Introduction to Marketing

Overview

Background

Strategic management deals with the long-term competitiveness of the firm. Innovation, understood as the development and commercialization of new products and services is an integral part of the competitiveness of the firm. All too often, though, are new products and services developed with superior technical performance at great cost, but with little attention paid to customers and their needs. Enters marketing.

Course Content

Marketing Mix
The course will have the traditional "marketing mix approach" as a starting framework. In the "marketing mix approach" four activity sets are recognized, known as the 4Ps: Product, Price, Promotion, and Placement (or distribution). Product deals with the actual product or service and the needs of the end-user or customer. Price deals with the pricing of the product, including discounts or alternative revenue models such as leasing or service contracts. Promotion deals with methods of promoting the product. Finally, placement deals with how the product reaches the customer. According to the marketing mix perspective, firms compete for customers along the lines of these four Ps. The marketing mix and 4P approach has its origin in the marketing of consumer goods where it is assumed that consumers have mass market properties. In order to introduce some flexibility to allow for variations in customer taste and demand, the market is usually divided into various segments. Thus, the logic is: segmentation, differentiation, and positioning; dividing the market into well defined segments of similar customers; differentiating the offer to satisfy the demand within the segment; and finally positioning your product in the minds of the customers relative to your competitors.

Goals of the Course

After taking this lecture, students should be able to understand and use essential theoretical concepts in marketing. This learning process will be facilitated by numerous empirical inisghts into the practice of marketing, devoting special attention to the toolbox of marketers.

Format

The course is a mix of class lectures, guest lectures, case seminars, and self-study literature.

Class lectures will provide and discuss the core concepts in building and implementing marketing. Within the guest lectures, specific issues will be highlighted from a practioner's perspective. The case seminars allows participating students to apply the acquired marketing knowledge to specific case studies. The self-study literature will complement the course content through in-depth theory and concepts.

Course Structure

All lectures and guest lectures will be given in room HG F3.

The lectures run between 13.00-15.00.

Preliminary Schedule

1. Entering the field (pdf)

Tuesday, September 18, 2012, 13.00-15.00

2. Product (pdf)

Tuesday, September 25, 2012, 13.00-15.00

3. Building marketing strategy (pdf part 1) (pdf part 2)

Tuesday, October 2, 2012, 13.00-15.00

4. Place (pdf)

Tuesday, October 16, 2012, 13.00-15.00

5. Promotion (pdf) (supplementary) (case study)

Tuesday, October 23, 2012, 13.00-15.00

6. Price (pdf part 1) (pdf part 2)

Tuesday, October 30, 2012, 13.00-15.00

7. Case session 1 (pdf)

Tuesday, November 13, 2012, 13.00-15.00

8. Guest lecture: UBS (pdf)

Tuesday, November 20, 2012, 13.00-15.00

9. Guest lecture: Swiss Business Hub India (pdf)

Tuesday, November 27, 2012, 13.00-15.00

10. Case session 2

Tuesday, December 4, 2012, 13.00-15.00

11. Summary (pdf)

Tuesday, December 11, 2012, 13.00-15.00

12. Exam

Tuesday, December 18, 2012, 13.00-15.00

Case Study Videos

Exam

The exam will be in the form of a "Semesterendprüfung" - closed book

When
Tuesday, December 18, 13:15-14:45 (90min)

Rooms
Aas - Kurmann: HG F3; Lissandrin - Zimmermann: HG G3.
It is crucial to go to the room that has been assigned to you. There is no free choice of rooms -- please do carefully check which room you have to go to!

Info
Please arrive at 13:00 to allocate your seats!
The exam consists of 50 multiple choice questions (1 point each) and 8 short questions (5 points each). Max=90 points.
Write all your answers directly on your examination form and solution sheet.
Respond to the exam questions in English and write clearly; illegible answers will not be marked.
Closed book, dictionary allowed, electronic dictionary (non- programmable) allowed, calculator (non-programmable) allowed.

Course grade
Calculated by 25% group assignment and 75% individual end-of-semester examination.

Administrative Details

For general and administrative questions, please contact us at marketing@mtec.ethz.ch.

Literature

The following reading list is subject to self-study and represents an integral part of this course. Exam questions will be partly based on an understanding of this part.

Entering the field

Levitt, T. 1960. Marketing myopia. Harvard Business Review (July-August): 45-56.

Vargo, S. L. and R. F. Lusch. 2004. Evolving to a new dominant logic for marketing. Journal of Marketing 68(January): 1-17.

Product

Lane Keller, K. 1993. Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity. Journal of Marketing 57(January): 1-22.

Christensen, C. M., S. Cook and T. Hall. 2005. Marketing malpractice: The cause and the cure. Harvard Business Review (December): 74-83.

Leslie, M. and C. A. Holloway. 2006. The sales learning curve. Harvard Business Review (July-August): 115-123.

Building marketing strategy

Shapiro, B. P. and T. V. Bonoma. 1984. How to segment industrial markets. Harvard Business Review (May-June): 104-110.

Yankelovich, D. and D. Meer. 2006. Rediscovering market segmentation. Harvard Business Review (February): 122-131.

Place

Narus, J. A. and J. C. Anderson. 1996. Rethinking distribution: Adaptive channel. Harvard Business Review (July-August): 112-120.

Shapiro, B. P. 1977. Improve distribution with your promotional mix. Harvard Business Review (March-April): 115-123.

Zeithaml, V. A., L. L. Berry and A. Parasuraman. 1988. Communication and control processes in the delivery of service quality. Journal of Marketing 52(April): 35-48.

Promotion

Lodish, L. M. and C. F. Mela. 2007. If brands are build over years, why are they managed over quarters. Harvard Business Review (July-August): 104-112.

Watts, D. J. and J. Peretti. 2007. Viral marketing for the real world. Harvard Business Review (May): 22-23.

Chandon, P., B. Wansink and G. Laurent. 2000. A benefit congruency framework of sales promotion effectiveness. Journal of Marketing 64(October): 65-81.

Price

Aeppel, T. 2007. Changing the formula: Seeking perfect prices, CEO Tears up the rules. The Wall Street Journal. New York, New York.

Anderson, E. and D. Simester. 2003. Mind your pricing cues. Harvard Business Review 97-103(September): 97-103.

Srinivasan, S., K. Pauwels, D. Hanssens and M. Dekimpe. 2002. Who benefits from price promotions. Harvard Business Review (September): 22-23.

If the links to the articles are not working on your computer, please proceed as follows: Go to the ETH electronic library via the following link:

http://www.ethbib.ethz.ch/db/sg/17x.html

Choose "Business Source Premier", click on "EBSCOhost Web", check "Business Source Premier", click on "Continue", and enter parts of the references on the list in the query form. Through the database, you can then retrieve the articles as PDF documents.

For this procedure to work, you have to be within the ETH domain. Alternatively, you can download the ETH VPN client. For further information, please see the link below:

http://www.id.ethz.ch/services/list/vpn/

The WSJ article for lecture 10 cannot be printed.

Teaching team

The teaching team can be contacted at marketing@mtec.ethz.ch.

• Martin Wallin
• Fredrik Hacklin
• Konstantinos Trantopoulos