MKT 521 Marketing Management

MIDTERM EXAM 1

Due by Friday, 26 JUL 02, 12:00 noon

• OFFICE: room 215 - no excuses without a receipt
• STAFF SUPPORT: Loretta Williams - no excuses without a receipt
• EMAIL: robert.owen@tamut.edu - MS Word format only, no excuses without a reply
• FAX: 903-223-3121 - at your risk

This take-home exam is being substituted for an in-class exam due to the loss of a class period.  Rather than a time limit, you have a limit on length.  This is not a research project: These are questions that you should be able to answer on a timed in-class exam and in the context of class our discussions.  This is an MBA level exam for which MBA level knowledge, insights, and writing are expected.

Note that this is an individual project.  Although it is expected that students have been discussing the readings and other course related issues outside of class, the final written exam document should be your own individual work.  Your answers may reference personal experiences, news events, etc. in addition to the readings used in the course.  Do be sure to support and substantiate your answer.  You should not be attempting to "core dump" on an exam such as this.  That is, do not attempt to confuse your answer with everything that you have learned: just answer the question that is asked.  Your answer should, however, be based substantially on the sorts of issues that have been part of class discussions, student presentations and hand-outs, and assigned readings, and your answer will be marked on the depth of substance. 

In answering these exam questions, you MUST adhere to the following rules:

1. Do NOT submit your real name with the exam.  Instead, identify your exam with a fictitious name.  Your exam will be blind graded and you will sign your real name next to your fictitious name when the exam is returned for your review.

2. Your answer must be typed: double space, one-inch margins.  Use a standard size and style of font - e.g., 12-point Courier, Times, etc.

3. Use plain white paper with a staple in the top left corner; no report folders.

4. Scoring is based substantially on substance and clarity; printing with an old dot-matrix printer on fan-fold paper is acceptable.  Errors of grammar, spelling, typing, etc., however, are not acceptable.

5. Type the question number and the first line of the question above each answer.

6. Start a new question on the page wherever the last one ends (i.e., do not leave any white space by starting a new question on a new page).

7. Limit the entire TEXT of the exam to SEVEN pages in length; you may add additional pages as an appendix to footnote supporting calculations if necessary.  The length of each individual answer may vary, but the entire submission must not exceed eight pages of text in length.  Note that not all questions carry the same weighting in the total score.

PART I: analysis

You MUST answer the following required question.  50% of the total exam score.

1. Alice, a young girl, wants to run a lemonade stand at the end of her driveway in a suburban neighborhood.  Her father has agreed to build the stand, but he expects to be reimbursed for lumber and any other materials that he uses.  Her mother has agreed to make the lemonade and to supply other associated materials, but she expects to be reimbursed for these materials.  Write a brief but persuasive report that Alice can submit to her parents to convince them that she is likely to be able to pay back their material assistance.

PART II: controllable and uncontrollable factors

Choose ONE of the following two questions.  25% of the total exam score.

2. You are at a party and a stranger hears that you are an MBA.  She pulls you into a corner and asks you for an opinion about why her small manufacturing business has suffered a small but steady decline in sales over the last 18 months.  What kinds of questions should you ask under these circumstances?  From the perspective of our class discussions, why are these the sorts of questions that should be asked?

3. In discussing issues associated with case analysis, your textbook authors mention that "there are usually several reasonable alternative solutions."  (p. 226, no. 2)   In class, we discussed the case involving a car and a dump truck, arriving at several "reasonable" solutions that were each very, very different.  What were these solutions, and what made each of them reasonable even though they were so drastically different?

PART III: readings, topics

Choose ONE of the following two questions.  25% of the total exam score.

4. We briefly mentioned the idea of product portfolio management.  Under what conditions would this be a useful idea?  Under what conditions would this not be a very useful idea in strategic planning? 

5. Your professor has mentioned several times the "twig wreath" business that was a class consulting client several years ago.  The primary reason for mentioning this example was to illustrate that a brief marketing plan was successful while a long and detailed marketing plan failed.  Although the document that was successful in obtaining venture capital was short, it was persuasive because it contained some important, basic elements.  Discuss the components that are the most important to include in any marketing plan.