Question 1:

How does competitive strategy relate to value chain structure? 

Your response should be at least 200 words in length. You are required to use at least your textbook as source material for your response. All sources used, including the textbook, must be referenced; paraphrased and quoted material must have accompanying citations.

Question 2:

Describe the challenges that an organization will face when changing business processes and how information systems support business process. 

Your response should be at least 200 words in length. You are required to use at least your textbook as source material for your response. All sources used, including the textbook, must be referenced; paraphrased and quoted material must have accompanying citations.

Assignment 2: Marketing Plan

Due Week 6 and worth 100 points

This assignment consists of two (2) sections: a marketing plan and sales strategy, and a marketing budget. Note: You must submit both sections as separate files for the completion of this assignment.

For the first six (6) months your company is in business—to give you time to perfect your product and to learn from actual customers—you will start marketing and selling in your own community, a radius of twenty-five (25) miles from where you live.

For most non-alcoholic beverages, marketing (as opposed to the actual product itself) is key to success. Cola drinks, for example, are fairly undifferentiated, as are many energy drinks, juices, bottled water, and the like. Companies producing these types of beverages differentiate themselves and attract market share through marketing and brand awareness—both of which are critical to success.

Section 1: Marketing Plan & Sales Strategy (MS Word or equivalent)

Write the three to five (3-5) page Marketing Plan & Sales Strategy section of your business plan, in which you:

1. Define your company’s target market.
   • Analyze the types of consumers who will be drinking your beverage in demographic terms (i.e., age, education level, income, gender, ethnic group, etc.). Support your analysis with actual data on the size of the demographic groups in your local community (nearby zip codes).
   • Outline the demographic information for your company specified on the worksheet in the course text (p. 107 | Demographic Description). Click here for help accessing a specific page number in your eBook.
     • Hints: At American FactFinder (http://census.gov), you will find demographic information on potential consumers in your area. If you are selling through other businesses (such as grocery stores), indicate the number of those businesses in your local area. You will find information about such businesses in your local area at County Business Patterns (http://www.census.gov/econ/cbp/). Check Chapter 2 of Successful Business Plan for more research sources.
2. Assess your company’s market competition.
   • Use the factors listed in the course text graphic (p. 123 | Assess the Competition) to assess your company’s market competition.
   • Defend your strategy to successfully compete against market leaders in your segment.
     • Hints: For example, in the soft drink market, it is intimidating to try to compete against Coke and Pepsi. Newcomers in mature markets typically must pursue niche markets or even create new market categories, as Red Bull did with energy drinks.
   • Defend your plan to differentiate yourself from the competition using the information detailed on the worksheet in the text (p. 131 | Market Share Distribution).
     • Hints: Every business faces competition and the non-alcoholic beverage market is an especially crowded market.

1. Clarify your company’s message using the information provided on the worksheet in the text (p. 160 | The Five F’s).
   • • Hints: Before you choose your marketing vehicles, you must determine the message you want to convey through those vehicles.
2. Identify the marketing vehicles you plan to use to build your company’s brand. Justify the key reasons why they will be effective. Provide examples of other non-alcoholic beverage companies that use these tactics effectively.
   • • Hints: If you plan to use online marketing tactics, refer to the worksheet in the text (p.171 | Online Marketing Tactics) to aid your response. Remember that even if you’re selling through grocery stores you need to build your brand and social media is a major part of that in regard to beverages. Some of the marketing tactics that beverage companies use include: sampling in grocery stores, building a following on social media, sponsoring events, exhibiting at trade shows attended by retailers, and so on. You will use a combination of these tactics. For example, if you decide to give out samples in grocery stores, promote your sampling on your social media networks and those of the grocery store.
   • • Hints: If you are planning to distribute through resellers, describe how you plan to reach them, for example, through industry trade shows or by establishing your own sales force. For information on trade shows, visit the Trade Show News Network (http://www.tsnn.com). You can exhibit or network at these shows.

1. Format your assignment according to these formatting requirements:

Section 2: Marketing Budget (MS Excel worksheets template)

Section 2 uses the “Business Plan Financials” MS Excel template (see: Course Required Files in Week 1). Use the “Business Plan Financials Guide” (see: Course Required Files in Week 1) to support your development of the Marketing Budget.

1. Complete the Marketing Budget worksheet for your company.
   • • Hints: The goal of the marketing budget is to help you determine how much it will cost you to reach your market and achieve your sales goals.
     • Hints: When filling out the “Marketing Budget” worksheet in the Excel spreadsheet:
       • Begin in the current year and complete a marketing budget for the first year of your business. The information you enter in the marketing budget spreadsheet will flow through to your “Income Statement” in the Business Plan Financials.
       • Leave the number at zero (0) for any marketing vehicles you do not intend to use.
       • Remember that all marketing activities involve costs. If social media represents a significant portion of your marketing, assume you will have cost of advertising and that should be reflected on your budget. Even if a social media site charges nothing to use it, you will need to use company resources to manage the site, pay someone to execute your social media marketing campaigns, and will most likely pay for ads on that site.
       • Do NOT leave the “Marketing Budget” blank, assuming you will not have any marketing costs.

The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are:

• Recommend effective business strategies based on an analysis of domestic and global operating environments, market dynamics, and internal capabilities.
• Analyze competitive positions including foreign market entry and the resulting impact on business strategy.
• Use technology and information resources to research issues in strategic management.
• Write clearly and concisely about strategic management using proper writing mechanics.

Click here to view the grading rubric for this assignment.

Thomas Aquinas wrote his great Summa Theologica that he could find only two objections to the existence of God. One of the two objections is the apparent ability of natural science to explain everything in our experience without God, and the other is the Problem of Evil. It is the underlying question for the biblical Book of Job: why does God allow bad things happen to good people? That question, more than any other, has caused religious people to abandon their faith.

In a well-developed, argumentative essay, address the following issues:

1. In your own words, explain the “Problem of Evil.” In other words, regardless of what you personally believe, if there is a God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and concerned with justice and the well-being of humanity, explain how there can be so much evil and suffering in the world.
2. Next, pursue as far as you can the responses and objections to one of the various attempts in the textbook to resolve the problem of evil. Explain in what ways it resolves the problem of evil AND in what ways it does not. (If you can’t figure out how to start, a good way of doing this is to have a friend act as devil’s advocate and try to refute your efforts to defend a solution to the problem.)

Note: Be careful not to commit a formal fallacy like the one in this example. This argument has an undistributed middle term.

E→F       The origin of evil is free will.
G→F       God created free will.
___________________________________

∴G→E    Therefore, God is the origin of evil.

Please ensure that your essay addresses each component of the assigned questions and that your answer is well-organized, uses excellent, college-level prose, and makes judicious use of textual evidence. Your essay must follow APA formatting and should be 500-750 words long.

If you quote, paraphrase, or summarize from the textbook or any other source, you must include in-text citations and a References page.

Assignment 2: Training on Diversity Trends

As a new member of a top management consulting firm’s diversity team, one of your responsibilities is to conduct training on diversity trends. Consultants use this training in their management practices with Fortune 500 companies.

You are asked to lead a training session next week. The topic is “The Global Demographic Trends Impacting Diversity.” The training will be presented to mid-level managers in your firm. The purpose of the training is to inform the management consultants of the latest changes in worldwide demographics relative to five key diversity areas of interest and provide recommendations for managers on sustaining a diverse workforce.

Prepare a seven to nine slide Microsoft PowerPoint presentation on this topic. Include a discussion of the following:

• Diversity Trends
• Population trends
• Working-age population movements
• Racial and ethnic trends
• Sexual-orientation trends
• Gender trends
• Impact of diversity trends and changes to the firm based on statistical data
• Recommendation to the firm for sustaining a diverse workforce

Include detailed speaker notes with your presentation that fully explain each point and justification for your recommendations.

Use at least three resources to justify your responses. Apply current APA standards for writing style to your work.  Include a title slide and reference slide(s) in addition to the main slides.

By Wednesday, February 19, 2014, deliver your assignment to the M4: Assignment 2 Dropbox.

Use the following file naming convention: LastnameFirstInitial_M4_A2.ppt.

In order for this assignment to be compatible with TurnItIn, you will need to save your PowerPoint presentation as an Adobe PDF file. To do this, open your presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint. Choose “Save As” from the File menu, then choose “Adobe PDF”. Before saving your file, click on the Options button and check the box next to “Convert Speaker Notes.” Now choose to save your file. Your speaker notes will be included in your PDF file that you will submit for this assignment.

Note: If your version of Microsoft PowerPoint does not have the option to include speaker notes, you will need to submit a Microsoft Word document that contains all information from your presentation, including the speaker notes.

Write a five to six (5-6) page paper in which you:

1. Determine three (3) most important characteristics of an effective paralegal. Justify your response.
2. Develop at least three (3) general guidelines for conducting legal research that a new paralegal should follow on in order to ensure that the attorney for whom the paralegal works is referencing valid laws within his / her legal documents.
3. Propose two (2) strategies that a paralegal could take in order to avoid the unauthorized practice of law. Provide a rationale to support your response.
4. Compare and contrast the key differences between the activities of paralegals versus those of attorneys in preparing a case for trial.
5. Use at least two (2) quality references. Note: Wikipedia and other Websites do not qualify as academic resources.

Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:

• Be typed, double-spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. 
• Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.

PLEASE, ONLY ORIGINAL WORK ONLY. NO PLAGIARISM  WILL BE CHECKED BY 3 SOURCES INCLUDING TURNITIN. ANY QUESTIONS CONTACT ME