The document outlines an assignment due about the 1938 Halloween Eve radio broadcast adaptation of H.G. Wells' 'War of the Worlds' by Orson Welles. It describes how the broadcast, despite a disclaimer, caused widespread panic among listeners who believed it to be a real news report about a Martian invasion. Additionally, it references various marketing practices and innovations from companies like Procter & Gamble, Caterpillar, and Ritz-Carlton that have contributed to their success.

1. Assignment due by Sunday at 11:59pm
I need 3 pages
Overview
On Halloween eve in 1938, there was an adaptation of H.G.
Well’s 1898 novel “War of the Worlds” on the radio series
“Mercury Theatre of the Air”. Orson Welles produced, hosted,
and acted in this series, which adapted mystery, science fiction
and other drama for radio. Welles aired the 1898 Martian
invasion novel (War of the Worlds) in the style of a radio news
program. For people who missed the opening disclaimer, the
program sounded like a real news report!
The production was scripted in the form of fake news flashes
that repeatedly interrupted musical recordings. The first news
flash reported strange activity sighted on Mars. The next
interruption was an urgent message saying a meteor had crashed
near Grover’s Mills, New Jersey. Then came a “live” report
from the New Jersey site saying it wasn’t a meteor at all but
Martians with death-ray guns who had just killed one thousand
people. Remember, all of this was scripted and it was an
adaptation of an earlier novel. The Mercury Theatre of the Air
regularly adapted novels to perform for this radio program.
Even though there had been a strong disclaimer at the beginning
of the broadcast saying the story was only make-believe, there
were some real consequences. The radio play was
misinterpreted by some to be an actual news story. People
crowded into churches, highways became jam-packed with cars,
and many people put on gas masks. In one unlucky town in
Washington State, an actual power failure magnified the frenzy
and horror. Thousands of people, believing they were under
attack by Martians, flooded newspaper offices and radio and
police stations with calls, asking how to flee their city or how
they should protect themselves from "gas raids." Scores of
adults reportedly required medical treatment for shock and

2. hysteria. There were even reports of people committing suicide
out of fear of the Martians invading New Jersey.
Instructions
After listening to a part of the broadcast (see below), answer the
following questions in about 3 - 5 pages, double spaced. You
may want to read the following article for further information
about the radio broadcast before answering the questions:
National Geographic article: "War of the Worlds": Behind the
1938 Radio Show Panic. (외부 사이트로 연결합니다.)외부 사이트로
연결합니다.
For this assignment, listen to about 15 minutes of the broadcast
War of the Worlds. (Pay attention to the first 11 seconds, from
the beginning to 0:11 - when it is introduced as a show.
Listeners who missed the introduction and disclaimer that this
was a broadcast based on a novel were more likely to believe
this was true.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWD9Q6klzco
Questions: there have 5 questions
1. What skills are involved in being a radio listener? In other
words, how is ‘reading’ or interpreting the radio program
different from ‘reading’ a television program?” Discuss the
differences.
2. Comment on what elements would have been familiar to the
listeners and what elements contributed to the panic.
3. Were these people media illiterate? Or did the Mercury
Theatre broadcast play against people’s media literacy? (That
is, you had to know something of the conventions to make it
“real.”) (The National Geographic article discusses this a bit).
4. Was this (unintended?) duping of the American public by
Welles's Halloween broadcast something that could have
happened only in the 1930s? Have Americans become more
sophisticated in their consumption of media? Have you heard
about misinformation that has been passed on via the Internet as
if it were correct information?
5. Discuss any other comments or reactions to this radio
broadcast, which is one of the most famous of all time

3. Marketing Excellence Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble (P&G) began in 1837 when brothers-in-law
William Procter and James Gamble formed a small candle and
soap company. Over the next 150 years, P&G innovated and
launched scores of revolutionary products with superior quality
and value, including Ivory soap in 1882, Tide laundry detergent
in 1946, Crest toothpaste with fluoride in 1955, and Pampers
disposable diapers in 1961. The company also opened the door
to new product categories by acquiring a number of companies,
including Richardson-Vicks (makers of personal care products
like Pantene, Olay, and Vicks), Norwich Eaton Pharmaceuticals
(makers of Pepto-Bismol), Gillette, Noxell (makers of
Noxzema), Shulton’s Old Spice, Max Factor, and the Iams pet
food company.
Today, Procter & Gamble is one of the most skillful marketers
of consumer-packaged goods in the world and holds one of the
most powerful portfolios of trusted brands. The company
employs 121,000 people in about 80 countries worldwide, has
25 billion-dollar global brands, spends more than $2 billion
annually on R&D, and has total worldwide sales in excess of
$84 billion a year. Its sustained market leadership rests on a
number of different capabilities and philosophies. These
include:
· Customer knowledge: P&G studies its customers—both the
end consumers and its trade partners—through continuous
marketing research and intelligence gathering. It spends more
than $100 million annually on more than 10,000 formal
consumer research projects and generates more than 3 million
consumer contacts via its e-mail and phone center. The company
also encourages its marketers and researchers to be out in the
field, interacting with consumers and retailers in their home
environment.
· Long-term outlook: P&G takes the time to analyze each

4. opportunity carefully before acting. Once committed, the
company develops the best product possible and executes it with
the determination to make it a success. For example, it
struggled with Pringles potato chips for almost a decade before
achieving market success. Recently, P&G has increased its
presence in developing markets by focusing on affordability,
brand awareness, and distribution through e-commerce and
high-frequency stores.
· Product innovation: P&G is an active product innovator. The
company employs 1,000 science PhDs, more than Harvard,
Berkeley, and MIT combined, and applies for roughly 3,800
patents each year. Part of its innovation process is to develop
brands that offer new consumer benefits. Recent innovations
that created entirely new categories include Febreze, an odor-
eliminating fabric spray; Dryel, a product that helps “dry-clean”
clothes at home in the dryer; and Swiffer, a cleaning system that
effectively removes dust, dirt, and hair from floors. Larry
Huston, former innovation officer at P&G, stated, “P&G is
largely a branded science company.”
· Quality strategy : P&G designs products of above-average
quality and continuously improves and reformulates them. When
the company says “new and improved,” it means it. Recent
examples include Tide Pods, a compact laundry detergent tablet;
Pampers Rash Guard, a diaper that treats and prevents diaper
rash; and improved two-in-one shampoo and conditioner
products Pantene, Vidal Sassoon, and Pert Plus.
· Brand extension strategy : P&G produces its brands in several
sizes and forms. This strategy gains more shelf space and
prevents competitors from moving in to satisfy unmet market
needs. P&G also uses its strong brand names to launch new
products with instant recognition and much less advertising
outlay. The Mr. Clean brand has been extended from household
cleaner to bathroom cleaner and even to a carwash system. Old
Spice extended its brand from men’s fragrances to deodorant.
Often, P&G will leverage the technologies already in place to
create a brand extension. For example, when Crest successfully

5. extended its brand into a new tooth-whitening system called
Crest Whitestrips, the company used bleaching methods from
P&G’s laundry division, film technology from the food wrap
division, and glue techniques from the paper division.
· Multibrand strategy: P&G markets several brands in the same
product category, such as Luvs and Pampers diapers and Oral-B
and Crest toothbrushes. Each brand meets a different consumer
want and competes against specific competitors’ brands. At the
same time, the company is careful not to sell too many brands
and recently reduced its vast array of products, sizes, flavors,
and varieties to assemble a stronger brand portfolio.
· Strong sales force: P&G’s sales force has been named one of
the top 25 sales forces by Sales & Marketing
Management magazine. A key to its success is the close tie its
sales force forms with retailers, notably Walmart. The 150-
person team that serves the retail giant works closely with
Walmart to improve both the products that go to the stores and
the process by which they get there.
· Manufacturing efficiency and cost cutting: P&G’s reputation
as a great marketing company is matched by its excellence as a
manufacturing company. The company has successfully
developed and continually improves its production operations,
which keep costs among the lowest in the industry. As a result,
it is able to offer reduced prices for its premium products.
· Brand-management system: P&G originated the brand-
management system, in which one executive is responsible for
each brand. The system has been copied by many competitors
but not often with P&G’s success. Recently, P&G modified its
general management structure so that a category manager runs
each brand category and has volume and profit responsibility.
Although this new organization does not replace the brand-
management system, it helps to sharpen strategic focus on key
consumer needs and competition in the category.
P&G’s accomplishments over the past 177 years have come
from successfully managing the numerous factors that
contribute to market leadership. Today, the company’s wide

6. range of products are used by 4.8 billion people around the
world in 180 different countries.
Marketing Excellence Caterpillar
Caterpillar was founded in 1925 when two California-based
tractor companies merged. The name “Caterpillar,” however,
dates back to the early 1900s when Benjamin Holt, one of the
company’s founders, designed a tractor crawler with wide, thick
tracks instead of wheels. These tracks prevented the machine
from sinking into California’s deep, rich soil, inspiring one
observer to say it “crawled like a caterpillar.”
Holt sold the tractor under the Caterpillar brand, and after the
merger, the company became the Caterpillar Tractor Company.
Caterpillar Inc., or CAT, is now the largest manufacturer of
earth-moving equipment and engines in the world, selling
hundreds of different machines for eight industries: residential,
nonresidential, industrial, infrastructure, mining and quarrying,
energy, waste, and forestry. Their distinctive yellow color has
helped make the brand a U.S. icon.
How did a small tractor manufacturer become one of the biggest
companies in the world? Caterpillar grew steadily at first,
hitting a few critical milestones including the use of its
trademark farm treads on Army tanks in World Wars I and II.
Huge postwar construction contracts and strong overseas
demand kept sales strong through the mid-20th century, as did
innovations like the diesel tractor and rubber-tired tractors.
Things changed, however, when the early 1980s recession hit
Caterpillar hard and international competitors like Japan’s
Komatsu gained market share. High prices and inflexible
bureaucracy nearly sent the company into bankruptcy. In 1982
alone, it lost $6.5 billion, laid off thousands of employees,
closed several factories, and suffered a long United Auto
Workers strike.
In the 1990s, Caterpillar recognized that it desperately needed
to change, and under new leadership it pulled off one of the

7. biggest turnarounds in corporate history. Several factors played
a role:
· Caterpillar boldly fought the United Auto Workers and
outlasted two strikes and seven years of disagreements.
· The company decentralized and restructured into several
business units, each responsible for its own P&L.
· It invested $1.8 billion in automating and streamlining
manufacturing with a combination of just-in-time inventory and
flexible manufacturing. Caterpillar became more efficient and
competitive, though it also was forced to lay off more of its
workforce.
· The company made research and development one of its
biggest priorities, investing hundreds of millions of dollars in
new technologies, products, and machines. As a result, CAT
construction trucks became more high-tech, competitive, and
environmentally friendly.
Today, Caterpillar ranks first or second in every industry it
serves. Its products are unmatched in quality and reliability, and
the company remains focused on innovation with a $2.5 billion
annual R&D budget. New products are launched every year.
Recent innovations include hybrid diesel-electric tractors—the
first of their kind—and lower-emission engines with ACERT
clean-diesel technology that also improves fuel efficiency.
Caterpillar’s product range is immense. From a small 47-
horsepower skid steer to an 850-horsepower tractor and a
massive 3,370-horsepower mining truck, the firm develops
products that serve each market and region’s specific needs. In
China, for example, a market critical to its future, Caterpillar
has divided its product strategy into three segments: World
Class, Mid-Tier, and Low-End. The company is focused on
innovating high-tech machinery for the growing World Class
segment and leaving the Low-End segment to local competitors
that will eventually be consolidated.
Another reason for Caterpillar’s dominance is its business
model. The company sells it all: machines, services, and support
for a wide range of industries. It accomplishes this feat through

8. its extensive Global Dealer Network—specially trained
independent CAT dealers who provide services on a local basis,
giving the global company a personal feel despite its size.
Feeling local is important considering that 56 percent of
Caterpillar’s business comes from overseas, making it one of
the United States’ biggest exporters. The company has been a
leader in building roads, bridges, highways, and airports all
over the world. In developing cities like Antamin, Peru, for
example, which is abundant in copper, large mining companies
spend hundreds of millions of dollars on CAT machinery and
services each year. As many as 50 different kinds of CAT
bulldozers, front loaders, excavators, and special mining trucks
help clear roads, clean up spills, and dig for copper. These
massive trucks are all manufactured in Decatur, Illinois,
shipped in pieces, and assembled at the job site.
Caterpillar maintains more than 500 production facilities and
retailer locations in 180 countries and saw sales hit $55.7
billion in 2013. Deere & Co. and Komatsu are its closest
competitors, each with about half its sales. As the company
moves forward, it remains focused on providing customers with
the best products, the best service, and the best value
proposition.
Marketing Excellence The Ritz-Carlton
Few brands attain such a high standard of customer service as
the Ritz-Carlton. This luxury hotel chain began with the
original Ritz-Carlton Boston, which revolutionized the way U.S.
travelers experienced customer service in a hotel. It was the
first of its kind to provide a private bath in each guest room,
fresh flowers throughout the hotel, and an entire staff dressed in
formal white tie, black tie, or morning-coat attire.
In 1983, hotelier Horst Schulze and a four-person development
team acquired the rights to the Ritz-Carlton name and created
the concept by which it is known today, with its company-wide
concentration on both the personal and the functional side of

9. service. The five-star hotel provides impeccable facilities but
also takes customer service extremely seriously. Its credo is
“We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen.”
According to the company’s Web site, The Ritz-Carlton
“pledge(s) to provide the finest personal service and facilities
for our guests who will always enjoy a warm, relaxed, yet
refined ambience.”
The Ritz-Carlton fulfills this promise by providing impeccable
training for its employees and executing its Three Steps of
Service and 12 Service Values. The Three Steps of Service state
that employees must use a warm and sincere greeting always
using the guest’s name, anticipate and fulfill each guest’s needs,
and give a warm good-bye, again using the guest’s name. Every
manager carries a laminated card with the 12 Service Values,
which include bullets such as number 3: “I am empowered to
create unique, memorable and personal experiences for our
guests,” and number 10: “I am proud of my professional
appearance, language and behavior.” Simon Cooper, president
and chief operating officer, explained, “It’s all about people.
Nobody has an emotional experience with a thing. We’re
appealing to emotions.” The Ritz-Carlton’s 35,000 employees in
29 countries go out of their way to create unique and memorable
experiences for their guests.
Not only is the company known for training its employees to
provide impeccable customer service, but it also reinforces its
mission and values with them on a daily basis. Each day,
managers gather their employees for a 15-minute “line up” to
check in, resolve any impending problems, and read and discuss
what The Ritz-Carlton calls “wow stories.” These true stories,
read to every employee around the world, recognize
an individual employee for his or her outstanding customer
service and also highlight one of the 12 Service Values.
One family staying at The Ritz-Carlton, Bali, needed a
particular type of egg and milk for their son who suffered from
food allergies. Employees could not find the appropriate items
in town, but the executive chef at the hotel remembered a store

10. in Singapore that sold them. He contacted his mother-in-law,
who purchased the items and personally flew them more than
1,000 miles to Bali for the family. This example showcased
Service Value 6: “I own and immediately resolve guests’
problems.”
In another instance, a waiter overheard a man telling his
wheelchair-bound wife that it was too bad he couldn’t get her
down to the beach. The waiter told the maintenance crew, and
by the next day they had constructed a wooden walkway to the
beach and pitched a tent at the far end where the couple had
dinner.
Wow stories can also be as simple as an employee’s
remembering how a guest prefers coffee and then preparing it
that way without asking for the rest of his or her stay.
According to Cooper, the daily wow story is “the best way to
communicate what we expect from our ladies and gentlemen
around the world. Every story reinforces the actions we are
looking for and demonstrates how each and every person in our
organization contributes to our service values.” Each employee
is empowered to spend as much as $2,000 without management
approval to help deliver a guest’s anticipated need or desire,
supporting the company’s intention to build lifelong positive
relationships with each customer.
Ritz-Carlton measures the success of its customer service
efforts through Gallup phone interviews, which ask both
functional and emotional questions. Functional questions
include: “How was the meal?” or “Was your bedroom clean?”
while emotional questions reveal the customer’s sense of well-
being. The hotel uses these findings as well as day-to-day
experiences to continually enhance and improve the experience
for its guests.
In less than three decades, Ritz-Carlton has grown from one
U.S. location to 87 in 29 countries; the company plans to
expand further throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle
East, and the Americas. It has also earned two Malcolm
Baldrige Quality Awards—the only company ever to win the

11. prestigious award twice.
MBA 5501, Advanced Marketing 1
Course Learning Outcomes for Unit V
Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:
1. Explore the management of marketing implementation and
control processes for organizations to
predict business outcomes.
1.1 Examine a business’s next steps within the parameters of
their industry.
3. Compare new product development and competitive product
strategies.
3.1 Compare competitors within an industry.
3.2 Examine a company’s competitive advantage with respect to
new product development and
brand equity.
5. Distinguish between market segmentation, market targeting,
and brand equity in the market planning
process.
5.1 Apply market segmentation to a company.
5.2 Explain the target market(s) of a company.
5.3 Connect how the identification of a target market relates to

12. brand equity.
Reading Assignment
Chapter 13:
Setting Product Strategy, pp. 367–392
Chapter 14:
Designing and Managing Services, pp. 399–416
Chapter 15:
Introducing New Market Offerings, pp. 429–437
Unit Lesson
Chapter 13: Setting Product Strategy
What do you think about when you hear product offering? Your
first reaction is probably the physical product
itself. While this is a part of the product offering, it goes
beyond this to also include services, quality of the
product, installation, warranty, delivery, packaging, and the
brand.
Within the product offering, differentiation is a key element in
order to maintain a competitive advantage with
respect to the product. Kotler and Keller (2016) discuss aspects
of product differentiation on page 371 of the
textbook. Companies absolutely need to maintain a
differentiated products in order to provide consumers with
the rationale for purchasing your product over the competitors’
product.

13. As consumers review each of these differentiating elements
within the product category, they determine
whether these factors carry a higher value proposition than the
product’s competitors.
Packaging plays an important role in the product strategy. It not
only protects the product but also enhances
it. This is accomplished by sending a message with the end goal
to influence the purchase. Additionally,
packaging provides necessary information about the product to
not only align with regulatory agencies’ rules
about ingredients but also to expedite the buying process. This
might be accomplished with the use of UPC
codes, which allow for fast scanning of multiple products and
work as an accurate and timely system of
UNIT V STUDY GUIDE
Developing the Product Offerings
MBA 5501, Advanced Marketing 2
inventory management. Click the link below to view a video on
how Samsung has approached the issue of
creative packaging.
Kokusai2010. (2012, February 12). Out of the box
Samsung.mp4 [Video file]. Retrieved from
https://youtu.be/cYfSKGjHBKg
The target market is the older demographic who might struggle

14. with putting together and operating a new cell
phone. The packaging mimics the vitamin packages with which
this elderly demographic is typically
quite familiar.
Product managers or brand managers within large corporations
are involved with the oversight associated
with the product system, which is defined as a group of related
products that are somewhat compatible with
each other. Conversely, the product mix or product assortment
refer to all of the products the company offers.
Decisions are executed on the width of the product mix, which
equates to how many different product lines
the company will offer. Another area of consideration is that of
the length of the product line, which looks at
the number of items in the product mix, and the depth, which
looks at how many different options are offered
for each product. Finally, the consistency analyzes how related
the products actually are to one another.
Chapter 14: Designing and Managing Services
As the world continues to be more competitive and society
becomes more time poor, companies look to
differentiate their product offerings based upon the services
provided. This could be as simple as on-time
delivery or a faster response time to inquiries. At the end of the
day, it is all about providing the customer with
services that the particular target market desires, which will
build a long-lasting relationship with the company
and brand. As discussed in Chapter 13 of the textbook, products
can be 100% tangible physical goods such
as a box of Kleenex or a loaf of bread. Alternatively, it can be
100% service such as hair styling or your
athletic club membership. There is also a blend where a
physical product is provided in conjunction with a

15. service. An example of this might be a restaurant where you
receive the actual food, and the service provided
is the cooking and serving of the food.
The United States has become an increasingly heavy service-
based society. Government, nonprofit,
business, and manufacturing sectors have all added to this
situation. Each of these areas has seen an
increase in the service side of their business. Worldwide, in
1995, service-related jobs represented 58% of the
gross domestic producut (GDP), and in 2014, it represented
68%. People are leaving their agricultural
businesses and moving into service-based occupations.
Learn more about strategies for service by clicking here.
Click here to access the transcript for the presentation.
Chapter 15: Introducing New Marketing Offerings
What is your favorite new product that a company has offered
lately? Do you remember the can cozies? They
sometimes fit on your drink of choice and sometimes did not.
They most certainly did not work on bottles.
Click the following link to see a new product that serves a
similar purpose (to keep drinks cool), but the
product fits on any size of a contained, and the product is
available in a plethora of unique designs:
http://www.freakerusa.com/.
Besides being an innovative product, read the story of the
aforementioned product, and review some of the
video marketing techniques. A word of warning—the company
may be “off-the-wall,” but their marketing is
most certainly effective.

16. New product development through innovation is key to the
long-term sustainability of an organization. Click
the link below to view a video on Home Depot’s innovative idea
to develop a creative approach to a mature
product category—utility buckets.
Herbst, S. (2013, April 30). TheBigGripper (2.5 gallon utility
bucket @ the Home Depot) [Video file]. Retrieved
from https://vimeo.com/65116497
https://youtu.be/cYfSKGjHBKg
https://online.columbiasouthern.edu/CSU_Content/Courses/Busi
ness/MBA/MBA5501/16N/UnitV_StrategiesforService/UnitV_St
rategiesforService.htm
https://online.columbiasouthern.edu/CSU_Content/Courses/Busi
ness/MBA/MBA5501/16N/UnitV_StrategiesforServiceTranscrip
t.pdf
http://www.freakerusa.com/
https://vimeo.com/65116497
MBA 5501, Advanced Marketing 3
In the case of this new product development, Home Depot
understood that consumers might appreciate a
more efficient way to accomplish tasks in which they use this
utility bucket. Another example of a mature
product offering is that of laundry detergent. Tide came up with
the Tide Pods concept, which is a small,
dissolvable, single-use package of detergent. While this product
costs the consumers about 25% more per
load, the question remains whether the value of convenience is

17. worth the extra cost. Other products come
about with respect to our need to be green and sustainable. An
example of this would be Levis who produced
a “waste less” jean, which consists of eight recycled plastic
bottles. Still, other innovative ideas are created
through the need for continued medical advancements.
After a new product is commercialized, it moves through what
is called a product life cycle. This cycle
describes the changes the new product goes through and how
sales are impacted at each stage. With this in
mind, the marketing efforts at each stage must also change.
Take a look at the product life cycle and the
characteristics associated with each stage.
low brand identity and low sales.
and increasing sales.
his stage is represented by a flattening of
sales.
are preferring other alternatives.
Each stage has unique characteristics, thus the wise marketer
will exert different efforts at each stage. Within
the market introduction area, the content of the marketing
should be informational and intense as the
consumer does not necessarily even know about the product
offering. In the growth stage, the customer
knows about the product but now has the option of choosing

18. from your competitors. The marketing content at
this stage should include facts that differentiate your product
offering from the competitors. During the
marketing maturity stage, the content should continue to
influence and maintain a bit of goodwill in order to
maintain past customers. Finally, during the sales decline,
marketing content should include incentives for
coming back to your product and possibly include price
reductions such as buy-one, get-one-free deals.
Before a product/service gets to the point of commercialization,
the company moves through a new product
development process to ensure that the idea is worth bringing to
commercialization. This begins with idea
generation where the product/service idea is formulated. These
ideas come from a variety of different places
beginning with market research, customers/users, competitors,
other markets, employees, customers,
suppliers, wholesalers, distributors, and even family members.
The next step in the process is the screening
which involves an evaluation process that might include a
SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and
threats) analysis discussed earlier in this course. The idea here
is to ascertain that this new product/service
idea really fits with the company objectives and market trends.
The third step is the idea evaluation where the
sophisticated evaluation process begins. This might involve
concept testing or even focus-group research of
customers to understand their reactions to this new
product/service idea. Additionally, rough estimates of
costs, sales, and projected profits will be analyzed. The next
stage is that of development where a prototype
is put together if the product is a tangible product. It the new
product is a service, the details of the training of
staff and the sequencing of the process will be compiled for
review. During this stage, research and

19. development is critical as the product specifications are
analyzed and the viability of the product/service is
finalized. As expected, final edits on the return-on-investment
numbers are also compiled. If the product has
made it through all of these stages, the product is
commercialized.
Remember that the purpose of the new product development
process is to remove or edit the new
product/service as it moves through each stage. As the
product/service moves from one stage to another, it
costs the company money with respect to resources in the
development. If the product is not a viable product,
the company would prefer to stop the process before it makes it
through the process and is commercialized.
At commercialization, the product is finalized and production
begins. The marketing plan is implemented, and
the final return-on-investment numbers are submitted. At this
point, the product begins the product life cycle
discussed earlier in this lesson.
Reference
Kotler, P. T., & Keller, K. L. (2016). Marketing management
(15th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
MBA 5501, Advanced Marketing 4

20. Suggested Reading
Chanchal, P. C. (2016, November 6). Riding the festive tide.
Business Today. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com.libraryresources.columbiasouthern.e
du/docview/1830259262?accountid=
33337
Timothy Prestero shares medical innovations and issues of these
types of innovations in the video below.
Prestero, T. (2012). Timothy Prestero: Design for people, not
awards [Video file]. Retrieved from
https://youtu.be/WpldYJ3sSIo
http://search.proquest.com.libraryresources.columbiasouthern.e
du/docview/1830259262?accountid=33337
http://search.proquest.com.libraryresources.columbiasouthern.e
du/docview/1830259262?accountid=33337
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Unit 1 Assignment: Independent Labels
I need 3 pages
Overview
This Critical Process exercise takes a deeper look at indie
labels. We will be applying the critical process (that we read

21. about in Chapter 1 and is discussed in every chapter) to the
music industry.
Instructions
Investigate a small, independent recording company (of which
there are tens of thousands throughout the United States and the
world). Visit its Web site, and/or e-mail or telephone the
company. In your investigation, proceed through the five steps
of the critical process (listed below). Write up your analysis in
about 3-5 pages (double spaced). Please number your responses.
1. Description. What kind of music does this label specialize
in? Is the label limited to only one genre? What are some of the
groups that the label produces? Where and how does the label
identify its musical artists? How does the label describe itself?
How does the label distribute its recordings to consumers?
2. Analysis. Look at the variety of groups that the label
produces. What kind of fan is the label trying to target? How
does this label promote its artists and get a recording to the
consumer? What obstacles does the label face in popularizing
its artists? Is the label fiercely independent, or is its goal to sell
to a major label? Is the label struggling, or is it financially
viable?
3. Interpretation. From what you’ve gathered so far from your
research, what major problems do independent recording labels
face? Do you see independent labels overcoming these
problems? How?
4. Evaluation. What is the value of small independent recording
companies to the entire recording industry? What would be
different about the recording industry as a whole if small
independent labels didn’t exist? Add other questions and
information as you go along.