Marketing Strategy & Decision Making

Participation Prerequisites

Basic knowledge in core concepts of marketing.

Course Content

Marketing is more than a corporate function but encompasses the entire business. Thus, this course takes a strategic marketing approach and focuses on creating and extracting value to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. Students will understand and apply the fundamentals of marketing strategy: marketing tasks, competitive strategy, customer segmentation, targeting, and market positioning. The course aims to provide in-depth knowledge of two core marketing strategies: branding and pricing.

Course Outline:

Fundamentals of Marketing Strategy

The course will provide an overview of the key concepts and principles of strategic marketing, including the role of marketing within an organization. Students will be introduced to key challenges marketing faces today.

Strategic Marketing Process

The course will introduce the concept of market segmentation and how it is used to identify and target specific customer groups. Students will learn about different segmentation methods and how to use them to develop a targeted marketing strategy. They will understand how to establish and position an offer and its unique customer value. The course emphasizes the effective utilization of digital data within the strategy process.

Brand Management

Brands are often the most valuable assets of organizations. In the course, students will learn about the role of branding in strategic marketing and understand how brands create functional, emotional, symbolic, and societal value for customers. As part of brand management, they learn how to develop, grow, and maintain strong brands.

Price Management

Price is the strongest profit driver and an effective marketing instrument. Within the scope of price management, students will get familiarized with the price management process focusing on price strategy, analysis, and decision to extract created value. They will learn how to determine the right price for an offer and how to charge that price to customers.

Intended Learning Outcomes and Competencies

1. Students will be able to explore and evaluate strategic options in marketing.
2. Students will be able to understand how marketing strategy can be turned into decision-making.
3. Students will be able to apply frameworks, concepts, and tools to solve specific problems in complex business situations.

Instruction Type

In-class.

Form of Examination

50% Final Written Exam (individual grade)

40% Marketing Simulation Performance and Assignments (group grades)

10% Participation in classroom discussion (individual grade)

Literature

No mandatory readings.

Literature suggestions will be provided in the lecture.