Marketing

• GSM MK 723: Marketing Management
  This course builds an in-depth understanding of basic marketing concepts and applies those concepts to a variety of management situations, including non-profit and public sector settings. The course provides working knowledge of the tools of marketing (product policy, pricing, distribution, promotion, consumer behavior), and the ways in which these tools can be usefully employed. The course builds practical skills in analyzing marketing problems and opportunities, and in developing marketing programs.
• GSM MK 724: Marketing Management
  This course builds an in-depth understanding of basic marketing concepts and applies those concepts to a variety of management situations, including non-profit and public sector settings. The course provides working knowledge of the tools of marketing (product policy, pricing, distribution, promotion, consumer behavior), and the ways in which these tools can be usefully employed. The course builds practical skills in analyzing marketing problems and opportunities, and in developing marketing programs.
• GSM MK 852: Marketing Research
  This course examines a variety of exploratory and survey research approaches and their associated data analysis procedures. It provides participants with state-of-the-art tools for identifying and assessing customer needs and requirements to improve the performance of profit-oriented and public-sector organizations. The course emphasizes a managerial, user-oriented point-of-view.
• GSM MK 853: Global Strategic Marketing
  This course focuses on the key strategic marketing decisions managers must make: deciding whether to market globally; selecting countries in which to market; choosing marketing strategies and tactics for entry and growth; and organizing for and managing the implementation of global marketing strategies.
• GSM MK 854: Branding
  This is a course about branding, and the ways that brands acquire and sustain value in the marketplace. The course is embedded in sociological, anthropological, and psychological theories of consumer behavior and culture, and relies on these disciplines for insight into effective strategic management of the brand. The cases, readings, in-class discussions, and assignments are designed to provide you with: an understanding of brands as co-creations of consumers, marketers, and cultures, and brand management as a collaborative process of meaning management; a sound foundation in consumer-brand behavior; and a capacity to think creatively and with increased precision about the strategies and tactics involved in building, leveraging, defending, and sustaining strong brands. Select topics we will cover include brand (re)positioning, brand design, brand community, product placements and grassroots marketing, internal branding, brand relationships, brand architecture, brand leverage and extensions, brand metrics, and brand stewardship. A group brand planning project weaves content throughout the course; individual write-ups allow you to explore select branding topics in more detail. Several guest speakers from the branding services, consulting, and practice sides will provide their insights throughout the course.
• GSM MK 856: Consumer Behavior
  In order to successfully implement strategy, marketers need to understand their consumers ? who they are, what they want, how they make decisions, and how their behavior is influenced by marketers? actions. This course will cover topics such as the role of culture, psychological processes (e.g. motivation, perception, memory, attitudes, etc.) and marketplace behaviors (e.g. in retail settings, online, post-purchase, etc.). We will also look at such marketing concepts as segmentation strategy, value-based pricing, brand equity, new product adoption, and customer relationship management. The course involves a team project focused on discovering an unmet consumer need and designing a product and marketing plan to address that need.
• GSM MK 857: Service Marketing Management
  This course takes both a practical and conceptual approach to the marketing of services. The marketing literature views quality as being defined by customer expectations and perceptions. This course looks at key components of services that affect these expectations and perceptions as well as issues of demand management; developing systems that address custom problem solving and complaint management; and the overlap between operational, organizational, behavioral, and marketing issues in service management. The focus of the course varies by class to include professional services, small service, large service organizations and businesses that produce services as a key and necessary line extension to products that they produce.
• GSM MK 859: Business Marketing
  This course provides an in-depth understanding of the unique aspects of marketing in a business-to-business environment. Students apply current marketing theory and techniques to industrial market settings. In addition, they develop managerial skills in the marketing planning and execution process, as well as critical analysis and problem-solving abilities with respect to marketing working relationships. The course allows participants to experiment with and apply strategic marketing concepts in a complex industrial marketing environment. Topics covered include the dynamics of relationships between suppliers and customers, the increasing reliance on the Marketing-R&D interface, the structuring of alliances between so-called competitors, and the process of negotiations-all in order to better understand how organizations endeavor to become and stay market-oriented. [Lectures, cases, guest speskers, interactive marketing simulation.]
• GSM MK 860: Integrated Marketing Communication
  The aim of this course is to provide you with an understanding of the strategic issues surrounding marketing communication, of which advertising is but one vehicle. We will be focusing on Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC), which involves using a variety of tools (e.g. advertising, sales promotion, public relations, etc.) in a synergistic manner to achieve communication objectives. Students will learn IMC principles and practices and then develop an IMC campaign from situation analysis to strategy development and implementation. The ultimate objective of this course is to enable students to understand and operate within the advertising industry from either a client or agency perspective.
• GSM MK 867: Marketing Social Change
  Many corporations are taking an interest in corporate social responsibility, as they realize the implications of climate change, respond to public, NGO and shareholder scrutiny of business practices, and see the need for long-term sustainability strategies. Businesses are analyzing how to incorporate practices that conserve resources and promote social good into the business model. Some companies are scrutinizing their supply chain, generating eco-footprints for their products, and developing metrics to evaluate the value that CSR brings to business. More and more, corporate marketers are integrating social-change strategies, from cause-related marketing to campaign sponsorship to social change advertising, into their marketing programs. The course Marketing Social Change will examine the roots of marketing social change -- marketing at traditional nonprofits, campaigns launched to influence public actions, legally-dictated social change, cause-related marketing -- and the evolution of corporate social responsibility. The course will explore how commercial marketing principles can be applied to positively influence social change. Particular emphasis will be placed on what it means for a corporation to be ?socially responsible? and the complex issues facing marketing managers in evaluating the costs and benefits of CSR. The course will include lectures, discussions, guest lectures by experts in social marketing and corporate social responsibility, and a semester-long project at a socially responsible company or organization. The course will be taught in Spring 2008 by Professor Kristi Kienholz. Professor Kienholz holds a BA from Williams College and an MPA from Harvard University. Kienholz currently consults to international organizations on NGO-private sector partnerships designed to advance social change. If you have questions about the course, you may contact Professor Kienholz directly at Kristi_Kienholz@ksg04.harvard.edu.
• GSM MK 912: Philosophy of Science and Pro-seminar
  This course focuses on the science of marketing. It develops an understanding of where the study of marketing falls within the philosophy of science and the creation of testable theory. After reviewing the historical underpinnings of scientific theory development and scientific methodology. It compares and contrasts different approaches to marketing science from empiricism to post modernism and examines what it is that makes some research interesting and important. The second part of the course is devoted to developing some of the professional skills needed by practicing marketing.
• GSM MK 927: Marketing Management and the Customer-Focused Firm
  This course will familiarize doctoral students with various areas of investigation for problem-oriented academic marketing research pertinent to the research mission of the department: advancing the customer-focused firm. Discussion topics include but are not limited to the following strategies for gaining strategic advantage through the cultivation of marketing relationships: branding and brand equity, pricing, sales, customer relationship management and CRM, consumer-company identification, corporate social responsibility, consumer-to-consumer relationships and brand communities, retailing and customer service, product innovation, and product launch strategy. Through exposure to a strategic marketing perspective for the identification of research problem areas, this course will further socialize students into the process of developing research ideas and undertaking research, while stimulating the development of ideas for summer projects, qualifying papers, and dissertations.
• SMG MK 323: Marketing Management
  Junior requirement; component of SMG SM 323, The Cross Functional Core. Introduces students to the field of marketing management: analysis, planning and implementation of marketing strategies as the means for achieving an organization's objectives. Students analyze cases and participate in workshops that focus on key marketing management tasks: marketing research, consumer behavior, segmentation and targeting, sales forecasting, product and brand management, distribution channels, pricing, and promotion and advertising strategies. A semester-long business plan project explores the interactions and the cross functional integrations between marketing, operations, information systems, and finance. 4 cr.
• SMG MK 445: Consumer Behavior
  Required for Marketing concentrators. Provides insight into the motivations, influences, and processes underlying consumption behavior. Considers relevant behavioral science theories/frameworks and their usefulness in formulating and evaluating marketing strategies (i.e., segmentation, positioning, product development, pricing, communications).
• SMG MK 447: Marketing Research
  Required for Marketing concentrators. Introduces tools and techniques of marketing research as an aid to marketing decision making. Definition of research problems, selection of research methodologies, design of research projects, interpretation of research results, and translation of research results into action.
• SMG MK 449: Business Marketing
  Explores in-depth the unique aspects of marketing to business and institutional customers in an increasingly complex, competitive and global marketplace. Exposes students to a wide range of industrial products and services, and the technology, demand, competition, and requirements for success that characterize each of them. Topics include marketing strategy, organizational buyer behavior, business market segmentation, market development, product development, B -to-B e-commerce, pricing, marketing channels, and business marketing communications, in the context of the U.S. as well as global markets. The course is taught through lectures, case discussions, and presentations and is designed to develop the analytical, decision-making, and communication skills of the students. 4 cr.
• SMG MK 463: Services Marketing and Management
  Covers topics relating to customer service management and focuses on the role of marketing in managing services. Also covered are human resource, information management, operational, and financial overlaps with marketing throughout the course. Focuses on services, though there will be discussion of how services support products as well. Includes an applied service marketing team project for a real organization (for an organization which has requested a student team to address its customer service issues). The final deliverable for this project is a team consulting project for the organization and a final consulting report presentation to the class and the organization's representative(s).
• SMG MK 465: Retailing Management
  Provides insights into all phases of retail and the inter-dynamics of today's retail organizations. It emphasizes the importance of retail strategy, careful planning, analysis and outstanding the execution in the retail environment. Focus will be on the tools that good managers use to insure success in the highly competitive retail marketplace. Students will increase their knowledge of how consumers make purchasing decisions and how retailers try to influence those decisions.
• SMG MK 467: International Marketing Management
  (Also offered in London in the spring semester.) Develops a critical appreciation of both the opportunities and challenges associated with the increasing globalization of markets. Students learn about the key environmental forces shaping the needs and preferences of the global consumer and the impact of foreign, political, and economic factors on the marketing mix. 4 cr.
• SMG MK 468: Advanced Marketing Strategy
  Provides the insight and skills necessary to formulate and implement sound marketing strategies. The process of strategy formulation is divided into three stages: strategic analysis, strategic decision making, and implementation of strategies. Specific topics include strategic planning, customer decision making, life cycle, segmentation, product positioning, market response, competitive behavior, new product development, product line management, and the marketing plan. Includes both lecture and case analysis.

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