Marketing Capstone Reflection Paper

Reflection Report Structure

1. Introduction

In order to complete my master’s course, I decided to take the project-based capstone course, because its practicality is strongly related to its academic nature. One of my goals throughout the master’s program is to incorporate as much practical experience as possible into the academic program. I am grateful for what I have learned over the past few years and hope that this information will help me achieve more in my life. In this project, I chose the research topic of The Potential for Ready Meals Delivery Services in Australia. It mainly focuses on the analysis of the market environment of Youfoodz company to study consumers’ attitudes towards its products and the market potential. In addition, to identify the shortcomings of its development, and create a marketing recommendation program to enhance its market development vitality.

In the process of this project, I collected the data of university students and workers in Sydney through qualitative analysis. This survey was conducted to identify objectives for my project, to help Youfoodz company identify deficiencies in its products and services and to understand future directions. These data are then executed while researching the creation of marketing recommendations. The whole process was exciting, exhausting, open-minded, frustrating and rewarding, but I felt I have not done my best to achieve the goals I had set.

2. What are your overall main insights from doing the Capstone project?

Business capstone project covers many areas of research, one of which is the most suitable marketing method for enterprise development. The following discussion on this research points out that only by deeply understanding the internal and external business environment of the enterprise can a specific comprehensive perspective of marketing be formed. This is mainly due to the fact that the analysis of a company’s business environment helps to identify important factors and existences related to the business, and subsequent attempts to decipher must consider the best product features and services for effective marketing practices in the industry arena.

In addition, I learned that there are many strategic analysis tools and/or techniques that can be used to comprehensively analyze a company’s business environment. These examples include PESTEL, Porter’s five forces model and SWOT analysis. Enterprises should consider using at least two of these technologies when analyzing their internal and external business environments.

After determining the research objectives, it is also essential to use appropriate and effective research methods. The reason why qualitative research is chosen to be applied in this project is that it can better grasp the subjective attitude of consumers. Especially in face-to-face communication, more interesting thoughts and answers can be extended through different open questions. All the information is vivid, can be recorded, and for certain keywords can trigger my potential thinking. Through each individual interview and communication, I can obtain different information and data. However, through later classification and analysis, I was able to find special similarities and differences. In general, the information provided by these interviewees has been of great help to me, especially in identifying problems and improvements in the company’s products and services. And the marketing recommendation strategy at the end of the project.

3. If you were doing this project again, how would you approach the challenges that you faced?

Critical reflection on the business capstone project will assist in putting this learning experience into perspective to assess significant achievements, challenges in completing the course, and acquiring new skills and knowledge throughout the course learning experience.

Getting enough information about the Ready-made meals delivery service in Australia can be challenging. Although the company has a full-featured website, it offers little information about its business strategy and other key operational aspects. This is exacerbated by the fact that there are very few academic articles about companies. The lack of access to a great deal of information about the industry makes the completion of the project a daunting task. I really had to dig deep to make sure I could gather as much detail as possible to better analyze its marketing practices and marketing development methods. I am fully aware that I might have avoided these challenges if I had chosen a larger, better-known company with a lot of readily available information. Determining the actual research process and methodology was also a major challenge for me, largely due to the lack of adequate information about the ready-to-make meals delivery service. As a result, there are only a few coherent academic articles detailing the activities and practices of this industry, which makes the framework of the research process very difficult. I am deeply aware that formulating a research question to show its unique difference and importance is indeed very challenging. This question ultimately affected my ability to propose effective research objectives.

Therefore, if I am given another chance to re-study this project, I will make more efforts in the field of investigation and research. I would spend much more time looking for the representative groups of respondents to make my data analysis more reliable. And then repeatedly confirm the correctness and representativeness of my research objective. In this way, the direction of my whole research can be clearer. The following marketing solutions can also be more specific and perfect.

4. Theory: Describe the most useful marketing theories, concepts and/or frameworks that you have used as part of this project process? Why are they useful? (PLO 1.1)

5. Business Values: If you were to extend this project, how would you:

(a) better relate your recommendations with ethical and social responsibility (PLO 4.1),

(b) extend your recommendations to incorporate sustainability principles (PLO 4.2), and

(c) extend your recommendations to incorporate culturally diverse and Indigenous perspectives (PLO 4.3)?

6. Professionalism: Discuss how the mentor system worked for your project? What did you learn about mentoring and working with people by doing this project (PLO 5.1)?

7. What are your final comments about your Capstone project?

8. Conclusion – what grade do you expect and why?

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