Midterm Madness

We have crossed the half-mark of the semester. In two weeks, you will be presenting your Strategic Marketing Management Paper to CBE Faculty for critiquing.

As I have previously emphasized, reading your textbook will certainly help you catch up with the lost class time. I do really hope that you are reading your reference book.

Your midterm papers are way below my expectations. To be honest, most of the papers that were turned in are not 3rd year college level outputs. I'm sorry to tell you this but I think it is time to step up. I can see your potential to excel, or at least to submit a respectable output but I think most of you are not yet into this class. Papers like this one need time, effort, and a lot of brain work. There are 7-9 people in your group, use  that to your advantage. More importantly, as what Steve Jobs said above, puso, kelangan may puso!

I shall be posting your scores soon. Meanwhile, you may check your Google Doc to see my comments. Some of you have seen it already, and has started asking questions. Let's get the ball rolling.

Here are my general observations on your submitted documents:

1. Many of you don't write in prose. This is an academic paper, so it is expected of you to discuss each of the assertions that you made. Do not write in bullets. You need to explain and expound. Use bullets, graphs and tables only to emphasize or to summarize an idea.
2. Be intellectually honest. Many of you do not cite your sources. It is not a point against you if your data comes from others as long as you use footnotes or end notes. Make original analysis from the data you have.
3. Use recent data, 2010-2013 are most helpful. Remember, you should be spotting a trend here for your market and industry. Data from 10 years ago is not as helpful as recent ones, especially if a recent one is available.
4. The Analysis of External Environment should be looking at current forces or factors that may affect your firm/industry. External means outside of the firm. Focus on the things, events, trends that are currently happening or will happen in the near future. Your analysis of external environment will help you predict the future. A correct prediction of the future scenario will help you come up with a more appropriate and responsive strategy. You should be able to identify your correct industry and get to know the factors that affect the firm: buyer power, supplier power, barriers to entry, power of substitutes, and extent of industry rivalry. To be able to do all these, you must know the size and characteristics of the industry where your firm belongs, the competitors, and the customers.
5. The Analysis of Internal Environment on the other hand looks at the present capability of the firm- on what is INTERNAL to the company. Look at the company's tangible and intangible assets, evaluate each one and identify whether it is a strength or a weakness. Look at the company's value chain- how they transform inputs into outputs- and what activities are supporting this transformation. Identify their strong and weak spots. Having done both SWOT and VCA, you may proceed with finding the competitive advantage of the firm.

Your papers will be rated based on what you have submitted so far. But I expect you to continue working on revising, improving, and adding more substance to these sections of your paper. On our next meeting, we will be discussing the rest of the sections moving towards submitting a draft document that is ready for presentation to the panel.

See you on Saturday!

PS. Please rename your Google docs using this protocol: Mark106-<section> <Company Name>