Marketing for Managers (MASTER)

The course is designed to give knowledge and skills relevant to strategic marketing decision-making. Therefore our main objective is to provide a deeper understanding of the issues that encompass the nature and scope of marketing analysis and its role in strategic marketing (investigating product-market opportunities, discovering unmet consumer needs, analyzing competitors, determining competitive advantage, forecasting results of strategies, allocating resources and predicting environmental changes so as to be proactive in the marketplace).

Class Sessions:
1 Introduction and Overview. Market orientation. Customer Focus.

2 The role of research in marketing. Defining marketing research problems and developing a research approach.

3 Identifying Attractive Markets. Understanding and forecasting the external environment: demographic, social, economic, technological and political factors.

4 Identifying unmet needs – what do the customers want. Customer values and benefits.

5 Market segmentation and market targeting.

6 Identifying competitors – whom will we compete against. Industry analysis. Sources of competitive advantage.

7 Designing marketing strategies: positioning decisions. Branding, brand equity, brand/product line strategies.