MKTG5001: Foundation in Marketing

1. Group Project: This project will run across the semester to identify an opportunity and develop a plan to realise the opportunity utilising theory and frameworks from the course supported by evidence of customer and competitor understanding.

This assessment will focus on further refining your target audience understanding, focusing on clear opportunity recommendation(s) that you can defend as likely to grow the client’s business, as well as develop the marketing mix plan that will commercialise your opportunity idea.

Permitted use of AI: You can use AI Microsoft Copilot to think about the strengths and limitations of your ideas. In this instance the role of AI is not about generating ideas (as they need to be your own, based on your critical evaluation of your earlier research). Rather, the role of AI Copilot is to help you strengthen your opportunity justification and to affirm its feasibility.

For the final submission you are permitted to use Microsoft Copilot generative AI to directly suggest readability improvements to your text in terms of structure, grammar and expression.

Acknowledging the use of AI in the Group Project: Use of generative artificial intelligence must be appropriately acknowledged. To show how you used AI to strengthen your opportunity justification and to affirm the feasibility you can insert a note in the appendix of your submission where you need to describe the AI tool that you used, what you used it to do, what prompt(s) you provided, and how the output of the artificial intelligence was used or adapted by you. It is important that you keep a record of the tools, prompts and output in a diary. You must do this from the beginning of the project as you will not be able to recreate it at the completion of the assessment. This information that you attach in the appendix of your submission will be used to validate that you have used AI to supplement your knowledge, and to confirm that the final submission is your original work.

To acknowledge the use of AI to improve readability follow these steps.  On the front of your submission, you should acknowledge the use of AI using the following statement: “I acknowledge the use of Microsoft Copilot to refine the academic language of my own work. On (insert date) I submitted my entire assessment (attach original pre-AI document to appendix) with the prompt to “improve the academic tone and accuracy of language, including grammatical structures, punctuation and vocabulary”. The output (attach to appendix with title AI output) was then modified further to better represent my own tone and style of writing which is my final submission.

So, your uploaded final submission will include in the appendix your diary, your final pre-readability AI document you uploaded to Copilot, and the AI document output from the readability prompt, that you later modified for your final submission. The appendices are NOT included in the word count.

2. Class participation: Unsecured assessment No AI. Degree of active engagement with both online activities and workshop exercises including quizzes and >50% completion of module reflections. You will also have two options for completing the 2% business research component of your participation mark. Option 1 – participate in a research study. Option 2 – complete a research paper review. For more detailed information about how to complete the business research component, please refer to the Assignments tab on the course CANVAS site.

3. Individual Assessment (in semester) – Customer Analysis

Prepare a customer profile and competitive analysis to identify an opportunity. This assignment comprises task 1a and task 1b. Task 1a is a pre-requisite task for task 1b. Task 1b is an in-class assessment.

This assessment focuses on building a rich understanding of a target audience of consumers and a competitive analysis to identify an area of opportunity that will help your assigned brand better serve the needs of their target audience.

Permitted use of AI: As you research the values important to the target audience, develop the empathy map, and the day in the life customer journey you can use Microsoft Copilot to help build your understanding of the target audience. It is recommended you use the Sydney University Microsoft Copilot AI tool since this tool does not share your work with the wider Internet.

It is recommended that you use AI to explore assumptions about the target audience that you can further validate through further secondary and a small piece of primary research (i.e., the required target market interviews). The prompts you use in co-pilot should be interview style questions. Think of Microsoft Copilot as someone who knows this target market better than you, which will help you build a robust understanding of who they are. By example, you may have prompts to ask them about their attitudes, interest and opinions. Their media habits. Purchasing behaviours. The things that shape the goods and services they buy etc. The more thinking you have behind the AI prompts, the stronger you will be able to build a critical understanding of your target market.

When you are thinking about the values important to the target audience you can use AI to interrogate your own assumptions about the values that are important to them. For example, you may have an assumption that the target values ‘health’. You could use an AI prompt such as, “how much do home cooks care about health”? You may also ask AI to direct you to references/resources that will help you validate your assumptions.

You may also use AI Microsoft Copilot to identify who are the brands competitors, however, you will have to be selective and provide a justification on why you have chosen the competitors you did.

You will then have to carefully transfer the information you find into the empathy map, day in the life customer journey, and competitor matrix as you construct the profile of the target audience.

In the final stage of this assessment, you will have to identify an opportunity that will help your brand better service the needs of the target audience. You cannot use AI to do this, you must critically analyse the information you have gathered, identify and justify the area of opportunity you proceed to recommend.

For the final submission you are permitted to use Microsoft Copilot generative AI to directly suggest readability improvements to your text in terms of structure, grammar and expression.

Acknowledging the use of AI in the individual assessment – customer analysis: Use of generative artificial intelligence must be appropriately acknowledged. To show how you used AI to strengthen your opportunity justification and to affirm the feasibility you can insert a note in the appendix of your submission where you need to describe the AI tool that you used, what you used it to do, what prompt(s) you provided, and how the output of the artificial intelligence was used or adapted by you. It is important that you keep a record of the tools, prompts and output in a diary. You must do this from the beginning of the project as you will not be able to recreate it at the completion of the assessment. This information that you attach in the appendix of your submission will be used to validate that you have used AI to supplement your knowledge, and to confirm that the final submission is your original work.

To acknowledge the use of AI to improve readability follow these steps. On the front of your submission, you should acknowledge the use of AI using the following statement: “I acknowledge the use of Microsoft Copilot to refine the academic language of my own work. On (insert date) I submitted my entire assessment (attach original pre-AI document to appendix) with the prompt to “improve the academic tone and accuracy of language, including grammatical structures, punctuation and vocabulary”. The output (attach to appendix with title AI output) was then modified further to better represent my own tone and style of writing which is my final submission.

So, your uploaded final submission will include in the appendix your diary, your final pre-readability AI document you uploaded to Copilot, and the AI document output from the readability prompt, that that you modified for your final submission. The appendices are NOT included in the word count.

4. Individual assignment (end of semester) – Individual Reflection: The reflection has two components – (1) Executive Summary of your group report and (2) a reflection using your weekly reflection tasks. This reflective task is designed to demonstrate progressive marketing learning across the semester utilising module reflections as evidence. Students must complete >50% completion of module reflections to be eligible for this assessment to be marked.

Permitted use of AI: You are permitted to use Microsoft Copilot generative AI to directly suggest readability improvements to your text in terms of structure, grammar and expression. It is recommended you use the Sydney University Microsoft Copilot AI tool since this tool does not share your work with the wider Internet.

You cannot use AI to write an executive summary of your report text. The reason there is no AI allowed for the executive summary is because we are assessing your ability to demonstrate your understanding of the content of the group report and convey the details of your report in a succinct manner. It needs to reflect your own understanding and ability to communicate, not the Ai’s ability to summarise.

The role of the reflection is to allow you to demonstrate your understanding of aspects of the course by stopping and reflecting on how aspects of the course made you feel, think and how they will shape how you take those ideas into your future careers. These must be your personal thoughts and feelings and cannot therefore be generated by AI.

Acknowledging the use of AI in the reflection: On the front of your submission, you should acknowledge the use of AI using the following statement: “I acknowledge the use of Microsoft Copilot to refine the academic language of my own work. On (insert date) I submitted my entire assessment (attach original pre-AI document to appendix) with the prompt to “improve the academic tone and accuracy of language, including grammatical structures, punctuation and vocabulary”. The output (attach to appendix with title AI output) was then modified further to better represent my own tone and style of writing which is my final submission.

So, your uploaded final submission will include in the appendix your final pre-readability AI document you uploaded to Copilot, and the AI document output from the readability prompt, that you later modified for your final submission. The appendices are NOT included in the word count.

Detailed information for each assessment can be found on canvas.

General overview of the expectations in using AI Tools

• The Academic Integrity Policy outlines the rules for using AI in assessments. Students must acknowledge their use of AI tools, ensure their final work is original, and not copied directly from a generative AI tool. All software or tool usage expressly allowed for different assessment tasks must be acknowledged, and all sources referenced.
• Students should keep records of how they use generative AI in their assignments and keep copies of generative AI outputs as evidence of their research and writing process.
• Do not enter confidential, personal, copyrighted or otherwise sensitive information into AI tools. If you use these tools, you must be aware of their limitations, biases, and propensity for fabrication. Your use of AI tools must adhere to the Student Charter 2020, including upholding honestly, ethics, professionalism, and academic integrity.
• Do not rely on the accuracy of outputs. You remain responsible for your work. This means you must independently verify and edit AI-generated content to ensure the integrity, accuracy, and suitability of the output
• If you use these tools, you must include a statement at the end of your assignment explaining what you used the tool for, and the prompts that you used.