Marketing & Society: Values, Change & Social Impact (2215.YR.006332.1)

General information

Type:	OPT	Curs:	3,4	Period:	S semester
ECTS Credits:	4 ECTS

Teaching Staff:

Group	Teacher	Department	Language
Year 3	Marta Gabarro Sust	Marketing	ENG

Group	Teacher	Department	Language
Year 4	Marta Gabarro Sust	Marketing	ENG

The course requires participants to have taken the core Marketing courses, enabling them to work with concepts such as market orientation, strategic marketing and operational marketing.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION: This class is taught in Spanish. To enrol, students have to have a certain level of Spanish (in particular, in terms of their listening comprehension skills). If necessary, some sessions may be taught in English (or a mix of Spanish and English). The company for which we¿ll be carrying out the project will ¿most likely¿ present the general case and supporting material in Spanish.

Workload distribution:
- Lecture classes: 30 hrs
- Independent study: 90 hrs, which habitually includes a visit to the organisation for which we will carry out the project.

This subject enables students to consolidate their knowledge of the marketing field and apply that knowledge, helping the business community to have a positive social or environmental impact. In other words, it allows students to further explore marketing applications as an option within corporate competitive strategies based on creating value for society. The subject is highly practical in focus as it includes a real project for a real firm.

Since its outset in the mass commodity market, marketing has been stigmatised as a means to create needs, provoke unsustainable consumption or simply to maximise profits for firms. All this has led both seasoned professionals and new generations to consider other possibilities. Two important macro-trends are generating these opportunities for marketing: corporate social responsibility and ethical consumption by consumers.

This course thus aims to analyse and interrelate the primary uses of this so-called positive marketing and their benefit for society:
- Private sector marketing which provides social value: from philanthropy to marketing causes or co-branding initiatives with social causes.
- NGO, social and foundation marketing, adopting a market orientation focused on individuals and companies with which they can collaborate.

Upon successfully completing this course, students will not only have a fuller vision of the trends and opportunities for their future careers but also the real experience of having worked on and developed these new concepts. This is a differential experience which students can develop further in their careers. For those interested, it is a unique, distinctive, exciting and highly professional experience.

Below are some comments by students from the previous edition:
- "I loved the class. It was amongst the best at Esade."
- "One of the best modules I took at Esade"
- "Really one of my best courses throughout my entire higher education."
- "Being able to work with a real company on a real project was amazing."
- "Knowing that, if we did a good job, our project would be implemented provided extra motivation."
- "The company was by our side, helping us whenever we needed."
- "The support from the professor and the company was spectacular."
- "I have truly learned a lot because I had never taken part in such a complete marketing project before."
- "Everything I knew about Marketing finally made sense."
- "I've learnt that companies can use marketing to help create a better world."
- "Now I know I really want to work in the Marketing field."

The course's specific aims or learning outcomes for participants, are:

1. Integrate the social dimensions of marketing, creating a concept map with all the facets of marketing that are positive for society.
2. Put the different marketing areas with a social aspect into practice: marketing with a consumer-related cause, NGO-company partnerships or applying marketing to sectors such as art.
3. Prepare a real marketing plan which reflects the previous two objectives with practical and realistic business aims.

The concept of Positive Marketing and associated terms (Social Marketing, Societal Marketing, NGO Marketing) are still in a state of initial development and so a book is not set as the core bibliography.

For those participants who wish to begin exploring the concept, we recommend the following:
- Web Marketing&Society by Gerard Costa, marketingsocial.esadeblogs.com
- Bonini et al., When social issues become strategic, McKinsey Quarterly, 2006, number 2
- Kotler & Lee, Best of Breed, Stanford Social Innovation Review, spring 2004
- Porter & Kramer ; Creating Shared Value: Redefining Capitalism and the Role of the Corporation in Society; Harvard Business Review, 2012

And for those who want to probe the topic even further, we recommend the following:
- Kotler, Hessekiel, Lee; Good Works!: Marketing and Corporate Initiatives That Build a Better World and the Bottom Line; ; John Wiley & Sons, 2002
- Kotler, Kartajaya, Setiawan. Marketing 3.0. Editorial Lid, 2012.

Group	Teacher	Department
Year 3	Marta Gabarro Sust	Marketing

Group	Teacher	Department
Year 4	Marta Gabarro Sust	Marketing