Marketing Management

Course objectives: showing the major decisions that marketing managers face in their efforts to balance the organization’s objectives and resources against needs and opportunities in the marketplace. This course tries to show a new approach to marketing management based on strategies for growing customer value and profitability.

Topics Readings

1. & 2. Understanding Marketing Management

• Defining marketing

• Core marketing concepts

• Company orientations toward the marketplace

• Marketing management process - definition

• Elements of marketing management process P.Kotler - Ch. 1 & 4

Case 1:

3. Analyzing Marketing Opportunities - Customer Analysis

• types of customers

• the business market versus the consumer market

• decision - making unit

• types of buying behavior

• stages of the buying decision process

• factors Influencing buying behaviour

customer value P.Kotler - Ch. 7 & 8

4. Analyzing Marketing Opportunities - Measuring and Forecasting Market Demands

• estimating market potential

• estimating industry sales and market share

• estimating future demand P.Kotler - Ch. 5

5. & 6. Analyzing Marketing Opportunities - Competitors and SWOT Analysis

• analyzing competitors (identifying the company’s competitors, product/ market battlefield, assessing the competitors strengths and weaknesses)

• SWOT analysis (strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats) P.Kotler - Ch. 9

Case 2

7. & 8. STP procedure

• market segmentation

• market targeting

• positioning P.Kotler - Ch. 10 and 11

Case 3

9. & 10. Product decisions

• product mix decisions

• product attributes

• new-product development process

• product life cycle P.Kotler - Ch. 14 & 15 Case 4

11. & 12. Promotion

• advertising

• sales promotion

• public relations

• personal selling

• direct marketing P.Kotler - Ch. 19 & 20, 21

13. Marketing channels

• direct vs. indirect channels

• number of channel levels

number of intermediaries P.Kotler - Ch. 16

14. Price

• factors affecting price decisions (demand, competition, cost, objective)

• price positioning

• price calculation (pricing methods)

• adapting the price P.Kotler - Ch. 17

15. Final Exam

P. Kotler: Marketing Management, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs.

Additional Textbooks:

P. Kotler, G. Armstrong, Marketing. An Introduction, 10-th edition, Prentice Hall

Course Grading:

• 70% final exam (seven open-ended questions, each worth 10%)

• 30% case studies (written preparation: 2-5 pages, case is to be done in groups: 2-3 persons during the class or at home as a homework)

Final grades:

• 100 – 91% - 5

• 90 – 81% - 4+

• 80 – 71% - 4

• 70 – 61% - 3+

• 60 – 51% - 3

• 50% or less - 2