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Teaching guide: Marketing

With a focus on unfamiliar topics, we’ve created this teaching guide to support you in planning your lessons.

The elements of the marketing mix: price, product, promotion and place (4Ps)

Relationship between price and demand

Students should understand that there is not a direct correlation between price and demand.

Classroom activities

Students could combine an exploration of the impact of price on demand as part of a practical market research study, perhaps in combination with The purpose and methods of market research

There are also opportunities for the interpretation of data and charts.

Boston Matrix

This analysis tool, developed by an American consulting group, helps marketing managers to plan the business’ product portfolio. It considers the market share and market value for each item in the product portfolio, classifying them as:

  • problem children
  • stars
  • dogs
  • cash cows.

Please note: you might find many examples, though often diagrams show the ‘market share’ axis in different directions. Terminology also varies with some examples using ‘question mark’ and some ‘problem child’.

This topic is rich in context and it’s an area where students can practise making effective use of context information when examining the product portfolio of specific businesses.

Classroom activities

  • Slideshare has many presentations that explain the use of the Boston Matrix; many also demonstrate the links to the product life cycle. Students could compare a small number of presentations that cover the content, summarising their content to create their own version.
  • Students could consider the product portfolios of businesses with which they are familiar, for example Apple, Unilever, Mars, Virgin, Adidas, BT, Nokia, Panasonic. The topic presents opportunities for the presentation of content as diagrams/display materials.

M-commerce

Students should be aware that business transactions can be carried out electronically by mobile phone. Some will have experience of using some of the additional features that are offered, such as fingerprint security.

Classroom activities

Students could carry out a comparison of face-to-face, telephone, electronic and mobile purchasing experiences. They could consider the speed, price, delivery, security, possible locations for carrying out the transactions.