<cn>Practical Activity Questions <ct>The Cover

Practical activities produced by Dr Stephen Dann.

Application / Practical

These practical application questions are about getting your hands dirty, so to speak, and using the internet. It’s one thing to read a chapter about online gaming and it’s another to have an excuse to play Facebook games in the name of research. These exercises are also an invitation for you to get out into the wider world of the Web and see what’s out there (particularly if you’re new to this internet stuff).

There are a few tricks to the process – first, there’s a bit of Applied Theory where I ask that you use one (or more) of the models, checklists, tables or diagrams from a chapter. This is about seeing the connection between the real world of the internet and all of those the arrows, boxes and squiggly lines. Second, there’s a chance for you to have some fun with the otherwise dry content from the chapters – for example,, you can learn about the theory of gamification as reward structure for extended problem solving. You can play a Tower Defence game from Armour Games (Kingdom Rush is pretty good - and experience the theory in real time. Third, it’s about having a go, giving things a try, and learning through trial, error and experience.

Chapter 1Application (3) Practical

  • Collect examples of different forms of advertising, sales promotion and products distributed through mobile marketing, interactive marketing and the marketing over IP styles of e-marketing. Discuss how the different approaches can be used to compliment each other, and how they can support an offline marketing campaign.
  • Create an account at Foursquare on the web, and check-in on your mobile device. Detail the differences in the way the website and the mobile site operate, and how this influences what you believe you can do with Foursquare. Discuss whether Foursquare is MOIP or mobile marketing. Could it also be adapted for interactive marketing? Explain your answer.
  • Using Figure 1.4 as a checklist, collect examples of online transactions that create services, result in virtual goods, create experiences and produce content. Use these examples to explain how Figure 1.4’s different quadrants can be related to Figure 1.2’s categories and conceptual boundaries.

Chapter 2 Application (3) Practical

  • Using the six reasons to be on the internet as a guiding framework, find examples of websites and webservices that would serve as encouragement for moving an existing business into the internet. In your answer, outline the business, the nature of the business activity, and the six reasons with matching example sites and service.
  • Apply the stages of change model to your own use of the internet services in the table below. As a marketer, what steps could you take as a marketer to move you to the next stage in the model, or to prevent you from moving out of maintenance into termination? Discuss with examples

Site / Stage / Suggestion
Facebook
Twitter
Foursquare
Eventbrite
PayPal
About.me
  • Using Chapter 0 and your own experience of the internet, collect a set of examples of software, sites and/or services that typify each element of the “Features of the E-marketing Environment”

Element / Site
Consumer Behaviour Impact
  • Interactivity

  • Mass Customisation

  • Interest Driven

Accessibility
  • Global Access

  • Time Independence

  • Ubiquity

Product Characteristics
  • Intangibility

  • Mobility

  • Portability

  • Volatility

Discussion: Which of the elements was the hardest to source a demonstration site? Which was the easiest? What aspect of the hardest element do you think made it quite so difficult?

Chapter 3 Application (3) Practical

  • Organise a list of different web sites based on your perception as to where these sites, services and products are currently positioned on the Product Life Cycle Curve. Select one example site or product from each category of the PLC, and recommend either a Porter or Ansoff strategy for that company.

PLC Stage / Sample Sites / Chosen Site / Suggested Strategy
Introduction
Early Growth
Sustained Growth
Late Growth Stage
Market Maturity
Decline Phase
  • Prepare a set of objectives for a company looking to launch a new product for an existing customer base using a combination of packet mix objectives and the SMART mantra.
  • Apply the five segmentation description phase to your own online activity. Identity systems, services or protocols that could assist you in collecting data on your own segmentation profile.

Chapter 4 Application (3) Practical

  • Draft a market research plan to assist your e-marketing course work. Follow the eight steps in the chapter (96 to 104), and outline how you will use this process to assist the research for your assignment.
  • Establish a series of Google Alerts on key areas of interest for this semester’s e-marketing activity. Follow the processes and procedures outlined in the Chapter (pages 101 to103) for the following topic areas
  • Your name (either your real name or your alias). It’s a nice way to see what you and your namesakes are up to on the internet.
  • Several keywords associated with your assignment topic (eg for the MTA, the key technology you’re investigating)
  • For those with their own blogs, use the advanced search link: to find references to your blog in links, indexes or other parts of the internet
  • Pick a contemporary commercial event being discussed on Twitter under a common hashtag. Track the use of the hashtag using the available Twitter research tools (Googe live results, Twitter’s own search function, Tweetdeck hashtag service) and write up a brief summary of what marketing information, consumer insight and other market intelligence that could be gather from the exercise.

Chapter 5Application (3) Practical

  • Outline a range of e-marketing products, goods and services which you are familiar with, or which you have recent experience, and the launch dates of these products (check Wikipedia for launch dates if you’re uncertain). For each of the sites, list whether you would regard yourself as an innovator, early adopter, early majority, late majority or laggard when it comes to the use of the site. Outline the basis on which you have classified yourself, and which consumer behaviour theories you have used for this process.
  • Using the Consumer Strategies for Using the Internet (145-148), outline one or more web sites, e-marketing products or iTunes applications that would fit into the strategic categories.
  • Innovation Features: Pick a series of web sites and web services that you commonly use, and, using the supplied table, describe how each of these products/sites rates on the innovation characteristics

Relative advantage / Compatibility / Complexity / Trial / Observable
Site 1

For this exercise, you may wish to work in a group with each group member comparing the same list of sites (whether they use them or not) to assess the variation between individual assessments of the innovation characteristics.

Chapter 6 Application (3) Practical

  • Outline a plan for distributing an information-centric value offer which is described “a virtual e-marketing book for high level business executives who do not have time to attend regular lectures and classes”. Outline the key features of the product, and briefly overview how you would position your competitor book on financial and non-financial price. Discuss, explain and justify your decisions with reference to the value your target market will find in your product, and any appropriate models or tables from the chapter.
  • Go to and generate a randomly generated startup that appeals to your taste in fictional companies. Using the brand name, and the brief descriptions provided in the sample text on the page, work through the following exercise
  • Using the Branching Product Model, and the Three Levels of Product Model, outline the detail of a product that would fit with the randomly proposed company.
  • Based on your product information, outline how this product would be distributed to the end consumer
  • Outline your price strategy for this hypothetical product based on the Total Price Concept and the Price Positioning Matrix (Table 6.1)
  • Write up your notes for this process, and retain them for Chapter 7
  • Using Table 6.1, find examples of prices from each of the following product, and outline which positioning strategies you believe your chosen products are using:
  • New release Xbox game
  • New mobile phone
  • e-book on Amazon Kindle
  • iTunes Classic “Best-Of” album release
  • Annual subscription fee to a photo sharing website
  • Approximately 40,000 virtual credits in a Facebook game (or highest virtual credit purchase available in the game)

Discuss which you believe is the most appropriate price positioning strategies for the following products for the following scenarios.

  • New product being released to an existing market by a well know company
  • New product being released to a new market by an unknown company

You may wish to identify companies and product releases that meet these conditions to assist with your answer.

Chapter 7 Application (3) Practical

  • Fill out the Brand Manual for
  • Your personal online brand or
  • Your blog’s brand

Explain how your decisions at the tactical level aspects of the brand manual are tied back to broader marketing principles and practices with examples from your work, and reference to theory.

  • Using the company created in Chapter 6, Practical Question 2 Using the brand name, and the brief descriptions provided in the sample text on the page, work through the following exercise
  • Based on the product, distribution and price information, outline the positioning strategy of the brand
  • Fill out the following section of the Content Pitch section of the communication plan to describe the company and its products:
  • Twitter posts (140 characters)
  • Twitter bio sentence (one sentence)
  • Elevator pitch (the two-sentence response to ‘So what do you do online?’), and
  • full-length paragraph for the ‘About you’ or ‘Biography’ section of social media sites
  • If you have access to image editing software, create banner advertising for the template shapes in Figure 7.3

[If you have not already created a Ykombinator company, go to and generate a randomly generated startup that appeals to your taste in fictional companies. You may wish to undertake the Chapter 6 activity first before attempting this question].

  • Collect a range of advertising from the Internet including at least one of the following categories
  • Google Adword
  • Facebook ad
  • Twitter sponsored keyword
  • YouTube video advert
  • A static or animated banner advert and,

Identify which phase of the AIDA model is being addressed by the advertisement, and how the associated linked page works (or doesn’t) towards the goals of that step in the process.

Chapter 8 Application (3)Practical

  • Outline the steps in Table 8.1 for developing trust in an internet transaction. Using one of the services you signed up for in Chapter 0, or a new web service of your choice, outline how the service provider has meet these steps, and what implied operational objectives and overt web mechanisms can be identified for each stage.
  • Collect examples of sites, products or services where online services marketing can be considered to be superior compared to the offline equivalent. Select two categories where you believe that offline services marketing traditional delivery mode can be the superior alternative.
  • Identify an online service that you use reasonably frequently, and outline the composition of the e-service product using Figure 8.1. During your next service encounter, identify how and where the service providers have addressed the four pillars of services marketing through site design, service interaction or the service product.

Chapter 9 Application (3) Practical

  • Using one or more of the community sites which you joined in Chapter 0, and/or a virtual world, cybercommunity or similar site, outline how the various models of communication function in those environments.
  • Outline a strategy for recruiting students to a social media based support group for university assessment items using the principles of destination marketing. Specify your preference for the type of social media channel, the nature of the community infrastructure, and provide details of how you would apply the different aspects of destination marketing to create the support group.
  • Using a community that you are familiar with by membership or observation, outline which concepts of community are observably in place. Give recommendations based on destination marketing as how you could deliberately improve one or more aspect of the concepts of community.

Chapter 10 Application (3) Practical

  • Using the revenue models from the chapter, identify examples of companies which fit each of the different subtypes of revenue model
  • Using the company created in Chapter 6, Practical Question 2 (and Chapter 7), work through the following activity: Using the brand name, and the brief descriptions provided in the sample text on the page, and the materials developed in Chapter 6 and Chapter 7, outline:
  • One packet mix objective that would suit the fictional brand and organisation.
  • Answer the sub questions associated with that objective.
  • Outline a brief set of metrics for measuring that objective based on the nature of the product on offer.
  • Outline which of the revenue types would be the best option for your fictional company based on your objectives and product offering.

[If you have not already created a Ykombinator company, go to and generate a randomly generated startup that appeals to your taste in fictional companies. You may wish to undertake the Chapter 6 and 7 activities first before attempting this question].

  • Use the Product-Market fit model to describe how you would achieve a behavioural change objective of encouraging students to pre-read chapters of an emarketing textbook before their lectures each week.

Chapter 11 Application (3) Practical

  • Using one or more of the social media sites that you signed up for in Chapter 0, apply Table 11.2 to their operations. How well do the different rows on the Table describe the performance of the site? Which aspect is the best fit, and which is the worst fit, between the content of the table and the reality of the site’s operation
  • Collect web based examples of the different types of online attractions. How do these attraction types compare to the motivations of the consumers? Outline what types of generic motivations consumers would have for using the sites you’ve identified per type of online attraction.
  • Collect examples of the different types of online content. Using the product model from Chapter 6 or the Services Model from Chapter 8, outline the product being offered by three of the content types.

Chapter 12 Application (3) Practical

  • Prioritise the list of social media sites from this chapter into a rank order of their value to you as a marketer.
  • Identify the one service that you think would be most valuable, and why it would be beneficial for your marketing activity.
  • Identify the service or site that you regard as least valuable. Propose an alternative site to replace it, and explain how this site is a superior alternative.
  • Select a social media site from Chapter 12, and outline how the principles of virtual destination marketing (Chapter 9) can be applied to the site or service.
  • Identify a new social media site that is not referenced in either Chapter 0 or Chapter 12. Using the same approach as Chapter 12’s social media section outlined in the Chapter 12 Social Media Identification document, detail the operation of the new social media site, and how it fits within the emarketing frameworks of the book.

Chapter 13 Application (3) Practical

  • Take a device survey of your friends, study group or tutorial. What types of devices are present in the group compared to the list in Chapter 13

1.Mobile phones,

2.Mobile phone plus

3.Smart phones

4.Too clever by half phones (TCBH)

5.Smart devices

Amongst the people who have the different devices, establish how many of the different ways of using them are actually used in a given period (day, week, month, ever), and which is the most popular.

  • Using the consumer motives outlined in Table 13.3, collect examples of advertising that promotes the use of phones to achieve these outcomes. Which of these motives was the hardest to acquire? Which was the most common?
  • Collect a range of mobile phone promotional materials from online and offline sources. Are there social endorsed behaviours associated with the different categories of phone based on how the advertising presents the use of the different features? Can you determine different use-positions or user market segments in these adverts based on how the phone’s features are promoted?

Chapter 14 Application (3) Practical

  • Examine the list of alternate channels in this chapter. Prioritise these options into a rank order of their value to you as a marketer. Identify the lowest two options that you think are not useful for marketing purposes. Outline why these networks are not valuable to you in your marketing practice.
  • Using the frameworks outlined in the chapter, and the template from “Chapter 14 Off Web Channel Identification.doc”, identify, analyse and document an off-web channel other than the ones covered in the Chapter.
  • Select one of the channels and collect examples of marketing activity within the channel including one or more of the following:
  • evidence of the application of the marketing mix
  • servicescape
  • opportunity for market research / consumer feedback
  • use of the communication models from chapter
  • cybercommunity structures

On the basis of the visible marketing activity, can the types of objectives that would suit this channel be determined?