group assignment 3

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Colgate University *

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352

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Marketing

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Apr 3, 2024

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pdf

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3

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Page 1/3 Group assignment #3: Segmentation Formatting: Your assignment should be written using double-spaced 12-point Times New Roman font on pages with one-inch margins on each side. The write-up should be as concise as possible; assume your audience is a busy executive; your analysis should be easy to follow so that she can understand your calculations and recommendations quickly. The writeup should be at most 5 pages + 1 page for a table that only contains the names of each segment and the segment number. Managerial context and background Throughout this assignment, you are a consultant to the Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc (www.starwoodhotels.com). Among other brands, Starwood owns the Sheraton and W brands. There is currently a Sheraton hotel in Maui (in Lahaina). Your task is to research a possible introduction of the W brand to Maui, and develop a Marketing strategy (segmentation, targeting and positioning). IMPORTANT: you can/should google information about the hotel chains in general, but you are not allowed to use AI tools for help. Using such tools for this assignment will be considered a violation of the honor code in this class. Data We will use the segmentation outputs provided below. For ease of convenience, I have also color- coded the results in a similar way to what we saw in class. These analyses are derived from a survey of 1,000 potential customers who answered a questionnaire related to: - Demographics and Usage: each respondent reported their demographics (such as age, gender, and marital status), as well as their previous usage (of the brands and beach-vacations in general, as well as of Hawaii as a destination). - Questions that allowed the data analyst to infer information on customer preferences (we will learn about this method later in the semester). Using these questions, the analyst created 4 separate segmentation analyses, each with 3,4,5, and 6 clusters. However, the clustering algorithm cannot tell us which of these segmentations is “correct,” how to interpret the customer segments in each of the clustering analyses, or which customers to target. It is your job to decide how to analyze these data.
Page 2/3 Company and Competition analyses [15 points]: This is the section where I encourage you to use online research tools to collect information and provide a relevant company and competitor analyses. Hint: Focus on identifying 2-3 important strengths and weaknesses of the company and clearly describe their implications. Research for what the W is known / its branding. [Add your sources as footnotes] For competition you can focus on: Who do you think is the most important competitor? Why ? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Customer [5 points]: What are important needs and wants? What are the main benefits that a hotel delivers to a vacation traveler? (Hint: keep this short). Segmentation [40 points] : A. Consider the output with 4 segments: Give your segments managerially useful names. Explain briefly the basis of the names. B. Consider the output with 5 segments: Give your segments managerially useful names. Which is the new segment that you identified (relative to the 4-cluster segmentations)? Is the new segment / the difference managerially relevant? C. Consider the output with 6 segments: Give your segments managerially useful names. Which is the new segment that you identified (relative to the 4- and 5-cluster segmentations)? Is the new segment / the difference managerially relevant? Hint: use preferences, demographics, and usage to make inferences when describing the segments. D. What number of segments (e.g. a 3-cluster segment) best balances the pros and cons for the purposes of the strategic decision you need to make? Briefly (but clearly) justify your decision. Targeting and positioning [20 points]: Given the segmentation you chose (e.g. a 3-cluster segment), choose the two most relevant segments for the W . Describe the pros and cons of targeting each of them. Choose which segment you would target for the new W Hotel, and discuss why. Craft a positioning statement. 4Ps: Focus on product [10 points] : Given the analyses above, describe your recommendation for the product features that the new hotel should have. Briefly describe why. Backward market research [10 points]: Now that you have analyzed the output of this research, what would you tell Starwood to do differently in their surveys if you were designing the process from scratch? What additional data should they have collected? Should the surveys have collected information on consumer preferences for other product features? Why? How might have these additional data points changed your recommendation ? Be specific.
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