UNIVERSITY OF COLOMBO, SRI L,ANKA

FACULTY OF MANAGEMENT AND FINANCE

Postgraduate &mid-career Development Unit

Master of Business Administration (Semester II-First half) Examination - September, 2010

MBA 536- Marketing Management

Three (03) Hours

Answer three (3) questions in all selecting one (01) question from part I and all questions in Part II

This is an open book examination

The paper contains four (5) questions in four (4) printed pages

Answers for Part i and Part 11 should be written in separate answer books

PART I

Answer one question only from this part

l. Assume that you are working for a sporting goods retail company. Overall sales have been declining for the

last three years and management is very concerned. Each retail store has its own individual databases that

keep track of sales for specific items. However at the overall management level, only sales figures for each

store are reported. Management has asked you to Drepare reports by sale items (such as specific brand X and

model Y of running shoes) and by categories of sale items (such as all running shoes) so that they can make

accurate decisions on which product lines to drop to reduce overall inventory costs, As a Business

lntelligence (BI) specialist or as a part of a development team, you will need to develop a procedure to

extract data from each individual database, reconcile data formats and types, aggregate all data into a data

repository, and develop queries based on management requests. You will communicate and work closely

with management representatives to ensure that the created data repository and reports meet their needs. This

usually involves a series of back and forth discussion during which both sides ask and answer questions. You

have to develop a good understanding of the business concerns and be able to frame them into technical

requirements for the BI project. You also need to educate management regarding possibilities and constraints

of the technology as ittranslates into business applications. Depending on your level of responsibilities, you

will develop or contribute to the development of a realistic estimate of time, resources and cost to achieve the

intended goal etc. etc.. Once the project is launched, you will develop full specifications, develop and test

subsystems, and integrate into final product. Throughout the development process, you will conduct a series

of increasingly rigorous technical, functional and user tests. Based on the results of these tests, you can

expect revision of technical specifications, and overall system and unit design, along with project timeline,

resources and cost revisions. Of particutar importance will be a focus on user needs and requirements,

business applications, and easy-to-use user interface. Your BI team may be also invoked in developing and

delivering training to managers and other stakeholders in using the new system.

(50 marks)

Z. Assume that you are working for a large hospital. Expensive equipment is often shared between units and

moved throughout the hospital facilities. One of the concerns expressed by medical professionals and

managers in the organization is the difficulty of tracking specific pieces of equipment. As a result more units

are purchased to make sure that at least one of them is always available when needed. From efficiency

perspective there is no data to track usage of specific equipment. The BI team you are a party of has been

asked to work with the technology infrastructure team to make recommendations on an RFID (Radio-

Frequency ldentification) based system that will enable to track to location and daily usage of every

individual piece of equipment. The focus of your team will be to specifu the data management part of the

overall system. you will need to educate yourself on RFID technology options and available systems, and

specifically on the type of data and software.systems that best interface with RFID units. You will research

what other healthcare organizations have implemented RFID systems and with what results. You will need to

interface closely with the lT group as well as users to understand and take into account the constraints and

requirements from both the infrastructure and the application sides. You will need to research solutions and

meet with potentialvendors to discuss advantages and limitations of each potential solution. You will need to

understand the types and frequency of reports that users and management will require to optimize operations.

Future plans for possible system capacity and functionality expansions will be taken into consideration in the

selection process. Once the research is completed, you will contribute to the development of an overall

proposal to upper management that presents selected system options with associated technology features

(presented from the user perspective). strengths and limitations of each option, estimated cost of design

and/or buy, testing, implementation and maintenance. You may have to conduct further research to answer

targeted management questions such as vendor suppon and reliability.

(50 marks)

3. The evaluators of your group presentation gave their comments ol1 your research project that you have

undertaken as an assignment. Given the views of the evaluation panel, how would you enhance its reliabilitl '

and validity? Answer this question taking following areas into account'

a. Introduction: Background of Marketing/Managerial Problem/lssue(Situation Analysis)

(5 marks)

b. Marketing Research Problem

(10 marks)

c. The aim/objective of the study/research

(5 marks)

d. The information needs (What information is needed to understand or address the issue?)

(10 marks)

e. Data collection Procedure

(5 marks)

f. Data Analysis and discussion

c,. Limitations of the research

(5 marks)

( i0 marks)

(Total 50 marks)

PART II

Answer all Ouestions

4. Every nation engages in significant international business because countries and their companies can no

longer afford to pay attention only to their domestic market. ln deciding to go abroad, a company needs to

define its international marketing objectives and policies. The company must determine whether to market in

a few countries or many countries. It must decide which countries to consider. In general. the candidate

countries should be rated on three criteria: market attractiveness, risk, and competitive advantage. Emerging

markets offer a unique set of opportunities and risks. Consider a product from Sri Lanka to market in two

different countries from emerging or affluent world.

Critically evaluate the opportunities available in those particular target markets and finalize the country to go

for with justification.(25 marks)

5. Companies are doing less broadcasting and more narrowcasting. The shift from mass marketing tosegmented marketing has had a dramatic impact on marketing communications. Just as mass marketing gave

rise to a new generation of mass-media communications, the shrft toward one-to-one marketing is spawninga new generation of more specialized and highly targeted communications efforts. Under lntegrated

Marketing Communications concept, the company carefully integrates and coordinates its many

communications channels to deliver a clear, consistent, and compelling message about the organization and

its products. Companies must ask not only "How can we reach customers?" but also "How can we find ways

to let our customers reach us easily and conveniently?"

Briefly explain the factors changing the face of today's marketing communications and by referring to an

organization based in Sri Lanka, discuss how the Integrated Marketing Communications assist the

organizations to find those ways mentioned in the above statement.

(25 marks)