What changed in MKTG3003 marketing strategy for 2026?

Direct answer: The Session 2 2026 unit guide records one new assessment and one reweighting. Extemporaneous Strategy Development is new at 20%, and the two other assessments fell from 50% of the unit mark to 40% each. The 2026 guide lists 10 credit points and a prerequisite of 130 credit points including MKTG2002.

The Macquarie unit guide for Session 2 2026 describes marketing strategy as "fundamental to business success" and says the unit "focuses on the analysis process" of finding information, interpreting it and using it for recommendations. Its Changes from Previous Offering section is the shortest useful paragraph, because older notes describe another task mix.

Source: Macquarie University (2026) unit guide, MKTG3003 Session 2, read 2026-10-27.

The three indicative times total 70 hours. Divided by the 2,000-word caps, the report implies 15 hours per 1,000 words and the portfolio 12.5, while the oral task has no word count, so its 15 hours can only be spent on rehearsal. The late penalty is headed for written and video assessments, so ask the convenors what happens if you miss your Q&A week.

Direct answer: Run the same five checks before every MKTG3003 task: the learning outcomes it assesses, the deliverable and word cap, the indicative hours, the deadline and extension rule, and the AI label. All five are printed in the unit guide, so the checklist costs ten minutes.

The guide maps outcomes to tasks. The portfolio and the challenge report assess ULO1 and ULO3, the Q&A assesses ULO1 and ULO2, and only the portfolio assesses all three outcomes: ULO1 is problem solving, ULO2 is critical analysis of the theory behind marketing strategies, and ULO3 is developing and applying competitive strategies individually and in collaboration. A practical consequence follows. The Q&A is a group setting but is marked as an individual task and does not assess ULO3, so your answer is judged on problem solving and theory, not on how well the group agreed.

1. Write the outcomes the MKTG3003 marketing strategy task assesses at the top of your plan, then tick each off.
2. Note the cap: 2,000 words for the report and the portfolio, none for the Q&A.
3. Compare your hours with the indicative 30, 25 or 15 hours and flag a gap early.
4. Check the deadline: written work is due at 11.00pm, with a 1-hour grace period for a technical problem.
5. Read the AI label, which is Open for all three tasks in 2026, and decide in advance what you will check by hand.

Late written work loses 5% of the total possible marks per day for up to 7 days, and the guide's own example turns 27/30 into 25.5/30 after 20 hours.

Direct answer: Write each decision in five moves: the situation, the options, the chosen option, the evidence and the risk. One paragraph of about 120 words per major decision lets you cover several rounds inside 2,000 words, with space left for theory and conclusions.

The model paragraph below uses invented figures to show the method; it does not come from the Macquarie simulation, and your own numbers must come from your own round outputs.

Situation. After Round 2, our sports-drink brand held 14% share against a rival at 22%, and the simulation output showed our price index at 108 against the market average of 100. Options. We compared cutting price by 6%, raising advertising spend by 20%, or repositioning towards the 18 to 25 segment. Choice. We chose the 20% advertising increase aimed at that segment, because the Round 2 output showed our awareness scoring 31 against the rival's 52. Evidence. Price-cut elasticity estimates from the round data suggested a 6% cut would lose more margin than it gained in volume. Risk. If the rival matches our spend in Round 3, our margin falls and we will switch to the price option.

Notice what a marker can check: every claim points to a number from a named round, the rejected options are visible, and the risk statement shows you know the strategy might fail. Link each paragraph to theory from your lectures in one closing sentence, which also covers ULO2. Keep the round-by-round log that feeds these paragraphs, because it is the evidence trail for the whole MKTG3003 marketing strategy report.

Direct answer: Prepare the case and a thinking order, not a script. The guide says students "will be assessed on their verbal ability to answer impromptu questions about the case and develop marketing strategy spontaneously in a group setting," so rehearse aloud against a clock in the order situation, evidence, recommendation.

The format resembles the interactive oral examinations studied by Sotiriadou et al. (2020), who call an oral exam "an opportunity for genuine and unscripted interaction between a student and other students or a student and an examiner." Their two business courses had 93 and 22 enrolled students, with 85 and 21 valid questionnaire responses. Orals in the face-to-face course ran for 10 minutes, and 73% of those students rated the oral as "extremely difficult", against 45% who said so about the written tasks. They also quote a US poll of 2,001 college students and 1,000 hiring managers in which 70% of students rated themselves effective communicators against 44% of employers, a gap that explains why universities now mark speaking.

In their study the students prepared mainly from the materials the course supplied: videos, an exemplar interview, rubrics and their own earlier assessment pieces. For the MKTG3003 marketing strategy Q&A the matching resource is your own weekly case notes. Reread three of them before your assigned week, write the first sentence you would say for each, then ask a friend to interrupt you with a question you did not expect.

Direct answer: Open means the unit permits AI use in all three tasks. It does not remove the Academic Integrity Policy, the word caps or the deadline rules, and you still need reasoning of your own that you can defend in the Q&A.

Corbin et al. (2025) separate discursive changes, which rely "solely on instructions students remain free to ignore," from structural changes, described as "modifications that reshape the underlying mechanics of assessment tasks themselves." One reading, which is MAAS's interpretation and not a claim by Corbin et al., is that the Open label is a discursive statement, while the live Q&A is structural: nobody needs an instruction, because the task itself requires you to speak and respond to questions you have not seen.

Practical rules follow. Use AI to outline or to question your own draft, then check every number against your round log and every theory claim against your lecture notes, because a generated paragraph will not know your simulation outputs. The portfolio is built from in-class case discussions, so the evidence it needs sits in the room, not in a chatbot. If you use a generative AI tool, keep a short note of what you asked and what you changed, since that note answers an integrity query faster than memory will. Related units show other mixes of cases and reports: MKTG3120 building and managing brands pairs cases with a brand audit, and MKTG3110 digital marketing leans on channel analytics.

Direct answer: If you would like an expert to read your plan for the 2,000-word report or portfolio, MAAS essay and assignment support works through outline, draft and final stages, with a target grade agreed for each task.

Bring three things to the first conversation: the unit guide for your own offering, your round-by-round simulation log and the case notes from your weekly classes. The expert reads them against the learning outcomes and tells you where a decision has no evidence behind it, where the rejected options are missing and where the word budget is being spent on description instead of reasoning. You remain the author of every sentence, and the expert's role is to question your logic the way a marker would. The impromptu Q&A is the part nobody can rehearse for you, so use the weeks before it to practise answering aloud, recording yourself and listening back for hesitation.

Direct answer: These three guides cover marketing units with different mixes of cases, projects and written reports, so they show how the Macquarie simulation-plus-oral design compares with other universities.

Read one of them before your portfolio is due to see which habits transfer, such as keeping a number beside every claim, and which belong only to the format of this unit, such as the live questioning in the Q&A. Keep a short list of what transfers, so your own plan stays focused. Skim the assessment section of each guide first and note where weightings, word limits and group tasks differ from yours.

• MKTG3120 building and managing brands: another advanced marketing unit, useful for comparing how evidence is expected behind each claim.
• MKTG3110 digital marketing assignment guide: for students whose electives lean towards channels and campaign reporting.
• MKTG1003 consumer behaviour assignment guide: the earlier unit that explains the buyer decisions your strategy will assume.

• Corbin, T., Dawson, P., & Liu, D. (2025). Talk is cheap: Why structural assessment changes are needed for a time of GenAI. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 50(7), 1087-1097. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2025.2503964
• Macquarie University. (2026). MKTG3003 Marketing Strategy unit guide, Session 2 2026. https://unitguides.mq.edu.au/unit_offerings/177148/unit_guide
• Macquarie University. (2026). MKTG3003 Marketing Strategy. Course Handbook. https://coursehandbook.mq.edu.au/2026/units/MKTG3003
• Skjelbred, S.-E., & Daus, S. (2022). Satisfaction is insufficient: Insights from a randomized, controlled trial of a marketing simulation game. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 38(6), 1686-1702. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12703
• Sotiriadou, P., Logan, D., Daly, A., & Guest, R. (2020). The role of authentic assessment to preserve academic integrity and promote skill development and employability. Studies in Higher Education, 45(11), 2132-2148. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1582015
• van Esch, P., von der Heidt, T., Frethey-Bentham, C., & Northey, G. (2020). The effect of marketing simulations on student engagement and academic outcomes. Marketing Education Review, 30(1), 43-56. https://doi.org/10.1080/10528008.2020.1713003
• Wellington, W. J., Hutchinson, D. B., & Faria, A. J. (2017). Measuring the impact of a marketing simulation game. Simulation & Gaming, 48(1), 56-80. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046878116675103

This article is part of the MAAS Journal series for students. MAAS is an academic support partner: experts guide students through each stage of their own work, and we do not complete assessed work on a student's behalf.