Introduces strategic marketing at the general manager level. The course emphasizes marketing concepts and tools that are both powerful and broadly applicable for orienting the marketing effort of your own organiza-tion and understanding the variety of marketing problems faced by a firm's key constituents. Covers market segmentation, positioning, product life-cycles, brand equity, customer value analysis, competitive analysis and market attractiveness assessment. Students make marketing decisions in a simulation of a competitive five-firm industry.

Emphasizes tools and techniques for planning and implementing a marketing strategy for an existing product or service. Develops hands-on familiarity with marketing decisions. Students write a marketing plan for a product or service of their choice, learn skills for developing forecasts and setting sales and profit targets and develop marketing mix strategies to meet their objectives. Students also participate in a simulated marketing game.

Covers concepts, methods and aims applicable to the study of consumer behavior. This includes both quantitative approaches (experiments, survey, statistical approaches) and interpretive approaches (semiology, qualitative approaches, humanistic studies) applicable at various levels from the most micro (individual-level behavior) to the most macro (societal or cultural phenomena at the global level). Illustrates applications of techniques learned in B8617, Marketing Research, but students do not need B8617 as a prerequisite.

Develops skills for designing commun-ications strategies and media and direct marketing plans. Students learn methods for specifying the objectives of a communications program, selecting a target audience, choosing the message, selecting media and evaluating the effectiveness of communication strategies.

Examines the process of designing, testing and launching new products, assessing the prospects for new product success and designing a strategy for a successful market launch.

Focus is on managing the sales force effort. Specific topics include the relationship between marketing and sales strategy, sales forecasting and planning, sales territory allocation, recruiting, training, motivating and compensating the sales force, sales force evaluation and sales presentations.

Provides in-depth examination of the role of marketing on strategic marketing planning at the highest levels of an organization. Develops skills critical for directing business-unit marketing strategy and designing and reengineering a customer-driven organization.

Emphasis is on marketing decision making in an industrial marketing context. By means of a five-firm industry simulation, students manage firms in a developing industrial market. Using a variety of analytic tools, including organization buyer analysis, experience curves, portfolio models and competitive analysis, they make decisions on market segment selection, technology and product strategy, research and development, production planning, sales force management, advertising, distribution strategy, pricing, corporate communications and marketing research. In addition, focus is on key strategic industrial marketing decisions by use of case studies.

Develops skills for obtaining and using the appropriate information with which to make sound marketing decisions. Provides experience in the use of surveys, experiments and a variety of practical analysis techniques, including regression and conjoint analysis.

Following is a description of seminars in marketing offered in 1996­97:

Perspectives on the study of entertainment, the arts, advertising and the media as they respond to and shape today's consumer society. Explores and illustrates eight contrasting approaches to the study of commercial communication. These alternative windows on the culture of consumption span the micro versus macro levels of analysis, neopositi-vistic versus interpretive methods and basic versus applied research objectives. A main theme is the need for multiple approaches to under-standing commercial communication as it unfolds in the postmodern era.

Examines how a favorable corporate image is created and managed over time, the role of visual elements in impression management and the role of publicity.

Course covers the basic tools for direct and database marketing.

Of all the activities performed by business executives, the most important is, by far, making decisions. While other MBA courses focus on the content of decision making within a given business area (i.e., what decisions should be made, for instance, in marketing or in finance), this course focuses on the process of decision making across various business areas (i.e., how business decisions are and should be made in general). Two complemen-tary facets of executive decision analysis are covered in this course. The first facet is descriptive. Students are exposed to recent developments in behavioral sciences that provide a solid understanding of the (often flawed) natural tendencies that business executives have when making decisions. The second facet is prescriptive. Students are exposed to tools and techniques (e.g., influence diagrams, scenario planning, behavioral decision support systems) designed to help managers overcome these natural tendencies and make better decisions. Both facets of executive decision analysis are equally important in marketing and management consulting.

Explores the implications of changing information technologies, including the Internet and other communications networks, on the marketing of products and services. Hands-on projects require working with multimedia personal computers available at the Information Technology Lab in the Business School. Students should have some facility with personal computers or be prepared to learn the basics of the DOS and Windows environments.

Focuses on the way individuals and groups interpret information and form opinions, particularly various quirks and biases that have been found in research. Implications for decision support systems as well as marketing decisions are stressed.

Focuses on the use of marketing in financial services companies.

Provides skills in the pricing of products and services and the management of sales promotion. Covers methods for strategic and tactical pricing in competitive settings, approaches for developing price leadership and the use of databases and technology in setting prices and promotions.

Examines the unique features of services (e.g., intangibility, lack of inventory, close interaction between the provider and the customer) and the related marketing and management tasks for a provider (e.g., managing demand, time and human resources). Marketing problems and their solutions are considered for a variety of service industries, including telecommunications, financial services, travel and information technology.

Primarily for PhD candidates; open to MBA candidates with the instructor's written permission. Topics vary by term. Recently, these have included cognitive and social/psychological aspects of consumer behavior, choice modeling, decision making, marketing models and marketing strategy. A proseminar is offered on an annual basis.