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Marketing Strategy
Marketing 466
Professor Tim Calkins
Course Overview
Marketing Strategy is a course designed to build your skills as a strategic marketing
leader. It is focused on helping you develop, gain support for and execute marketing
strategies that will create and build competitive advantage in the market and deliver
strong financial results.
The course assumes you know the basics of marketing; the class is focused on helping
you apply the basics in a dynamic market in a general manager role. The class first
covers some critical marketing fundamentals, including positioning and customer
advantage. These will probably seem familiar. The class then considers established
business strategies, new product strategies and defensive strategies.
This class is challenging. However, the class will help you learn how to translate
marketing concepts into action, and prepare you for the day when you assume a
leadership marketing position.
The class is also fun. At least, I think it is fun.
The class includes cases, readings, guests, and a computer-simulation, Markstrat.
Markstrat is a terrific tool to gain experience developing, executing and communicating
strategic marketing programs. Markstrat is unique in that you play against other teams
in the class; what happens in each round of the game depends on the actions of the
other teams.
Class discussions are an important part of the class. As a result, participation is
important and I will cold call quite frequently in order to involve everyone in the
discussion.
There are five short assignments in the course, including three Markstrat business
updates (2 written, 1 presented), a case write-up or presentation, and a final paper.
I use Blackboard heavily to distribute class notes and communicate updates.
Teams are a big part of the course. All assignments are completed as a team, and as
part of the evaluation process group members grade each other’s participation. These
grades play an important role in the determination of final grades. I set up teams in
week 1. Size of teams depends on class enrollment, because there has to be 10 or 15
teams in a class.
The class can be a lot of work. In particular, the Markstrat simulation can consume vast
amounts of your time; there is no shortage of data to work with and analyze. However,
the class is not necessarily a lot of work. If your team is disciplined the class can be
very manageable in terms of time required. It is largely in your hands.
My goal for the course is simple: to help you become stronger marketing leaders.
If you have any questions about the course, feel free to contact me.
Tim Calkins
[email protected]
(847) 467-3209