Marketing Strategy

3 units

Marketing strategic decisions require long-term planning and are often costly to change once implemented. They often involve more than one marketing mix variable (price, advertising, promotions, loyalty program) that have to be consistent with a firm's core competencies and complementary with each other, with the purpose of establishing competitive advantages over competitors. A good strategic planning requires careful analysis of market environments related to customers and competitors of a company. With the development of the information technology in recent decades, companies have collected valuable data, either by themselves or from third-party data providers, on customers and competitors. The biggest challenge for most companies, however, is how to use the data for strategic decision-making. The objective of this course is to provide a comprehensive framework to help understand the strategic situations of firms and trade-offs in the decision-making. This course covers some analytical and modeling techniques, but the focus is on the use of analysis results. It provides students the fundamental knowledge of analyzing data and solving business problems that have long-term impacts on business. Different marketing topics will be covered. One example is customer analysis, which is the most important strategic component for marketers. Other topics related to market competition, including competitor analysis, positioning, product and entry strategies, pricing and advertising planning will also be covered. This course is analysis driven, with the focus on better use of data. Doing so helps to develop initiatives for strategic planning to better compete in the market.