Objectives

Course Objectives

The course introduces a systematic approach—the planning process—to understand a business problem and develop an appropriate response taking into account the objective of a business and its external influences. In contrast to Marketing Science, it focuses on the purpose and the function of marketing strategy, as well as its relationship to competitive advantage, within the context of an organization, and less on the theoretical foundations of marketing. In contrast to an introductory marketing course, this course goes beyond individual marketing actions—the Ps. Instead, it focuses on how to create superior value for customers and achieve an organizational objective using an ‘integrated combination’ of marketing actions. Much emphasis will be given to the selection of target customers, the development of a positioning strategy, and the allocation of resources to different marketing actions.

At the end of this course a student is expected to be able to

• Perform a market and business analysis by using appropriate concepts and tools;
• Develop a marketing strategy to take advantage of opportunities and strengths and alleviate threats and weaknesses; and
• Know role and structure of a marketing plan to communicate findings, insights, recommendations, and expected results.

Course Format

The course uses a variety of pedagogical approaches. Lectures, cases and exercises are used to introduce the analytic challenges behind designing, implementing and evaluating a marketing strategy for a brand or business unit. The lectures build on the readings from the assigned textbook while the cases offer opportunities to apply theories, concepts and tools in real-world settings to practice strategic thinking.

The course gives much emphasis to ‘learning-by-doing’ in the form of in-class presentations and discussions. The goal of working with cases is not to find the solution, there hardly ever exists only one. The goal is to learn and refine the strategic marketing thinking process.

To get the most out of the course, preparation and participation are therefore critical. Every student is required to prepare the assigned material in order to participate in class and group discussions. Each step of the process is reinforced with cases and exercises, which are to be done in groups of up to five students.

Due to the current health situation, the lectures will be mostly given in form of prerecorded videos and through sessions in the digital classroom. The case presentations and discussions will be held as much as possible in smaller sections to encourage active interactions and conform with health measures. If necessary, the entire course will be moved online.

Contents

The course takes place during the second part of the semester - after the Marketing Science course - with classes twice per week.

Course Overview

1. 06.11.2020: Strategic Marketing: The Planning Process
2. 11.11.2020: The Goal: Value Creation and Value Capture
3. 13.11.2020: The Customer: Needs and Behavior
4. 18.11.2020: The Business: Brand Performance Analysis
5. 20.11.2020: The Opportunities: Growth Options
6. 25.11.2020: The Core: Marketing Strategy Decisions
7. 27.11.2020: Positioning: Customer Mind
8. 02.12.2020: Creating Offers: Customer Benefits
9. 04.12.2020: Connecting: Customer Journey
10. 09.12.2020: Capturing Value: Pricing, Budgeting & Forecasting
11. 11.12.2020: Innovating: Creating a New Market
12. 16.12.2020: Competing: Gaining Market Leadership
13. 18.12.2020: Strategic Marketing: The Marketing Plan

Class Time

The syllabus contains a detailed description for each session along with the readings and cases to facilitate preparation.

• Wednesday 08h30 to 12h00 in digital classroom (Zoom)
• Friday 08h15 to 11h45 in Amphimax/415 or digital classroom (Zoom)

Changes and updates to the class schedule along with access details to the digital classroom will be posted on Moodle.

References

Required Course Material

Moodle will be the main communication channel for this course; kindly make sure you register on Moodle before the course starts.

• Platform: Enginius from DecisionPro, Inc.
• Textbook: Lilien GL, Rangaswamy A, De Bruyn A (2020), Principles of Marketing Engineering and Analytics (3rd Edition), DecisionPro, Inc.
  (the book is included with the Enginius platform.)
• Readings: Cases and articles to be discussed in class.

See Moodle for details and links to downloadable material.

Pre-requisites

Fundamentals of marketing

Evaluation

First attempt

Exam:

Written 2h00 hours

Documentation:

Allowed

Calculator:

Allowed

Evaluation:

The required work for completing and passing the course comprises group and individual components. There are three group assignments (40%), two individual assignments (20%), and a written open-book exam (40%).

Assignment details will be provided in class.

Retake

Exam:

Written 2h00 hours

Documentation:

Allowed

Calculator:

Allowed

Evaluation:

Retake Exam

• Insufficient individual components: Will be replaced with a written exam; the group component scores remain the same.
• Insufficient group components: Will be replaced with a 20-minute oral exam; the individual compoent scores, including the written exam, remain the same.