marketing intelligence can help to identify major market opportunities.
5. Studying the market and the dynamics of individual consumers is an imperative.
6. Creating a compelling, well-differentiated brand position requires an understanding of consumer needs and wants, capabilities and competitive activities.
7. An effective branding strategy identifies which brand elements a firm chooses to apply across various products.
8. Companies today must build and manage a continuously evolving and increasingly complex channel system and value network.