FINAL EXAM

Due 3 AUG 98 - in class
FAX: 315-341-5440

phone: 315-341-2658; email: owen@oswego.edu (don't send excuses!)
URL http://www.oswego.edu/~owen for this and other class documents

This exam is an in-class exam, but may be done on your own time at home if you wish. If done as an in-class exam, you have a four-hour limitation in time to submit a hand-written response. If done prior to the last class, then your answer must be typed with a nine page limitation, excepting appendices. Your exam must either be entirely hand written during the period of the last class, with a time limit, or must be entirely typed, with a page limit - you cannot mix and match. In both cases, the exam is open notes, open book.

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.

Be sure to support and substantiate your answers. 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. An additional document is available at the above URL which might be a useful orientation for approaching graduate level exams.

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

1. A cover page with your name should be the LAST sheet on the exam. This will assist the professor in blind-grading the exam.

2. If you type your exam at home, it must be must be double spaced with 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. If you write your exam in class, lined paper will be supplied.

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 if you submit a typewritten exam.

5. Type or write 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) if your answer is typewritten. If handwritten in class, then start a new page for each answer.

7. Limit the entire TEXT of the exam to NINE pages in length if you are printing the exam; 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 nine pages of text in length. You do not have page limit if you are doing the exam in class, but you will be limited in time. Note that the professor has no preference regarding which option you take. Some students might prefer to work work entirely at home; not everyone has the luxury of time and might prefer to mentally outline some of the issues this week and to use the designated exam time to write their ideas down on paper.

QUESTION 1 - 60%

Our midterm exam considered an organization, TradeOnline (name changed), which is selling a new type of product using a new channel of distribution and using new methods of promotion. One of the problems that we had in attempting to assess the feasibility of such a product is that almost everything about it is new. Netscape, a company which helped make the World Wide Web possible, was founded in 1994, with its own public offering (stock) in August 1995 - only three years ago.

It is therefore not only difficult to look at the past of TradeOnline to predict future performance, opportunities, and threats, but it is difficult to look at the Web itself to predict the future of TradeOnline. Methods of promotion and measurement, such as banner ads, number of impressions, and clickthrough rates, were not in the marketer's toolkit until recently; indeed, these are terms that are still unfamiliar to many rusty marketers. Unfortunately for some, and fortunately for others, the marketing environment is harshly unforgiving to those who are unable or unwilling to follow change.

Some students suggested on the midterm that they would first ask experts what to do if they were hired to consult for TradeOnline. The problem with this approach is that there really is no such thing as an expert when it comes to such a new, rapidly changing, volatile technology. Indeed, students in this class who consider themselves to be naive and unknowledgeable about the Web are probably in a better position to assess this situation than are programmers and others who work closely with this technology; technologists could hold optimistic hopes which bias any predictions that they could make. One expert who might be able to provide a more realistic prediction of future consumer behavior is a potential consumer. Perhaps a pooling of potential consumer perceptions could provide some insights.

Design and discuss a survey which TradeOnline could use in predicting consumer behavior with regard to their product. Be sure that your survey and discussion of that survey consider all that we have learned about product diffusion, segmentation, target markets, components of attitude, the relationship between attitude and behavior, etc. Also don't forget that a product offering includes all elements of the 4Ps.

The survey length can be no more than a half-page in length, attached as an appendix, if typed. (I.e., the half-page survey is not considered in the 9-page limit.) If handwritten, the survey length must not be more than about a full page in length.

QUESTION 2 - 40%

Throughout the semester, several students made presentations based on particular organizations or industries. Should these organizations, or organizations in these industries, all have marketing departments? If so, what would be the job duties of different members of each department? If not, then how do the different marketing functions get done?