Marketing FAQ

 Communication/planning & organizing

 During the course of your MBA programme, you must have worked along with your classmates
in group projects. How the responsibilities were divided amongst the team members?
 Do you think having job experience would have helped you in faring better in the MBA
programme?
 Describe how you spend a typical Sunday?
 How do you think as a fresh MBA you are better than a plain graduate with 2 years of corporate
experience?

 Problem solving, Initiative and enterprise

 From your student experience, describe one incident which depicts your quality as an 'idea'
generator.
 If you are in a sales team, and your leader has been assigned an unreasonable target by the
management, what would you suggest to your leader?
 You are on the 3rd floor of a five star hotel and the guests in the floor include women and
children. Suddenly there is thick smoke in the floor and the fire alarm is activated. What would be your
first action?
 You fall down in a deep dry well in a desolate locality. You have a broken leg and the only thing
that you have is a match box. How would you seek help?

 Subject/Business Knowledge
 What is the difference between market and market-place?
 Name one 'industry analysis' tool.
 What is the difference between the PLC plotted on 'sales and time period' and 'revenue and time
period'?
 Is it always necessary that 'growth stage' will come after 'introductory stage'?
 What is the difference between fashion and fad?
 In SWOT, which are macro & micro elements?
 What is the difference between product and brand?
 Can ‘time’ be used as a segmentation tool?
 When we sell insurance, is it a product or a service? Explain.
 How does ‘branding’ exercise, help reduce a ‘high involvement’ product to a ‘low involvement’
product?
 ‘Reader’s Digest’ uses which technique of selling?
 ‘Aquaguard’ fulfils which need in the Maslow’s need hierarchy?
 What starts first ‘selling’ or ‘marketing’?
 What are the three biggest advantages of Internet Marketing?
 What is the difference between ‘guarantee’ and ‘warranty’?
 What is the difference between – salary, wage and commission?
 What comes first – recruitment or selection?
 What do you understand by ‘societal-marketing concept’?
 What is the difference between ‘customer’ and ‘consumer’?
 Why cannot a consumer durable company have as long a channel network as FMCG companies?
 Normally FMCG companies offer lesser intermediary margins as compared to Durables. Why?
 In how many ways can a sales organisation decide ‘span of control’ of the sales people?
 What is the basis of fixing ‘targets’ for a salesman selling a product in the ‘introductory stage’?
 What is the basis of fixing ‘targets’ for a salesman selling a product in the ‘decline stage’?
 What would be the CRM strategies for the different stages of the PLC?
 What are the features of a ‘cash cow’ in the BCG?
 When would the ‘question-mark’ directly become a ‘dog’?
 Relate the BCG with PLC?
 Advertising is different from publicity? Are both of them different from ‘promotion’?
 What is ‘customer lifetime value’?
 When a consumer buys a Monalisa Painting, how does he/she consume it?
 What is ‘Rotation’ and how does it impact ROI?
 What are the key factors which affect the length of the distribution channel?
 For customised products, can we have an elaborate distribution channel?
 What sort of segmentation strategy is followed by television news channels?
 What are the revenue models of newspapers?
 Differentiate between – personal selling, impersonal selling and experiential selling?
 How can ‘categorization’ and ‘merchandising’ be done in the case of online selling websites?
 How can you make the Delhi Metro free of cost for passengers, at the same time not incur losses?
 If all brands become ‘homogeneous’, would marketing be required?

COMMUNICATION
 Can you describe a situation when you felt at the top of the world?

INITIATIVE & ENTERPRISE

 Have you ever taken any initiative for a cause and set an example for others to follow?

PLANNING & ORGANIZING

 What kind of a solution do you have for mismanagement as in the Commonwealth Games?
. 2) How do you see yourself in the next 5 years?

3)) what kind of a plan do you propose to solve the abovementioned problem?

BUSINESS AWARENESS
 Top Indian IT companies have proposed a model to their overseas clients on the basis of which
they will support the latter in the economic crisis. What are your comments on the feasibility of the
model?

SUBJECT
 1. Which subjects are you comfortable in?
 2. May we ask you questions from this area?
 3. Do you think that you have improved your subject knowledge in last year? How?
 4. What all projects have you done so far in this subject?
 5. What is the industry application of this subject?
 What kind of job prospects you think, are present in the industry?
 How would you describe yourself?
 Tell me about Your Past Live Project.
 You would now be a Management Trainees; tomorrow you are going to become frontline
manager 5 sub-ordinates under you. two of them are your friends and three of them are seniors to
you. How would you handle them?
 What specific goals, including those related to your occupation, have you established for your
life?
 What is your long-range objective?
 How has your college experience prepared you for a business career?
 What influenced you to choose this career?
 In your college life how did you handle a group activity in which you were the group leader,
 Describe the specific situation or task you were involved in.
 Detail the action and steps you took in the situation.
 Outline the results and outcome of your actions. What happened, what was accomplished, what
you learned?
 Describe a difficult problem you had to sort out in your last assignment.
 How we can Evaluate Market Potential and Risk? Especially in Telecom and Banking Sector
 What do we mean by branding the channel and what are the items we may use to do so?
 What are the effects of price increase? How do you manage price rise and maintain company
market share?
 What is the difference between marketing and sales?
 How can you convince me that you can do a sales job even though you don't have any sales
experience.
 Which environmental variables shows effect on marketing plan?
 Market strategy is constantly changing, what steps should be taken in the specified sector in the
last three months to keep up with of current trends?
 Sell me this pen / mineral water?
 How would you rate yourself as a salesperson on a scale from 1 to 10?
 What is your psychology of selling .
 Take a product from FMCG sector and design the following strategies
 The process of choosing the right marketing segmentation
 How would the product be diffrentiated from the competitors
 How far can we customize the product
 How can we build stronger brand
 What are the external variables that effect the services sector (logistics, retail, healthcare,..)
 Do you feel that with the onset of e advertising the print media would suffer , if so what are the
strategies they have do adopt to stay in business.
 What is India's population and how would you segment it for ----- (telecom, toothpaste, banking
services, insurance..)
 What is the size of largest company in India? Where does it figure in the list of world's largest
corporations?
 What is a difference between hypothecation and mortgage?
 What is the use of accounting in marketing? How do you account for a large promotional
expenses that is going to yield sales over the next few years?
 Does HR have any role in managing sports teams say Cricket, Hockey?
 What is per capita Income in India? What do you understand by BPL? What % of people in India
fall in that category?
 How many telephone users are there in India? Fixed? Mobile?
 What is approximate telecom spend per person per month? What do you mean by ARPU and
churn in telecom parlance?
 Who is the Vice President of India? Finance Minister? Any other ministers who directly impact
corporate sector in India?
 How is India organized politically? How many states? How many UTs? Name any 3 State
capitals.
 Roughly how many countries are there in the world? Which is the largest economy in the world?
Second largest? What is India's rank?
 What is the per kg price of Sugar? Have you heard of any brands of Sugar? Can there be branding
of commodities?
 What is the approximate distance between Kashmir and Kanyakumari? Delhi-Mumbai?
 What do you understand by mean, mode, median? What is the best measure for stating salaries of
an MBA batch of students?
 What are the typical advertising rates in TOI, HT, Indian Express? How much does a quarter page
BW advt cost in TOI?
 What are the typical rates for advertising on TV? Any idea about what is prime time?
 How much does it cost to advertise on Radio? For what products/target segments would that be
an effective medium?
 How many countries participated in CW Games? This was what edition of the Games? When
would be the next CW Games held? Where?
 What is the significance of Cricket World Cup in marketing? What are marketing opportunities
that such events present? When is the next world Cup? Where? Has India won it anytime?
 Has any Indian won a Gold Medal at any Olympics? What event?Has any Indian won a Noble
Prize? Oscar?
 What are the Indian civilian awards? Which is the highest civilian award? Defense services?
highest sports award?
 What is termed as the biggest industrial disaster in India? When did it happen? Where?
 What do you mean by brand ambassador? Do they really help / add value? Any examples?
 Have you heard of NDNC registry? Does it affect telemarketers?
 What do you mean by Below The Line promotion activities? Is there anything called ATL also?
 How much do you think FMCG companies spend on advt and promotion? As % their sales?
 What is TOMA? ITP? How are these concepts useful in marketing?
 Have you heard of QFD? How can it be used in marketing?
 How can companies offer 100% finance at zero % interest?
 What is the role of ethics in marketing? Can certain actions be legal but not ethical?
 What are newspaper inserts? When are these useful?
 How are IT and telecom useful in Sales & Marketing? Have these made selling simpler or
difficult?
 Suppose you have quarterly targets and after first 2 months you feel that you would be falling
short by 30% by end of the quarter. What would you do in the third month?
 What is short-term for you? What is long-term? What are your long-term goals?
 It is often said that objectives setting must be SMART. What do you really mean by SMART?
 How reliable is the data available on Internet? Can you decide to invest based on projections
made using data available on net?
 What is sampling? Why is it done?
 What is segmentation? How does it help? Do all companies need to do it? Even when they have
large resources?
 What is positioning? How is it done? Does it really help in real life?
 Why have you opted for specialization in marketing?
 What are the traits that make a successful marketer?
 Would you prefer Sales or Marketing research?
 What are the various selling skills?
 What is the difference between sales and marketing?
 What is B2B marketing?
 What is B2C marketing?
 What is C2C marketing?
 What is e-marketing?
 What makes one a successful salesman?
 What is product does?
 What is Product category?
 What is Product mix?
 What is Promotion mix?
 What is marketing mix?
 What is length of Product Line?
 What is width of Product mix?
 What is Depth of Product Line?
 What is Sales Budget ?
 What are typical Sales objective?
 What is Quota?
 How would you decide on Sales Quota?
 How would you decide which Salesman should be deployed in a given territory?
 What is Sales Plan?
 What is Segmentation?
 What is Targetting?
 What is Positioning?
 How will you decide on Pricing?
 What is Predatory Pricing?
 What is market skimming?
 What is perceptual distortion?
 What is Publicity?
 What is PR?
 What is CSR?
 What is Sales Promotion?
 Which is more effective- Advertising or Personal Selling?
 What is Direct marketing?
 What is Brand Equity?
 What is FMCG?

Golden Tobacco Co. visited the campus for placement interview. The question they posed to
students was as follows:
“We have very small market share in Delhi. We wish to increase it [Link] a plan
to accomplish this objective, as if we have selected and entrusted you with this Job”