BTEC HND Level 4 Unit 2 Marketing Process & Planning Assignment Brief 2026

BTEC HND Level 4 Unit 2 Assignment Brief

Assignment Title: Understanding Marketing Planning Towards Business Success.

Introduction

Large, medium and small businesses that operate globally, internationally or locally have at least one thing in common – they all use marketing to influence us to engage with their products and/or services. Whether this means becoming a loyal customer buying a product and service or donating to a charity, organisations use a range of marketing techniques and tools to inform and influence us.

This unit is designed to introduce students to the dynamic world of the marketing sector and the wealth of exciting career opportunities available to support their decision making in their career choices. Students will have the opportunity to learn about the competencies and behaviours required by employers to work in the marketing sector. They will be introduced to the key principles of marketing, enabling them to develop a marketing plan and to employ elements of the marketing mix to achieve results. They will study the underpinning theories and frameworks of marketing while relating them to real-world examples, including products/services that they encounter in their daily lives.

The knowledge, understanding and skill sets that students will gain on successfully completing this unit will enhance their career opportunities, whether this is setting up their own business or employment in an organisation.

To succeed in this unit, you are required to follow the scenario provided and complete all the required assessment criteria. Your submissions should demonstrate your understanding of how your research links coherently to these aspects of Marketing Process & Planning.

Task A: Submission Format

This submission will be in the form of an individual report that is appropriate and suitable for use at a business meeting. The report must be submitted using a WORD processed document. PDF and other types of files are not accepted.

The recommended length of this submission is 4500- 5000 words, although you will not be penalised for exceeding 5000 words.

Where appropriate, learning theory and additional research must be used, and referenced according to the Harvard Referencing system. The work must include a bibliography for all referenced work using the Harvard referencing system.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this unit a student will be able to:

LO1 Explain the role of marketing and how it interrelates with other business units of an organisation
LO2 Compare ways in which organisations use elements of the marketing mix to achieve overall business objectives
LO3 Produce a marketing plan for an organisation that meets marketing objectives
LO4 Develop a media plan to support a marketing campaign for an organisation

Assignment Brief and Guidance

Scenario and Activity:

McDonald’s missed a key sales target, partly due to customers boycotting the firm for its perceived support of Israel. The fast food chain reported its first quarterly sales miss in nearly four years due to weak growth in its international business division. Its boss previously acknowledged the impact of the conflict, blaming “misinformation”. Shares in McDonald’s fell about 4% after the announcement.

McDonalds is one of several Western corporations including Starbucks and Coca Cola that have seen boycotts and protests against them by anti-Israeli campaigners. The firm said that the Israel-Gaza conflict had “meaningfully impacted” performance in some overseas markets in the fourth quarter of 2023. In the branch which includes sales in the Middle East, China and India, sales growth stood at 0.7% in the fourth quarter of 2023 – far below market expectations.

“So long as this war is going on… we’re not expecting to see any significant improvement [in these markets],” the McDonald’s boss added. McDonald’s relies on a franchise system in which thousands of independent businesses own and operate most of its more than 40,000 stores around the world. About 5% of its outlets are located in the Middle East.

The fast food retailer drew criticism after its Israel-based franchise said it had given away thousands of free meals to members of the Israeli military, sparking calls to boycott the brand by those angered by Israel’s military response in Gaza. It prompted franchise owners in Muslim-majority countries such as Kuwait, Malaysia and Pakistan to put out statements distancing themselves from the firm.

As the conflict goes on, so does the pressure of boycotts. In this climate, you have recently been employed by the marketing department of McDonald’s Middle East division as a Junior Marketing Analyst.

Source: BBC

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68209085

You are required to produce a report to the marketing manager that will critically analyse the internal and external marketing environment in which the marketing function of McDonald’s operates.

This analysis should adequately cover the concept of marketing, including the different areas it operates, the role of marketing, and the interrelationships with other internal functional units within McDonald’s as well as the wider organisational context, with an emphasis on the importance of such interrelationships for the organisation.

Further to the above, you need to evaluate the strategies and tactical approaches to the marketing mix that Mc Donald’s and another major competitor in the same sector apply to achieve their overall business objectives in order to compare them.

Then, you must produce a strategic marketing plan for Mc Donald’s that applies the extended marketing mix and measures the achievement of marketing objectives with key performance metrics.

Following your strategic marketing plan, you will need to develop a valid and justified integrated multimedia plan based on quantitative and qualitative criteria, selecting appropriate digital, offline and social media channels that helps to meet the budgetary requirements and marketing campaign objectives of Mc Donald’s. The plan should provide effective recommendations with respect to media channels and activities for effectiveness, to help Mc Donald’s deal with its current situation.

Learning Outcomes and Assessment Criteria

GRADING DETAILS

Achievement of a Pass grade

A student must have satisfied all the Pass criteria for the learning outcomes, showing coverage of the unit content and therefore attainment at Level 4 or 5 of the national framework.

Achievement of a Merit grade

A student must have satisfied all the Merit criteria (as well as the Pass criteria) through high performance in each learning outcome.

Achievement of a Distinction grade

A student must have satisfied all the Distinction criteria (as well as the Pass and Merit criteria), and these define outstanding performance across the unit as a whole.

ALL GRADES ARE PROVISIONAL UNTIL INTERNALLY VERIFIED AND UNTIL EXTERNALLY CERTIFIED BY EDEXCEL

THIS MEANS THAT A GRADE CAN BE CHANGED AT ANY POINT UNTIL EDEXCEL CERTIFIES IT

As per Pearson policy, you are only allowed two submissions per module. One for final submission and another one for referral. Failure to achieve a grade pass after a second submission will result in you having to repeat the module in the next term.

Any re-submission or late submission (unless authorised due to mitigating circumstances) will be capped at a PASS grade only.

Specification of Assessment

• Present your work in one report style which should include a cover page, table of contents, introduction, conclusion, reference list, foot or end notes and appendices, if any.
• Include the reference code of this assignment on your assignment submission front page.
• Sign the Learner’s Statement of authenticity in the cover page.
• Failure to do so will result in the submission being declined.
• Ensure the following information is in the footer on every page:
  o Your name
  o The production date of your submission
  o The code number of your assignment brief
  o The page number (Each page must be numbered at the bottom right-hand side)
• Spell-check the document and make sure there are no grammatical errors as it may result in the submission being declined.
• Complete all the tasks in a Holistic manner as set in the brief and without separating the assessment criteria to avoid a potential referral.
• Create your own titles and sub-headings to structure the work without copying the assessment criteria verbatim.
• Produce clear specific reasoning and arguments in support of your answers.
• Submit your work in a single WORD processed document of not more than 5000 words for all learning Outcomes. This word limit is only for guidelines and is not applied to grading. PDF and other types of files are not accepted.
• You must include a bibliography at the end to show where your information was sourced. Failure to do so may result in the submission being declined
• Your sources must be identified using the Harvard referencing system. The words used in your bibliography will not be included in your word count.
• You must use Arial, size 12, 1.5 line spacing and black to format the text.

To access any feedback (formative/summative) you will have to access Moodle and open your assignment. You will have to click on the blue comment box in the right hand side and the feedback will appear within the text. You might have to click on the blue bubbles to see the feedback.

Extension and Late Submission

If an extension is necessary for a valid reason, requests must be made in writing using a course work extension request form to the head of department. Please note that the lecturers do not have the authority to extend the coursework deadlines and therefore do not ask them to award a coursework extension.

The completed form must be accompanied by evidence such as a medical certificate in the event of you being sick.

Plagiarism and Collusion

Any act of plagiarism and collusion will be seriously dealt with according to the regulations and MRC Malpractice policy

Plagiarism occurs when a student misrepresents any work submitted as his/her own work, the work of any other person or of any institution. Examples of forms of plagiarism include:

• the verbatim (word for word) copying of another’s work without appropriate and correctly presented acknowledgement.
• the close paraphrasing of another’s work by simply changing a few words or altering the order of presentation, without appropriate and correctly presented acknowledgement.
• unacknowledged quotation of phrases from another’s work;
• The deliberate and detailed presentation of another’s concept as one’s own.

All types of work submitted by students are covered by this definition, including, written work, diagrams, designs, engineering drawings and pictures.

Plagiarism and Collusion

Any act of plagiarism and collusion will be seriously dealt with according to the regulations and MRC Malpractice policy

Plagiarism occurs when a student misrepresents any work submitted as his/her own work, the work of any other person or of any institution. Examples of forms of plagiarism include:

• the verbatim (word for word) copying of another’s work without appropriate and correctly presented acknowledgement.
• the close paraphrasing of another’s work by simply changing a few words or altering the order of presentation, without appropriate and correctly presented acknowledgement.
• unacknowledged quotation of phrases from another’s work;
• The deliberate and detailed presentation of another’s concept as one’s own.

All types of work submitted by students are covered by this definition, including, written work, diagrams, designs, engineering drawings and pictures.

Collusion occurs when, unless with official approval (e.g., in the case of group projects), two or more students consciously collaborate in the preparation and production of work which is ultimately submitted by each in an identical, or substantially similar, form and/or is represented by each to be the product of his or her individual efforts.

All submissions for assessment must be submitted on Moodle to generate a Turnitin Report on similarity to detect potential plagiarism and collusion.

The maximum Turnitin score admissible is 15% but a submission can be classified as plagiarism and/or collusion with a lower score depending on the size of the submission and size of the text highlighted.

Assignments with plagiarism/ad or collusion will be automatically referred for reworking and resubmission. Please check the MRC Assessment policy as well as MRC Malpractice policy for details of the potential penalties as a procedure.

Including pictures of text (apart from the cover page or table of content) or pictures of any other type of information (diagram for example) without a citation and a Harvard Reference could be deemed to be an attempt of malpractice and could trigger an automatic referral as well as a malpractice procedure.

Any student might be called to seat through a viva with the lecturer to confirm any parts of the submission through an interview which will then form part of the summative assessment.

Using Artificial Intelligence

AI tools have proliferated and become more common and as a result, their usage for research has increased which prompted change of government policies in this matter. Overall, it remains too easy for students to misunderstand how they can use Generative Artificial Intelligence tools and unintentionally breach academic integrity guidelines.

Research of information and the writing of academic work must always be performed by the student, and while it is acceptable to use an AI tool to start a research process, it is not allowed to use it to write a submission in your place.

The important part is to understand that the best way to produce a work is to research it through traditional methods (books articles, websites, journals). Yet, AI tools could be used to help with the research but only as a starting point. Having found information, thanks to an AI tool, about a topic you are writing about, you should then research it using these traditional methods and include the references and citations based on these resources in your work.

Once you have the correct information, you need to write the assignment yourself, using an AI tool to do this for you is never allowed. The usage of paraphrasing tools might be appropriate to find alternative to some words and short sentences, but not or a whole paragraph/page/ work.

The same way Mont Rose College is using a similarity detection system, an AI detection tool is embedded in our systems and every submission you make will go through both of them. Submissions for assessment that consist of large substantially unmodified output from Artificial Intelligence software may be considered as a very poor academic practice as it does not represent the student’s own work.

To this effect, the limit on AI detection has been set at 40%. If a submission is over that allowance, the submission could be rejected and awarded a Referral and/or the student called to seat through a viva with the lecturer to confirm any parts of the submission through an interview which will then form part of the summative assessment.

In cases where an individual persistently exhibits poor academic practice through inappropriate use of Artificial Intelligence tools, such as a lack of evidencing their use of the tools, they may be referred to the academic misconduct procedures and the range of the potential penalties.

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