International Marketing and Management

Annotation

Communication is a fundamental part of most marketplace transactions. In its purest form, price communicates the information necessary for a transaction. In most cases, however, marketers have to communicate more than just price in order to establish, sustain, and grow their business. So how does communication in the marketplace work? How can marketers succeed in nowaday’s increasingly digital and international communication environment? In order to address these important questions, this course aims to provide a deep understanding of marketing communication, both in terms of real-life application and as a field of scientific research.

Over the duration of the course, students will work in groups to develop a communication strategy for a real industry client. The lectures will provide inspiration for the group projects in two ways:

1) It discusses key theories and findings in communication planning and consumer psychology. These insights are applied in the communication strategy, but we will also pay close attention to theoretical and methodological challenges in these research areas.

2) We will meet guest speakers holding various key functions in marketing communication (e.g., on the agency side, the client side, the media side). These practitioners will provide insights into the daily business and the current challenges of marketing communication.

Course Aims and Objectives

This course aims to provide students with a systematic knowledge and understanding of the core concepts of integrated marketing communications.

Learning Outcomes

• Understand how Integrated Marketing Communications fits into the overall marketing mix and marketing strategy;
• Understand how the communications process fits into and works with consumer behaviour with emphasis on the consumer decision making process;
• Develop an awareness of the connection between marketing communications tools, and how each can be used effectively- individually or in an integrated mix;
• Obtain a practical, real-world application of Integrated Marketing Communication theory;
• Gain a critical awareness of best practice in reputation management and sponsorship on corporate context.

Annotation

The role of corporate responsibility and sustainability has gained momentum in the last decades.This advanced course focuses on a deeper understanding of the interaction between organizations, society, ethics, corporate responsibility and sustainability. The dominance of US based literature, has suggested the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility as the main doctrine. However, considering the historical, economic and political context – the situation in Europe is fundamentally different. Unlike in the United States, the question of philanthropy plays only a minor role in Europe. On the other hand, the question of social, legal, environmental, and economic responsibility – within the context of a welfare state – dominates daily business life. The course will therefore take a more holistic approach – and concentrate on the question of how Corporate Responsibility has to be handled in an international context. Moreover, alternative models aiming at a win-win situation of society and corporations will be present. Besides, a focus will be on stakeholder theories, as well as on the role of NGOs, consumer perception, and the government.

Course Aims and Objectives

The aim of the course is to raise awareness for the participants that corporations have a responsibility towards all stakeholders – not just towards increasing shareholder value. The drivers of CSR and sustainable development will therefore be discussed in an international and intercultural context.

Learning Outcomes

• To understand the forces which are driving CSR and Sustainable Development in a European Context;
• To understand the impact of the government and the capitalistic system which drives the role of the corporation in a society;
• To understand the philosophical background of current CSR and sustainability theories;
• To apply CSR and sustainability concepts in practical business situations;
• To develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Goal of the course

Overall, the course is designed to provide students with a foundation on how to measure and manage marketing performance to increase profitable growth – and how to raise company’s marketing accountability to a higher level. The relevance of any marketing organization depends on its ability to shift from operational orientation to a strategic one, and the best marketers aspire to help their organizations make this transition. Making this shift is imperative for marketing to change its perception as a ‘tolerated’ expense to that of a valued revenue generator. From a leadership vantage point, there’s a lot riding on marketing’s ability to make this shift, because reactive and purely tactical marketing doesn’t enjoy much influence. This course provides an introduction to marketing analytics and marketing metrics – some of the most important tools for making marketing accountable and strategic. The approach taken throughout the course hinges on three questions:

1. What are the outcomes that the business needs to achieve in order to meet its goals?
2. What does senior management expects marketing to contribute towards these outcomes?
3. How will senior management know that marketing has made a contribution?

Learning outcomes

Upon completion of this course, successful students will:

• Understand the importance of marketing analytics and how they can help improve the measurement and management of marketing performance.
• Understand how to use and apply key marketing analytics and interpret associated marketing metrics.
• Learn to apply marketing analytics to a company and present marketing analytics and metrics in a management report, or in a form of a dashboard.
• Understand the barriers to successful implementation of marketing analytics as well as the potential for improved performance and profitability.

Course description

The ability to choose the most efficient tools for seeking answers, as well as to intelligently interpret the gathered information is indispensable for marketing managers. This course will equip students with both the understanding of principles that guide quality research in the context of marketing and the tools needed to implement those principles in formulating a research project, selecting appropriate methods, collecting and analyzing data, and presenting their findings.

Course aim

The goal of the course is to familiarize students with the fundamentals of Marketing Research. Marketing Research involves developing research questions, collecting data, analyzing it and drawing inferences, with a view to making better business decisions. By adopting a do-it-yourself perspective this course will teach you how to prepare, conduct and analyze a small-scale marketing research study. This course will build on the content of the courses Research methodology and Statistics, familiarity with research design and basic statistics is required. Specifically it means that your own ideas and solutions are expected prior to any consultation with the lecturers (i.e. sampling procedures, questionnaire design etc.)

Learning Outcomes of the Course

On completion of this course successful students will:

• Understand the relevance of marketing research in managerial decision-making.
• Have a critical awareness of research issues, methodologies, and methods used in marketing research.
• Obtain skills to identify a marketing problem, translate it into a research question, and design an appropriate way to answer it.
• Develop skills to identify and understand the main qualitative and quantitative strategies of marketing research, their advantages and disadvantages and appropriate application areas.
• Develop skills to design a research project and collect data.
• Obtain skills to analyze data and draw reasonable interpretations as well as communicate research findings in a clear and well organized way.
• Develop skills to critically evaluate the quality of other researchers‘ findings and the process used to obtain them.

Course Description and Aim

The purpose of this course is to develop an enlightened perspective on the phenomenon of consumer behavior, in the international/intercultural context, through the integration of theory and analysis.  The course emphasizes critical reflection and creative thinking, as reflected in the extensive use of experiential activities and a comprehensive, integrative research project in which you apply a full range of consumer behavior theories and concepts.  This course addresses consumer behavior as part of a marketing/business process and as a socio-cultural phenomenon.

Course Learning Outcomes

• Understanding of basic theoretical foundations (paradigms, theories, models, concepts) of consumer behavior.
• Knowledge of cultural theories and models based on  interdisciplinary methodologies and research.
• Competences for systematic and creative application of theoretical and empirical knowledge of consumer behavior to marketing relationships and social problems.
• Social competence (teamwork, presentation skills) and multi-media communication competences.

Course description

This course is intended to be challenging and exciting. It is first and foremost a course about “strategy” and about “managing for success”. The course centers around the theme that a company achieves sustained success if and only if its managers (1) have an astute, timely strategic game plan for running the company, and (2) implement and execute the plan with proficiency. We shall explore in some depth how and why a well-conceived and well-executed strategy nearly always enhances a company’s long-term performance. We will also look at the reasons why successful companies fail in a long run. This course will encourage you to synthesize all the knowledge you gained at undergraduate and graduate levels. It is my hope that having finished this course you will have a better understanding of what it takes to lead and run a successful company in a global and dynamic environment.

Course objectives

This course is designed to develop your capacity to think strategically about a company, its present business position, its long-term direction, its resources and competitive capabilities, the caliber of its strategy, and its opportunities for gaining sustainable competitive advantage. It will also aim at integrating the knowledge gained in earlier core courses in the business school curriculum, show you how the various pieces of the business puzzle fit together, and demonstrate why the different parts of a business need to be managed in strategic harmony for the organization to operate in winning fashion.

Learning outcomes

• To build students’ skills in conducting strategic analysis in a variety of industries and competitive situations and, especially, to provide them with a stronger understanding of the competitive challenges of a global market environment.
• To give students hands-on experience in crafting business strategy, reasoning carefully about strategic options, using what-if analysis to evaluate action alternatives, and making sound strategic decisions.
• To acquaint students with the managerial tasks associated with implementing and executing company strategies, drill them in the range of actions managers can take to promote competent strategy execution, and give participants some confidence in being able to function effectively as part of a company’s strategy-implementing team.
• To develop students’ powers of managerial judgment, help them learn how to assess business risk, and improve their ability to make sound business decisions and achieve effective outcomes.
• To help participants become more proficient in using personal computers to do managerial analysis and managerial work.
• To make students more conscious about the importance of exemplary ethical principles, sound personal and company values, and socially responsible management practices.

Course aim

Companies and their decision makers rely heavily on functions such as marketing research, analytics, and competitive intelligence to help them make better decisions. Informational overload and ever-increasing need for fast and actionable insight forces contemporary companies to re-evaluate the way they approach knowledge management. Aim of the course among other objectives is to:

• Give students foundational knowledge on what is actionable insight and how it drives decision-making that enables business growth and competitive advantage.
• Introduce range of tools and action frameworks that facilitate generation of actionable business insights – standard marketing research, advanced analytics and simulation methods.
• Demonstrate how managers can organize, evaluate and manage insights in a systematic way; make them easy to find, understand and accepted within the company.
• Develop system thinking skills that allow for business problem deconstruction, boundary definition and formulation of insight search goals.

Learning outcomes

• Understand what is insight and role it plays in contemporary business decision-making.
• Have knowledge of insight management strategies, critical awareness of insight credibility issues.
• Develop skills to identify, map, challenge and influence mental models prevailing in marketing and other business areas.
• Develop skills to identify and understand marketing research methods that are potentially valuable for given insight need.
• Analyse, within business, insight delivery process capabilities and plan changes to facilitate wider insight adoption.
• Use system thinking tools to help analyse business issues and structure decision influence frame.
• Learn various types of insight generation tools and their relevance to marketing.
• Demonstrate a set of analytical skills and presentation skills for debating central insight problems.

Course description

The course builds on traditional marketing courses and discusses digital strategies and tactics from a brand perspective. Beside more general overview of the digital marketing and social media phenomena, the course will focus on topics which are critical in leveraging the power of social media, such are: content management, development of social media presence, mobile marketing and viral marketing. It will be discussed how power has been shifted from brands to consumers, how to engage consumers through social media, and what is the interplay between social media and other digital marketing activities.

Course aim

1. Providing students with a comprehensive understanding of how digital technologies and the rise of social media are changing marketing strategies and tactics across different industries.
2. Learning about marketing concepts that are relevant in the digital environment, analyzing best practice examples, and developing skills for creating, delivering and communicating value by using digital marketing tools and social media platforms.
3. Providing students with insights into current digital marketing and social media trends.
4. Teaching students how to combine digital and offline marketing tactics.

Learning outcomes

• To get acquainted with core digital marketing concepts and the specifics of digital marketing environment.
• To be able to assess the marketing potential of digital technologies for a particular real-life marketing challenge.
• To gain in-depth understanding of the value of data in digital marketing and developing skills for data acquisition, analysis and its usage for digital marketing decision-making.
• To understand the new role of consumers in digital environment and to be able to develop digital personas.
• To be able to propose relevant online value propositions and tactics to create value in the digital environment, choose relevant digital platforms and propose digital tactics to achieve marketing goals.

To foster a holistic approach to marketing management by critically thinking about new digital marketing trends, and questioning their applicability for marketing strategy in contemporary business.

Course Objectives

The study of brand management is considered a crucial area in marketing and business curriculum as brands are one of the most valuable assets a company can have in today’s highly competitive marketplace. An understanding of the psychological aspects of consumers’ awareness, preference, and loyalty to brands is vital for a long-term company growth. The course aims to develop the necessary knowledge and skills required to prepare managers to develop an enduring advantage for their products in a competitive marketplace. It deals with important issues both at the individual product and the firm level and is designed both for those entering careers in brand and product management as well as for those with an interest in marketing management or general management. Particular emphasis is placed on hands-on experience of analyzing, assessing and managing brands.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this course successful students will:

• Increase understanding of the important issues in planning and evaluating brand strategies.
• Provide the appropriate theories, models and other tools to make better branding decisions.
• Provide a forum for students to apply branding principles in practice.
• Gain an in-depth knowledge on the planning and implementation of a branded product.
• Develop skills of brand analysis, draw reasonable interpretations and objective judgements.

Develop skills of presenting research / field work findings.

Annotation

Due to the recent silent revolution of “tertiarisation,” the service sector now accounts for almost two-thirds of GDP globally and is also the fastest growing sector worldwide. Odds are when somebody graduates there will be two to three times more jobs in service-oriented businesses than in goods based businesses. Indeed, all manufacturers today offer a number of services to their customers. As services are inherently relational, there are always relationships between a service organization and its customers. The key issue is whether a firm uses these relationships properly in the way it manages customers or not. This course aims to provide an in-depth understanding of how services are marketed, with emphasis on the significant difference between marketing of services and marketing of products. The attraction, retention and building of strong customer relationships through quality service and services are at the heart of the course content. The focus will be on internationalisation of services in world-class organisations rather than on a particular country or culture.

Course Aims and Objectives

This course aims to provide students with a systematic knowledge and understanding of the core concepts of services marketing in the context of the challenges that international marketing and service management actually face.

Learning outcomes

• Analyse and critically evaluate differences between services and goods drawing on the understanding of how these differences influence the practice of services marketing.
• Identify and analyse the different components of the “services marketing mix” for developing strategic thinking in services marketing.
• Demonstrate the knowledge and understanding of the role of employees and organizational culture in service delivery.
• Reveal a critical understanding of how customers evaluate services and how customer behaviour and expectations play a role in the service environment.
• Analyse and assess the relevance of service recovery.
• Demonstrate a critical awareness of best practice in dealing with service customers in international organisations.
• Demonstrate the knowledge and understanding of the role of customer relationship management in services.
• Demonstrate an awareness of major cultural issues influencing services on an international basis.
• Contribute to the academic debate relating to services marketing strategy and implementation.
• Demonstrate a set of analytical skills and presentation skills for debating central issues in services marketing in a group-context.

Course annotation

The course deals with the process of new product development (NPD) and service innovation. The course is divided in two parts. The first part focuses on the basics of innovation management. In particular, after clarifying what innovation is and how firms should look at it, the focus will go to the organizational antecedents of innovation: the routines and the best-practices that make some firms more innovative than others. The second part of the course focuses on the sources of innovation and on the process of new product development, with a special focus on service firms. The course is based on frontal lectures, case-study discussions and experimentation. A willingness to work in group and to interact in class is a necessary prerequisite to successfully complete the course.

Course aim

The main aim of the course is provide students with the basics of innovation management and new product development in a fast changing economic and technological scenario. Specific aims of the course include:

• To provide students with appropriate knowledge and tools to self-assess the innovation capacity of a firm and to benchmark it with competitors.
• To learn which routines and best practice allow firms to become more innovative.
• To learn where and how to look for new business ideas (innovation sources).
• To learn how to manage the New Product Development (NPD) process in a systematic way.
• To learn how to innovate at the business model level.

Learning outcomes

• Measuring the innovation capability of the firm and benchmarking with competitors.
• Learning which best practices allow some firms to be more innovative than others.
• To learn how and where looking for new ideas, which strategies and which tools using for doing it.
• To learn how to manage a NPD process.
• To learn how to innovate at the business model level.

The Master’s Thesis is the culminating experience in graduate level education for Master degree candidates. It is an individual endeavour of analytical nature, which contains elements of originality and is performed in conformity with general requirements of academic papers and scholary projects. For the student, the Master’s thesis should be a learning activity that is stimulating and engenders a sense of pride and accomplishment.

The intent of the thesis is to provide an opportunity for Master’s degree candidates to refine, in some cases acquire, a range of skills at an appropriate level to do capable and competent research. A successful thesis is evidence that the candidate has acquired the minimum level of research skills required and can therefore be accredited a Master‘s degree. Skills required of thesis writers are those associated with research design, data collection, information management, analysis of data, synthesis of data with existing knowledge and critical evaluation of the writer’s own ideas and those presented in the literature reviewed. The thesis should be written in English, within a given period of time and comply with commonly accepted principles of academic ethics.

Course description

The course explores the determinants of industrial competitiveness and successful economic development viewed from a bottom-up, microeconomic perspective. While sound macroeconomic policies and stable legal and political institutions create potential for industrial competitiveness, wealth is actually created at the microeconomic and firm levels. The sophistication and productivity of firms, the vitality of industrial clusters, and the quality of the business environment are the ultimate determinants of the productivity and innovation capacity of nations, regions and industries. This course examines both advanced and developing economies and addresses competitiveness at multiple levels – nations, subnational units such as states or provinces, particular clusters, and neighbouring countries. The course is concerned not only with government policy but also with the roles that firms, industry associations, universities, and other institutions play in competitiveness. In modern competition, each of these institutions has an important and evolving role in economic development. The course explores not only theory and policy but also the organizational structures, institutional structures, and change processes required for sustained improvements in competitiveness. The Microeconomics of Competitiveness is a distinctive graduate course offered in cooperation with prof. M. Porter and a team of his colleagues at Harvard Business School (HBS). It is designed to be taught to second year MBA students at HBS and affiliates of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School (http://www.isc.hbs.edu/moc.htm).

Course Aims

The main aim of the course is to enable the students to integrate and activate general knowledge on competitiveness in order to make analytical managerial decisions. The course focuses on the environment in which global strategy is developed at the corporate, business and operational levels. Particular attention is paid to the processes, competencies and vision of top management, competitive positioning, understanding comparative costs. Part of the purpose of the course is to expose students to some of the most successful countries and regions. In addition to cases, there are readings, a series of lectures, and videotaped or physical appearances by guests who are national, regional, or business leaders involved in the cases studied or experts on the issues discussed in class.

Learning outcomes

• Understand the major elements of competitiveness.
• Understand the role of clusters.
•  Understand the interaction between the micro level (entrepreneurial activity), meso level (regional clusters) and macro level (national policy).
• Understand the complex relationship between government activity and business activity within institutions for collaboration.
• Apply their knowledge in the framework of a concrete research project for a concrete country and cluster.

Course Aims and Objectives

This course introduces advanced applications in financial management that are geared to maximize firm value. Topics include valuation, investment techniques, estimation of cash flow, and various aspects of risk management. This course will go into details into some of the major corporate finance issues: financing and optimal capital structure, investments, considerations on becoming a publicly-traded company, company valuation methods most commonly used. Overall, the main outcomes for the students should include the following: Improve your English language skills particularly as they relate to corporate finance. Strengthen your awareness of some of the major corporate finance issues. Improve your skills for short, finance-related group presentations.

Learning outcomes

• Develop familiarity with financial statements in English.
• Improve financial analysis skills on financial statements.
• Become comfortable in valuing companies using market multiples of comparable traded companies.
• Be comfortable with the concept and calculation of cost of capital.
• Become comfortable in valuing companies using discounted cash flows.
• Be aware of major corporate finance dilemmas and have some tools to help on decisions.
• Be able to assess and compare the attractiveness of corporate investment opportunities.

Course Annotation

There are always key decisions to make at the heart of a superior marketing practice.  A marketer, for example, must decide on how to price a specific product, which types of distribution channels would be most appropriate or most effective, and/or how to advertise the given product most effectively.  In order to minimize complexity and to select and support the best alternative from a multitude, quantitative marketing methods and multivariate data analysis have become essential to the success of most business organizations.  Thus, the key purpose of this course is to acquire a general and fundamental understanding of the various quantitative and analytics tools that can be utilized and applied to a variety of diverse marketing settings.  This course will combine a theoretical foundation based on lectures and readings with practical applications to assist students in acquiring a sound working knowledge of and essential experience with multivariate data analysis.

Course Goal

The main objective of the course is to assist students in acquiring a sound working knowledge of multivariate data analysis tools, methods and applications.  Any business manager who examines only two-variable or bivariate relationships (and avoids multivariate analysis) is ignoring a larger set of powerful tools that often provide additional useful information and critical business insights.  The conceptual framework and methodologies of various multivariate data analysis tools will be illustrated by numerous cases and examples.  The emphasis here is on when to apply given tools and methods and how to interpret obtained results – utilizing R and Matlab.  All in-coming students should already have a fundamental understanding of basic introductory statistics.

Learning Outcomes

• Identify business situations where multivariate statistics could be applied.
• Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the different multivariate data analysis methods most commonly used in business.
• Understand how to use statistical methods for decision-making.
• Analyse data, interpret results and present them in a rigorous, yet understandable, clear and concise manner.
• Demonstrate analytical skills and presentation skills for understanding, analysing and debating business cases.