Marketing Strategy (2235.YR.006495.1)

General information

Type:	OBL	Curs:	1	Period:	S semester
ECTS Credits:	3 ECTS

Teaching Staff:

Group	Teacher	Department	Language
Year 1	Andrés Cuneo Zuñiga	Marketing	ENG

Fundamentals of Marketing.

Case discussions in class: 65%
Case discussions in mini-groups: 25%
Lectures: 10%

This skill-based marketing course will prepare you to tackle marketing problems in a way that is structured, analytically robust and down to earth. It will also provide you a common ground of knowledge, as we will review the elements and frameworks which are more used on the modern marketing practice. These frameworks will help you to easily integrate the content from the following courses.

Marketing is one of the most complex areas of a company, as it requires not only to master a set of conceptual and theoretical frameworks from different fields (psychology, sociology, economics, strategy, statistics, etc) but more importantly, it requires the development of a set of key managerial skills. Top marketers are strategic, analytical and business oriented but also open-minded, curious, and sensitive to human behavior and social trends. This is a mix really hard to find, unless you work hard and exercise marketing practice.

Marketing Strategy is an Advanced marketing course which focuses on the development of marketing skills through practice. At this point, participants are no doubt familiar with the fundamentals of marketing management, but the real challenge is to apply that knowledge to real business situations. Therefore, the main objective of this course is to make participants to confront with real marketing dilemmas that companies from different industries and geographies face. Assuming the role of marketing strategists participants will be challenged to clearly identify the "source of pain", define and analytically evaluate alternatives and select and defend their decisions with their team mates and with the whole class. This course will also give them the opportunity to critically evaluate their peers' points of view and to "publicly" defend recommendations.

1. Summary Throughout the course we will review the marketing process that companies follow to establish their value propositions in the market, with a special focus on those decisions related to market segmentation, targeting, brand positioning and the marketing mix across different industries and market geographies.

2. Sessions planning Day 1: Understanding the Marketing Framework: Markets, competition and customers Day 2: Defining Market segmentation strategies and targeting Day 3: Defining Competitive positioning Day 4: Defining Customer value propositions Day 5: Defining and implementing market access strategies

For many years, the best business schools have been melting theory and practice, utilizing the Case Method as the tool of choice. Reality shows that hands-on classes utilizing business cases, where students can create their own hypothesis, discover opportunities and challenges for companies in different industries, is one of the greatest experiences you can have during a Master program.
There might not be a straight forward - right answer- to solve complex problems. However, a thorough and creative analysis can shed light on different paths towards the most profitable alternatives these companies can steer too.
Business life is full of small and big decisions. Some of them are difficult to contextualize while others are pretty much a straight forward answer. In any case, one of the best ways to quickly learn what to look for in a current business situation is to work business cases with the information at hand, and then clean the alternatives, in order to simplify and find answers to be worked on through more detailed analysis and implementation.

ASSESSMENT BREAKDOWN

Cases and a reading packet.

Group	Teacher	Department
Year 1	Andrés Cuneo Zuñiga	Marketing