Marketing Plan Project SP 2020
Purpose: The purpose of this project is to give students experience in a range of marketing problem-solving and decision-making scenarios, including researching target markets, deciding on marketing mix elements, and determining an action plan.
Project Intro:
Students should prepare a written report marketing plan using the following guidelines.  There is no set page limit for this assignment. Please refrain from writing more than 20 pages.  Most successful projects will be around 10 pages.
This project will require both creativity and critical thinking.  You should include at least 5 credible outside sources to support various components of your project. For example, if you are introducing a new fitness app, you may want to research current markets for fitness apps when discussing the target market you will be pursuing.  Other places to include citations include company introduction, situation analysis, etc. 
Step 1) You will develop a marketing plan for a new product or service you believe an existing firm should offer.  Examples of past projects/product include : Nike introducing a new sports drink, Chick Fil A offering delivery services, ModCloth opening physical retailers, etc.  Students generally either 1) think of a new product and then think of a firm that would be appropriate or 2) think of a firm they are interested in and then think of a gap in that firms product/service offerings.  So, Step 1 is for you to think of a product/service and firm
Then, complete the project using the outline below.  Remember that you should be researching the firm, industry, competition, target market, etc. There will be videos on the CougarView site to help you identify and find appropriate sources.
Please note that the following is a proposed project outline.  You should cover most, if not all, of the following topics. You can find more information about creating Marketing Plans in Chapter 2 of your text.
Executive Summary
–    Introduce the reader to the chosen company and give highlights of the Marketing Plan.
Company Intro
-name of business, mission statement, brief description of existing products and services; introduction of new product/service   

Situation Analysis
–    Internal Environment – Marketings role in chosen firm, corporate culture, past marketing activities, resources, value proposition
–    External Environment Competitor analysis, overview of existing markets, relevant key trends in economic, technological, regulatory, social, and cultural environments
–    SWOT Analysis identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the firm and discuss their implications for the firm
Objectives
–    Detail at least 3-5 specific marketing objectives (total) you believe this company should strive to achieve over the next year, 3 years, 5 years
–    Provide specific justification for each objective (HINT: these objectives should connect with situation analysis).
Marketing Strategies
–    Target Market (Customer Analysis)- Identify organizations final customers in terms of geographic, demographic, social, psychological and behavioral dimensions; Identify organizational customers in terms of market structure, buying situation, and major buying influences;
Segment the target market based on similar needs, wants and characteristics;
Select the market segment(s) to target;
Describe your positioning strategy and create your positioning statement;
Describe the consumer buying process and buying behavior(s) as it pertains to products.
–    Products/Service Analysis Strategies- Identify key products; describe how product meets customers needs; value proposition
–    Pricing Strategies- Overview of the company and product/service costs that must be considered for break-even calculations; Estimate demand for your offering based on your pricing objective; Identify the pricing strategies that are most appropriate for the company; Detail the price change tactics to be used by the company/organization.
–    Place/Distribution Strategies- Describe the channels of distribution used by the company to distribute its products based on the geographic area; If your business has a physical retail store location that serves as a touch point for customers, describe your physical location and how it fits with your overall marketing strategy (services, products, price, etc.)
–    Promotion Strategies- Detail the promotional mix used to communicate with current and potential customers.
Identify and explain the companys main promotional objectives. Evaluate the organizations strategies.
What changes or suggestions would you propose for this company with regard to their marketing mix?
Implementation
–    Action Plan
–    Responsibility
–    Timeline
–    Budget
–    Measurement and Control
Conclusion
–    Address expected results & organizations potential for future success.

You will be evaluated based on the completeness of your project, use of adequate and appropriate support, and readability of your report (including grammar, formatting, etc.)

Goal: The purpose of this assignment is to write a Java program that implements a MerkleTree to be
used in a blockchain. Then you will write a brief report describing your results, in the comments of your
program; see the end of this document.

1. This assignment is self-contained. We do not expect you to know how Blockchain works. However, by
the end of this assignment, if you read the code well enough, you will learn Blockchain in detail.
2. You will be surprised how this Blockchain technology, considered revolutionary, is built on such simple
ideas that a beginner student can code. And later in life you can mention that you were writing
blockchains in your second year of undergraduate.
3. A transaction is a transfer of coins from a set of addresses (i.e., senders) to another set of addresses
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(i.e., receivers).
4. Each sender or receiver is an address, which is stored in a String variable (see Transaction.java). In
real life, people can create and use many addresses. We cannot know the owner of an address by just
looking at the string.
5. A Bitcoin transaction can have many senders and receivers. This is why transactions in Figure 1 have
dierent shape sizes. For this assignment, we simplify the transaction model to only one sender and
one receiver (see Transaction.java).
6. A transaction has sender, receiver and amount attributes. In Bitcoin, transactions are created by ordi-
nary users and sent to a Peer to Peer network. Miners listen to the network, discover new transactions
and create blocks out of them. In this assignment, we will not have a real Peer to Peer network.
The PeerToPeerNetwork.java simulates this, and returns a random number of articial transactions
whenever someone calls the collectNewTransactions() function.
7. A miner is a user (anyone can choose to be a miner) who wants to create a block. The process of
getting transactions, putting them into a block and solving the Proof-of-Work puzzle is called mining
a block.
8. Proof-of-Work (see mineTheBlock() in Blockchain.java) involves creating a string from the block-
Hash of the previous block, topHash of the MerkleTree, and a long integer (called nonce). Once the
SHA256 hash is applied to this string, a 256 bit integer is computed. If the integer is less than a
predened diculty, the nonce is said to satisfy the diculty. The block is said to be mined.
9. Any helper function that you need (e.g., to hash SHA256) is already given in the les.
What you should implement: Implement the following algorithms and methods (you can