Marketing

Fall

• Marketing Strategy in the Digital Economy
• Multichannel Route-to-Market Strategy Mini
  The distribution channel is the route through which suppliers’ products reach end-customers. Channel members provide many essential services to end-customers without which the supplier would fail, and which the supplier often cannot efficiently provide itself. But, channel members are customers in their own right, with their own needs. Further, they usually market not only the supplier’s products but also competitors’ products and their own private label products. Their motivations and objectives are typically not aligned with those of the supplier, hence the challenge of “coordinating the channel”. Managing the distribution channel or route-to-market was never easy but it has never been more challenging than it is today. At the same time as suppliers of products ranging from packaged goods and sporting goods to hotels and cars are bypassing retailers to go directly to end customers, other middlemen are inserting themselves to perform narrow functions and take slices from an-often shrinking profit pie. The objective of this course is to help students appreciate the complexities involved in managing and/or being a part of today’s route-to-market and internalize the frameworks and tools needed to manage these complexities. We will take the perspective of suppliers, retailers, and other intermediaries because an effective channel partnership can be sustained only if one understands the value added by each channel member, as well as the constraints and alternatives they face. Course materials include the book titled Getting Multi-Channel Distribution Right, cases, and some related articles/notes. In-depth classroom discussion of these materials and their application to graded individual assignments and a team project will be the primary vehicles for learning. The frameworks presented in the readings and in class sessions will serve as a bridge between the specifics in each case we analyze and the situations you will encounter in your careers. I expect you to explicitly draw on them as we discuss cases and other examples in class and also in your discussion posts and project. Students who intend to work in marketing, product management, start-ups, or consulting should take this course. The relevance of this subject to the first three career paths is obvious, but the last is worth noting. The internet and mobile technology, the availability of extensive customer data, the growth of digital intermediaries and of large retailers in multiple formats, and now AI search, have put issues of distribution front and center in business. Several consulting companies now have special practices in this field, so a good understanding of route-to-market and distribution is a valuable tool for students interested in marketing or strategy consulting.
• Introduction to B2B Marketing / Customer Growth Strategies and Tactics
  Over three sessions the course will provide foundational knowledge of B2B marketing, both as a standalone practice and relative to consumer marketing. The material will be drawn from academics, thought leadership organizations, global consultancies, industry think tanks, and case studies. The course will provide the frameworks, tools and levers used by B2B marketers. We will bring all of that to life via case studies. And the instructor will draw on 25+ of B2B experience to support the insights and provide context. The class is ideal for aspiring marketers as well as students who will go into finance, consulting or product leadership in an enterprise. Students planning on entering consumer marketing should know the basics (and differences) between consumer and enterprise marketing. The course will also serve the needs of future leaders in consulting, banking, private equity and technology by showcasing innovative growth strategies, internal team management and alignment, and M&A strategies to support growth. The ability to build and orchestrate customer driven growth is a core skill in all fields. Assignments will simulate real life issues and be based on actual tasks required in leadership roles.
• Strategic Sales Management
  This is a strategic sales management course set in a business-to-business (B2B) context. In B2B firms (technology, healthcare, investment banking, industrials, manufacturing, management consulting, retail, private equity, to name a few), direct personal selling is the predominant go-to-market channel. This course will provide the fundamental tools to 1) apply personal selling tactics in pursuit of selling the firm’s products and/or services, 2) manage effectively key drivers in the firm's sales strategy and 3) execute sales plans aligned to the firm’s business strategies. It will benefit those who will work in Business Development (either in direct sales or managing salespeople roles), Product Management, Brand Management, Product Marketing, and roles in the Professional Services sector (management consulting and most finance-related positions). Next, the course will be beneficial to students who see themselves running a business or managing an organization at some point in their career (General Manager). Finally, in a broad sense, being able to “sell your idea” is a critical skill component of all successful leaders.
• Marketing
  The marketing course prepares managers to understand the strategic role of marketing and how to apply it in their organizations. The course teaches how to grow a business by thoroughly understanding its current and prospective customers, the only source of a firm’s revenue. Companies with high or increasing market capitalizations know how to create, communicate, and deliver value to their customers. Students will learn how to create such value by applying a set of frameworks and analytical tools in three areas: identifying market opportunities, setting a marketing strategy, and formulating the marketing mix. Case studies and practical applications are used to develop experience in implementing these frameworks and analytical tools in order to grow a business. Specific course topics include market research, consumer decision making, market segmentation, targeting, positioning, branding, product development, advertising, pricing, distribution, marketing across borders, and marketing for a better world.

Winter

• Customer Analytics
  This course introduces students to the concepts and methods of customer analytics – leveraging customer data to increase marketing productivity. Methods covered include lifetime value of the customer (CLV), predictive modeling (using regression, logistic regression, matching, neural nets, and random forests), and experimentation/testing. Students will work on real applications and databases. Applications include customer acquisition, acquisition and retention management, cross-selling, up-selling, churn management, targeting online advertising, loyalty program evaluation, marketing attribution, and multichannel customer management. Industries examined include subscription services, software, retailing, financial services, consumer electronics, telecom, and travel. Software used includes Excel, a commercial predictive modeling package, and R. Upon completing this course, students should have a working knowledge of customer analytics, its application potential, and limitations.
• Integrated Marketing Communications
  Integrated marketing communications (IMC), or marcom, is a strategic process that involves the use of coordinated, persuasive and measurable communications with the goal of generating short-term financial returns and long-term shareholder value. This course will provide an overview of IMC, its role in the marketing process, and the channels and tools through which companies communicate with a market, including traditional advertising, sales promotions, digital media, social media, and public relations. The course will simultaneously address consumer response to these coordinated communications and the ever-evolving landscape through which marketers must compete to reach their target market. Course content, classes and assignments will be guided by a framework that mimics the broad steps involved in marketing communications planning: 1) Identifying Your Customer, 2) Setting Clear Objectives, 3) Crafting Your Campaign, 4) Measuring Your Success, and 5) Refining and Repeating. In addition to readings and individual assignments, the course will culminate with a small group project in which students will apply course concepts by auditing and suggesting improvements to an existing company’s IMC program.
• Pricing Strategy and Analytics
  In this course, we will study pricing strategies and approaches to achieve profitability, including questions such as: How do I measure what my product should be worth to customers? Should I invest in product improvements or advertising to raise prices? How can I expand into price-sensitive markets without diluting existing high-value sales? How do I avoid a price war? This is a practical course that will equip you with the tools to manage pricing decisions in B2B and B2C environments. The course builds hard analytical skills that enable you to apply the full range of marketing principles in real-world situations. You will learn the techniques of strategic analysis necessary to price more profitably by evaluating the price sensitivity of buyers, determining the relevant costs and anticipating and influencing competitors’ pricing moves. We will also link pricing theory to the practice of marketing strategy via the consulting engagements of the professor, who has led global innovation and aviation practices at a large consulting firm. This course is valuable to anyone who will be directly or indirectly involved in pricing decisions; it will be especially relevant for those who intend to work in general management, marketing, and consulting.
• Creating Winning New Products and Services
  New products and services are vital to companies’ success. In fact, creativity and innovation are the key drivers of market success and shareholder value for most of today’s leading companies. Indeed, a culture of creativity, innovation, and design is commonly recognized as the only persistent competitive advantage. To win (and hopefully dominate) markets, companies must often create entire new markets and move beyond a product’s functional capabilities to connect with customers on an emotional and relational basis. However, innovation is risky and most new products fail. This course teaches a process for identifying market opportunities, creating new product/service ideas, and turning those ideas into valuable new products and services. We focus on the tools and techniques for analyzing market opportunities, creative thinking for generating new ideas, and then designing, testing, and launching new products and services. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches are covered. More specifically, this course covers the new product development process, including idea generation, concept testing, product design and development, mapping customer perceptions, product positioning, market sizing, and market entry strategies. The course emphasizes how to incorporate customers and competitors into all aspects of new product development. Students will solidify their learning by putting these tools and techniques into practice by forming teams to conceive and develop a new market offering and then present their idea to classmates and external judges. The goal of each presentation is to convince others that your idea satisfies criteria for winning in the marketplace. For your individual project, you will select a creative genius who you admire, research their creative process, and prepare a brief write-up reflecting on their process, your own creative process, and the creativity processes discussed during the course. The course is intended for students who are interested in creating and developing innovations, both in entrepreneurial firms and in established companies; and for students interested in enhancing their creativity more broadly. The course structure is flexible in terms of choosing case write-ups and selecting group and individual projects, so you can tailor the course to meet your personal goals.

Spring

• Business Applications of Natural Language Processing
  Natural language processing (NLP) is the field of artificial intelligence that allows computers to understand human languages such as English. NLP has made astonishing strides in the past decade, and is increasingly used by businesses to extract and understand useful information from large amounts of unstructured text, found in sources such as customer correspondence, online product reviews, Twitter feeds, social media posts, press releases, SEC filings, news feeds, contract repositories, web pages, and organization document caches. NLP techniques allow businesses to gain insights into customers, competitors, and industries. In this minicourse, students will gain knowledge of state-of-the-art NLP techniques, including large language models and associated tools. The course also describes how to apply those techniques to a range of marketing and other business problems. Students will become able to critically read the NLP literature, converse with NLP experts, and understand what new NLP capabilities are expected in the future. Students will also develop custom NLP software tools to solve concrete business problems, and will retain these tools to use after the course ends. Basic programming experience is required. You should be able to understand simple programs and you should be comfortable writing simple programs in a language such as R or Python. If you have taken the Quantitative Digital Marketing course in the Winter term, you will have the comfort level needed. If not, resources will be made available for you to get to that comfort level.
• AI for Managers
  In this minicourse, students will learn about a wide range of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Model (LLM) techniques and how they can be applied to the challenges and opportunities that firms face. AI is delivering impressive results across a growing number of industries and business functions, including marketing, strategy, operations, and finance. A firm’s competitive advantages increasingly rely on its ability to make superior decisions using AI technologies. This in turn requires managers to become conversant with a growing number of AI capabilities in order to assess and oversee the opportunities that AI provides. This course provides broad exposure to how AI is used for different business tasks: marketing, product strategy, revenue management, operations, etc. We take the viewpoint of a manager or consultant who must understand and offer advice on a wide range of AI topics relevant to a variety of business needs. The course also describes the pitfalls and challenges firms face when attempting to introduce or scale AI technologies. Basic programming experience is required. You should be able to understand simple programs and you should be comfortable writing simple programs in a language such as R or Python. If you have taken the Quantitative Digital Marketing course, you will have the comfort level needed.
• Brand Strategy
  Developing and managing intangible assets has become one of the main sources of differentiation that firms use to compete. Among all intangible assets, the brand is considered one of the most important ones. Specifically, for companies, the brand represents a way to build differentiation, drive loyalty, and leverage growth. For consumers, the brand is a link with which to establish relationships and, more interestingly, to express their identity. However, creating, developing, and managing brands to reach their full potential is more difficult than ever. Firms are facing a complex environment where differentiation is hard to build, products and services tend to be commoditized, product lifecycles are getting shorter every day, and consumers are not only more heterogenous, mobile, and well connected, but also skeptical about brands, and even about some marketing practices. Digital technologies have opened a world of opportunities for brands, especially start-ups, but also have empowered consumers when evaluating, choosing, and recommending brands. Interestingly, consumers are being actively involved in co-creating brand meaning. Brand Managers today are not only required to design branding concepts and interact with consumers in significantly new ways, but also to deliver promises that are relevant, credible, and consistent across geographies. During this 5 week- mini elective we will discuss the core elements of brand strategy. We will pay special attention to the role of brands and brand managers in the new competitive and social context. Core learnings will focus on how brand strategy can be defined, crafted, developed, and managed in ways that create value for today’s consumers and firms. While the main focus of the course is strategic, we will also discuss how brand strategy speaks to execution.
• Consumer Insights
  Consumer Insights (CI) focuses on developing a deep understanding of consumers. Understanding consumers, from what choices they will make in given situations to how to influence those choices, is a key component of business success. It is not enough to just develop great products or services. Marketers must also incorporate strategies that account for the biases and tendencies that affect consumers’ decision making. Acquiring CI allows companies to more deeply understand how and why consumers purchase the goods and services that they do so they can tailor their business approaches. This course will expand upon some of the concepts covered in the core Marketing course, however, it will do so by taking a decidedly psychological look at consumers and their behavior. Class sessions will be guided by following three questions to provide a comprehensive structure for learning about consumer insights: 1) Who are consumers? 2) How do consumers make decisions? 3) How do we influence consumers? Within this structure, we will focus on both the internal (i.e., psychological) and external (i.e., social, cultural, environmental, situational) factors that influence consumer behavior and will examine consumer behavior insights generated by behavioral economics, cognitive science and social psychology. By using consumer psychology as a foundation and increasing familiarity with analytical and research tools used by marketers, students in this course will be able to predict what consumers might be expected to do versus what they will actually do in a variety of marketing settings. This course will involve a combination of lectures and discussions, cases, in-class exercises and assignments that will move students beyond using personal intuition about consumer behavior and equip them with concepts and tools to uncover, interpret, and apply consumer insights to drive strategic decision-making.