Courses

• SMG LA 430: Entertainment Law
  (Offered in Los Angeles) Covers the basics of entertainment law, including constitutional, contracts, labor, and employment law and intellectual property rights. Students develop a clear understanding of the applicable laws and how these laws have been applied in the past, how they are applied today, and how they might be amended and applied in the future. Students learn applicable legal concepts, practical insights, and an appreciation of how to deal with lawyers and the law in their entertainment business futures. It is intended to provide a good conceptual understanding of the law and demonstrate its relevance through case study, reading, guest speakers, field trips, and intense discussion. The application of the law to the digital now, the digital future and the Internet now crucial, indeed central, to any discussion of entertainment will be included throughout and be the subject of an entire class toward the end of the course. The law to be explored will be constitutional, copyright, trademark, contracts, labor, employment, and remedies and their application to and use within the entertainment business.
• SMG LA 450: Advanced Business Law
  Takes a closer look at the legal issues surrounding businesses, from purchasing contracts, rights and responsibilities for breaches of those contracts, commercial financing, the Uniform Commercial Code, bankruptcy, products liability, real estate and more. The emphasis is on understanding legal issues as a component of good business planning. Group work to draft contracts and leases and negotiate terms.
• SMG LA 498: LAW Dir Study
  
• 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 and Online Distribution
  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.
• SMG MK 469: Communications and Digital Marketing Strategy
  Marketing communication strategy has moved beyond advertising to include interactive marketing, sales promotions, direct marketing, public relations, the more. This course focuses on developing marketing communication strategy that integrates these tools for more efficient and effective communication. Topics include the establishment of objectives based on a situation analysis, developing subsequent messages, creative and media strategies, effectiveness testing, and client/agency relationships.
• SMG MK 470: Pricing Strategy and Tactics
  Focuses on the practical needs of the marketing manager when making pricing decisions. Students learn the techniques of strategic analysis necessary to price more profitably by evaluating the price sensitivity of buyers, determining relevant costs, anticipating and influencing competitors' pricing, and formulating an appropriate pricing strategy.
• SMG MK 486: Digital Marketing Strategy
  Provides a strategic look at internet marketing. Topics include an investigation of current e-business models, website analysis, customer acquisition and retention strategies, and consumer behavior on the Internet. Students explore internet marketing through lectures, class discussion, guest speakers, text readings, and cases.
• SMG MK 487: Branding
  Explores the art and science of branding, and the strategies through which companies can create, capture, and sustain shareholder value through brands. Through a mixture of theory and real-world cases, the course examines brands from the perspectives of the cultures and consumers who help create them, and the companies who manage them over time. Basic branding disciplines including positioning and repositioning, brand equity measurement, brand leverage, integrated brand communications, brand stewardship, and brand architecture are considered, as are more contemporary topics such as brand parodies, brand community, and branded entertainment. Particular attention is paid to branding challenges associated with today's interconnected, consumer-empowered, and transparent web-enabled world. 4 cr.
• SMG MK 498: Directed Study: Marketing
  
• SMG OB 221: The Dynamics of Leading Organizations
  Sophomore requirement. This is an experiential learning-based course that studies what people think, feel and do in organizational settings, focusing on individual, interpersonal, group and organizational processes. The primary objective is to help students understand and manage organizational dynamics as effectively as possible. This is done through: analysis of readings; reflecting on hands-on, real-time experiences in organizations and in teamwork here; practice opportunities in class sessions, creative applications and team exercises; and papers written by students and teams. The readings, discussions and lectures provide students with abstract knowledge about organizational behavior processes and structures; the semester-long "OB Team" experiences, working together as an intact team to address real-world problems, will provide skill-building opportunities to help manage one's own and others' behavior in teams and organizations in the future. Major topics include personality, motivation, team dynamics, leadership and organizational change. SMG students must take concurrently with SM411. 4 cr.
• SMG OB 441: Human Resource Management
  Required for Organizational Behavior concentrators. Introduces students to the field of human resource management (HRM). Emphasizes the strategic importance of effective human resource management to the success of any organization. Specific topics covered include: job design and workforce planning, recruiting and selection, training and development, performance management and rewards, employee and labor relations, and retention. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which organizations' strategies and practices around these issues contribute to the strategic objectives of the organization. Individual and group projects enable students to develop skills in making decisions from both the human resource manager's and the general manager's perspectives. 4 cr.
• SMG OB 442: Leading High Performance Teams and Project Groups
  Provides an opportunity for students to develop an in-depth understanding of creating, leading and maintaining high performance teams - and in particular, project groups that have clearly defined goals and deliverables. Students will learn to structure and organize high performance teams, develop and practice team interventions, and use teams effectively in organizational contexts. 4 cr.
• SMG OB 444: International Management
  Examines the many dimensions of managing people in the global organization. Topics include understanding and valuing cultural differences, cross-cultural communication, managing cross-cultural teams, and career management in global organizations. 4 cr.

Back to full list of School of Management