ICS , Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy
[Term 1] Marketing (Y. Fujikawa) (2008/Term 1&2 (Fall&Winter))
“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two – and only two – basic functions: marketing and innovation. Everything else is an expense.” (Drucker 1954)
“Marketing is much too important to leave to the marketing department …In a truly great marketing organization, you can’t tell who’s in the marketing department. Everyone in the organization has to make decisions based on the impact on the customer.” (David Packard, in Kotler 2003)
Marketing, which takes customers’ perspectives to heart, is so fundamental to business success that it should not be delegated to marketing specialists alone. Marketing should be the job of everyone throughout an organization, and the skills peculiar to marketing are required of business professionals in all careers. This required course, therefore, views marketing as a broad, general management responsibility and exposes future business leaders to marketing challenges in a variety of settings: B2C and B2B, product and service, for-profit and not-for-profit, entrepreneurial and established, and East and West. We will discuss the role of marketing in organizations as well as explore its relationship to other business disciplines.
Course Structure
The course views marketing as a process by which a firm creates, delivers, and sustains value with respect to key stakeholders: company, customers, competitors, and collaborators. Reflecting this notion of marketing as a process of managing value, the course is structured as follows:
Module 1 defines value from customer’s perspective, and introduces a few, overarching frameworks and tools of the course, such as SWOT for situation analysis, 4Cs of marketing strategy, and 4Ps of marketing tactics. Module 2 lays out a basic approach for creating value; topics such as buyer behavior, market research, segmentation, targeting, and positioning are discussed. Module 3 focuses on managerial skills and concepts for delivering value; topics include marketing mix issues, such as product, pricing, places (channels), and promotions (communications). Module 4 moves on to examine marketing strategies for sustaining value; relationship marketing issues, such as customer acquisition, retention, and lifetime value are discussed. Module 5 puts it all together to examine implementation challenges, such as social marketing and international marketing.
Teaching Method
The primary teaching approach is the case method. There is no right or wrong answer to case discussions. More accurately, there is no single right answer, but many viable answers. What matters is for you to take a specific position among alternative courses of action and articulate, support, and defend your argument. For this goal, your participation in the case discussion starts with completing the online poll before coming to class. The substantial learning then takes place through in-class interaction with your fellow students and the instructor. Students are expected to prepare a case for each session along the discussion questions provided by the instructor before class meets.
Cases discussions will be supplemented by occasional group exercises, mini lectures, videos, and other materials.