Background Report

(GMC)

Now that you have learned about the basic concepts and the need for marketing in today’s changing environment, select an existing publically owned company for which you would like to use as the basis for your research throughout this course.

View the link Public Companies for a comprehensive list of publicly traded companies.

The assignments throughout the course will focus on the application of different marketing principles and concepts to a company you choose.

This will entail mapping the company’s business operations to the requirements of the different assignments, finding advertisements on the company’s products, and searching for any recent press releases, so it is recommended that you gain an in-depth knowledge of the operations of the company you have selected.

Over the span of the course, you will gather information from a number of probable sources. Some of the sources may include, but are not limited to, the Internet, public libraries, business magazines, newspapers, the Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, annual reports, consultant/industry analyst reports, databases, Department of Commerce publications, Temple and other university libraries, trade and academic journals, Moody’s, Value Line, etc.

You may be surprised and overwhelmed by the volume of information that is available for many topics, though you may have to do some “detective work” to locate them.

You may find Web sites such as Hoovers.com and Lexis-Nexis extremely helpful.

Select a publically owned company and develop a three- to four-page background report on the company.

Your report will contain background information on your selected organization and their product or service offerings.

Be sure to include:

1. A description of the organization and their current products and/or services.

1. The company locations, both national and international, in which the organization operates.

1. A thorough historical background summation of the company, including when it first began operations.

1. On the company’s Web site you should be able to access the company’s financial records shared with their investors. This may be located in the annual report section of their Web site. Discuss your overall impression of the company’s financial status based on your observation of their financial records.

1. Be sure to include the company’s mission statement along with your interpretation of what that mission statement tells you about the company and its concern for its employees and for its customers.

Apply current APA standards for writing style to your work.

Use the following file-naming convention: LastnameFirstInitial_M1_A3.doc. For example, if your name is John Smith, your document will be named SmithJ_M1_A3.doc.