Learning Outcomes:
• To outline and examine the critical decisions which have to be addressed in designing a customer-driven marketing strategy in a socially responsible way such as:o Understanding the role of modern Marketing in an innovative and practical way.• Review the underlying marketing process • Understanding the Marketplace and Customer Needs• Identify the main social criticisms of marketing• Explain how consumerism and environmentalism affect marketing strategies• Understand the principles of socially responsible marketing• Explain the role of ethics in marketing• Understanding dimensions of sustainable marketingo How marketing creates customer value and relationships• Define customer value and discuss its importance in creating and measuring customer satisfaction.• Explain the importance of retaining current customers as well as attracting new ones.• Understand the role and operation of customer relationship management.o Understanding competitive strategy • Discuss the need to understand competitors as well as customers through competitor analysis.• Explain the fundamentals of competitive marketing strategies based on creating value for customers.• Illustrate the need for balancing customer and competitor orientations in becoming a truly market-centered organisation.o Product and Branding Decisions• Define the term product including the core, actual, and augmented product.• Explain the main classifications of products.• Describe the decisions companies make regarding their individual products, product lines, and product mixes.• Discuss branding strategy—the decisions companies make in building and managing their brands.• Discuss additional branding issues with respect to socially responsible brand decisions and international marketing.o New-product development and product life-cycle strategies• Explain how companies find and develop new-product ideas.• List and define the steps in the new-product development process and the major considerations in managing this process.• Describe the stages of the product life-cycle.• Explain how marketing strategy changes during a product’s life-cycle.o Marketing Services Decisions• Describe the nature and special characteristics that affect the marketing of services.• Identify the additional marketing considerations that services require.• Explain the marketing strategies for improving service differentiation, quality and productivity.• Describe the nature and special characteristics of non-profit marketing.o Pricing Decisions• Discuss the role of pricing and why it is important to understand customer value perceptions when setting prices. • Discuss the importance of company and product costs in setting prices. • Identify and define the other important internal and external factors affecting a firm’s pricing decisions. • Describe the major strategies for pricing new products.• Explain how companies determine a set of prices that maximise the profits from the total product mix.• Discuss how companies adjust prices which take into account different customer and market situations.• Discuss the key issues related to initiating and responding to price changes.o Integrated marketing Communications Strategy• Define the five promotional tools and discuss the factors that must be considered in shaping the overall promotion mix. • Discuss the process and advantages of integrated marketing communications in communicating customer value. • Outline the steps in developing effective marketing communications. • Explain the methods for setting the promotion budget and factors that affect the design of the promotion mix.o Advertising Decisions• Define the roles of advertising in the promotion mix.• Describe the main decisions involved in developing an advertising programme.o Public Relations• Define the role of public relations in the promotion mix.• Explain how companies use public relations to communicate with and influence important publics.o Sales Promotion• Explain how sales promotion campaigns are developed and implemented.o Personal Selling• Discuss the role of a company’s salespeople in creating value for customers and building customer relationships.• Identify and explain the major sales force management steps.• Discuss the personal selling process, distinguishing between transaction-oriented marketing and relationship marketing.o Direct and online marketing• Define direct marketing and discuss its benefits to customers and companies. • Identify and discuss the major forms of direct marketing.• Explain how companies have responded to the Internet and other powerful new technologies with online and digital marketing strategies.• Discuss how companies go about conducting online marketing to profitably deliver more value to customers.• Overview the public policy and ethical issues presented by direct marketing.o Managing Marketing Channels• Explain why companies use marketing channels and discuss the functions these channels perform.• Discuss how channel members interact and how they organise to perform the work of the channel.• Identify the major channel alternatives open to a company, and how companies select, motivate, and evaluate channel members.• Explain the role of retailers ad wholesalers in the distribution channel.o Applying the marketing concepts to critical issues relating to a real marketing situation• The primary focus of the company case scenarios is to develop participants’ conceptual and analytical skills to enhance their strategic thinking by developing an appropriate response to a number of critical issues relating to a real marketing situation
Indicative Module Content:
Please refer to Module Outline on Brightspace for details