Date of Award

1992

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Business Administration

Department

Business

First Advisor

Daniel W. Kemper

Second Advisor

Patrick Akers

Third Advisor

Victor Beck

Abstract

This thesis will focus on the development o f a marketing plan for a specific Southwestern Bell Telephone Company (SWBT) software product and the impact the plan has upon the course of action that the company takes in the marketplace with regard to the product.

Due to general economic conditions, which are described in the conventional literature as ranging from a slowdown to a stall to a recession, depending on the authority's particular perspective, and an unprecedented event in the telecommunications industry, SWBT found itself with reduced resources, the loss of a previously targeted customer base, and no marketing plan for a product it had invested heavily in.

Research has indicated the need for and the importance of marketing planning, yet many organizations continue to operate without a marketing plan . Many authorities believe that without proper marketing planning and said plan's proper implementation, failure is almost assured. At best, the subject matter experts maintain, a business in operation without a formal marketing plan is operating under a severe handicap.

The purpose of the present study is to investigate ways to communicate the company's business strength to a prospective customer base with regard to a specific product and to secure the profitability of the product in the process. These concepts were formulated into a marketing plan which was submitted to company officials for review and approval.

Results of the plan's evaluation produced improvements in the design . The actual implementation of the marketing plan produced evidence that a specific organization within SWBT had not only accepted the concepts of marketing planning, discussed in this study, but also agreed with the specific plan elements , processes, and procedures developed herein . This was a strong indicator of the plan's ability to provide a systematic course of action for marketing the software product and of the general workability of the plan . It was concluded that the marketing planning concepts and this specific plan design have provided a road map to help SWBT decide where it wants to be in the marketplace, with regard to the software product, and how it is going to get there.

It was suggested that, although it would change the nature of the study, canting it more toward an empirical design, a statistical test of extraordinary vigor and longevity could provide a means of explicitly determining whether the marketing plan was significant in securing the profitability of the product . At this time, the second criteria of this study, securing the profitability of the product, remains an open and indeterminate item.

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