Overview

Marketing Management is the art and science of choosing target markets and getting, keeping, and growing customers through creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value. Marketing management seeks to meet organizational objectives by effectively satisfying customers in a dynamic environment. This course provides an overview of marketing processes and marketing principles, and provides students with the opportunity to apply the key concepts to practical business situations.

This course is an in-depth examination of marketing environments and the impact marketing activities have on organizational operations in competitive, global, multicultural business settings. It discusses both domestic and international frameworks of the fundamental marketing functions of product, pricing, distribution and promotion. Explored and analyzed are modern marketing problems and solutions from conceptual, legal, and ethical perspectives. Marketing information systems and the use of advanced technologies in marketing decision-making are explained.

Learning Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:

• Identify a target market and its product market segments
• Apply the marketing mix towards a specific target market
• Develop and implement a marketing plan
• Evaluate the effectiveness of an existing product marketing strategy
• Evaluate marketing strategies in relation to current legal and ethical standards of practice
• Demonstrate a clear understanding of major marketing concepts in writing and orally using proper business communications techniques
• Demonstrate the ability to use on-line resources to research and prepare written and oral assignments
• To apply marketing theory and concepts to what marketers do in "the real world"
• To use marketing concepts to make business decisions
• To improve familiarity with current challenges and issues in marketing
• Understand the aspects and principles of International Marketing
• Identify how the Internet is changing the ways companies market their products

Course Prerequisites

Introductory economics or marketing course, or equivalent knowledge. Basic knowledge of word processing software (such as Microsoft Word), Internet and Email.

Student Conduct

Students are expected to conduct themselves in a professional, mature and ethical manner.

Class Participation

Student participation is an important component of the course. Students are expected to come to class prepared, and willing to discuss the readings and cases.

Students are expected to attend all class sessions, participate in all class activities, complete written material and exams as scheduled, make presentation(s) if applicable, and turn in all assignments on time. Failure to do so may result in a reduced final grade.

Text and Case Studies

The text will consist of a variety of sources, mainly from Kotler's "A Framework for Marketing Management".  Here is the companion website.

Case analyses will assess your analytical and written communication skills. You will be provided with the cases, posted on the Internet at this site. The case questions will require you to apply your understanding of course principles to the situations described in the cases. The specific questions and assessment criteria will be provided to the class. The analyses should not exceed 2 pages in length.

Deadlines - The deadlines for the case analyses are at the beginning of class on the assigned days. Analyses turned in after the start of class on the date due will not be accepted.

Text will either be handed out in class in hard-copy, or more often, posted here on the website. The professor will notify students of new or expected reading material. Students are responsible for the knowledge posted here.

Course Schedule

The schedule can be seen here. This schedule is subject to change. In general there will be 2 classes a week for 1.5 hours, scheduled for Tuesday and Thursday from 11h45-13h15. The professor will notify students in advance if there are any schedule changes.

Group Project

Students will be expected to submit a group project, basically a marketing plan built around a unique product or service concept. Students should form groups of no more than 3 persons each, and write a business and marketing plan, which will be due at the end of the course. Students will be also expected to present to the rest of the class in a professional manner the basic plan and concept.

Testing and Grading

Students will be tested and graded on the following performance indicators:

• Class Participation - 10%
• Periodic written material - 10%
• Mid-term exam - 20%
• Final exam - 30%
• Group project - 30%