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Welcome to Marketing Management Class (GSBA 509)

Shantanu Dutta

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Overview

• The marketing concept n

• Setting the Marketing Strategy

• 4 C’s and 4 P’s framework

• Administrative Details

• Course outline and coverage

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What is Marketing, Anyway?Why Study It?

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Some Perspective on Marketing...

• Historical Views of Marketing:In well-ordered states, storekeepers and salesmen are commonly those

who are weakest in bodily strength and, therefore, of little use for any other purpose.

--- Plato

• A More Modern ViewCorporate leaders nationwide are discovering that their most powerful competitive weapon is marketing --- the development, pricing, distribution, and promotion of products.

--- Newsweek

More than half of the polled executives at 250 corporations ranked marketing as the most important element of strategy for the 1990's.

--- Yankelovitch, Skelly, and White

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A Market OrientationThe Marketing Concept

• The marketing concept holds that the key to achieving organizational goals consists of determining the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors.

• Concentrate on the needs or benefits of the buyer, not the needs of the seller.

• The industry's approach used to be: “Here's what we have --- buy it!” Now the customer is the most important product ... because if the customer doesn't like what we've got, they can go elsewhere.

--- U.S. Steel

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Simple Questions, Hard Answers...

• Who are our customers?• What important benefits do we provide

them with?• Are these benefits sustainable?

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Marketing Strategy Process

Market Analysis (The 4 C’s)

Customers Company Competitors Collaborators

Market Segmentation

Product and ServicePositioning

Customer Acquisition Customer Retention

CreatingValue

TargetMarket Selection

Product and Service

Marketing Mix (The 4 P’s )

Place/Channels Promotion

Pricing

Profits

Creating Value

CapturingValue

SustainingValue

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Teaching The Concepts in the Marketing Strategy Process

• I will cover the relevant concepts through lectures and case discussions. My goal is to keep you abreast of the current thinking on these concepts

• To clarify concepts from time to time I will rely on:• My consulting and executive teaching

experience.• My research findings on certain marketing

concepts and industries• Recent business articles • Relevant Web sites

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Web site Help For This Class and Beyond

You can check out the following web sites for information on various companies that we discuss in class. Some of these are:

•www.wsrn.com

•http://dir.yahoo.com/Business and economy

•http://www.reinartz.com

Also useful are the library sites:

•http://www.marshall.usc.edu/library/Marketing/marketing.html

•http://www.companiesonline.com

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Case Analysis Objective• The cases that we will be using during the course will invariably

focus on a marketing problem that a company faces. The case offers information relevant to that decision.

• The main purpose of the case analysis and subsequent discussion is to enable you to apply and internalize the marketing strategy framework in different contexts and in addressing different problems.

• Often the case data is not complete but that is the reality, managers often have to make decisions based on insufficient information.

• The important thing is to develop the analytical and conceptual skill to build a marketing strategy for a specific problem.

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Case Analysis Objective

• Often when making recommendations on a course of action, there are no ‘right’ answers -- but there are some bad answers and often some answers are more ‘right’ than others.

Important to develop the skill to write down your assumptions and justify your answers.

• The case discussion is a major vehicle to improve oral skills for presenting and defending your own assumptions and recommendations, and for critically examining and discussing the assumptions and recommendations of others.

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Additional Help• Additional RA help to work through different break-even

and other quantitative exercises for different cases to improve your analytical skills.

• My objective in this class is to help you become better marketers. It is important to realize that given the time constraint any single class can only provide an overview of some of the important topics, tools and applications available in the area of marketing.

• Therefore I urge you to use me as a resource for exploration of any area in marketing that interests you. I can suggest more readings in any area of marketing you wish to pursue.

• I will be happy to sit with you individually and discuss with you your specific interests in marketing and help you to the extent I can.

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Administrative Details1. Course Materials (in course packet)

1. Cases

2. Readings:

Required readings in the course packet

Recommended reading: Philip Kotler Textbook on Marketing Management

3. Performance Evaluation (a.k.a. grades)

Class participation (15%)

Two written case analyses – group work (20% and 25%)

Final examination (40%)

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Next ClassCase Discussion: Optical Distortion Case

• Case discussion on Optical Distortion Inc.

Discussion questions that you need to think through when reading the case before class, and relevant data and spread sheet are in the web site and also sent by first class