W3021: Marketing Management

(Revised Sep 1, 2009; Subject to changes during the semester)

Fall 2009 Professor Leonard Lee

Thursdays 10.45 am – 1.45 pm 508 Uris Hall
Room: Uris 330 LL2399@columbia.edu
212-854-2177
Teaching Assistant: Office Hours: By email appointment
Rom Schrift
rSchrift13@gsb.columbia.edu

Course Description

This course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the fundamental marketing
concepts and their application by business and non-business organizations. The goal is to expose
the students to these concepts as they are used in a wide variety of settings, including consumer
goods firms, manufacturing and service industries, and small and large businesses. The course
will give you an overview of marketing strategy issues, elements of a market (company,
customers, and competition), as well as the fundamental elements of the marketing mix (product,
price, placement/distribution, and promotion). The course highlights both theory and
application. Extensive use of cases and exercises presents you with a challenging and real-world
environment in which to apply and hone your strategic decision-making skills.

As with any class, the knowledge that you take away from the class will be determined in large
part by the degree to which you rigorously pursue an understanding of the material covered. This
includes reading the assigned materials, asking informed questions, and productively interacting
with your peers in team assignments.

The course has five key objectives:

x To understand marketing as a framework for analyzing real-world situations

x To understand that marketing is a process and to explore the interrelationships among its
elements
x To understand and be able to critically evaluate basic elements of a marketing program
x To acquaint you with some behavioral and managerial tools used in marketing situations
x To develop your skills in defining marketing problems, analyzing alternatives,
identifying opportunities, and interpreting their implications

W3021 Marketing Management (Fall 2009) 1 Professor Leonard Lee

Required Material
1. Capon’s Marketing Framework by Noel Capon, Wessex Press, 2009.
2. Required case packet (to be purchased online from Harvard Business Publishing:
http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/access/4413128. If you have not registered with Harvard
Business Online previously, you will be required to do so.)
3. Additional readings (available for download from Courseworks.)

Recommended Reading
1. Product Management (4th Edition) by Donald R. Lehmann and Russell S. Winer, McGraw-
Hill Irwin, 2005 (available under Course Reserves from the Business library.) This out-of-
print textbook is written from a marketing practitioner’s perspective and is an excellent guide
for developing a marketing plan.

Course Requirements and Student Evaluation

The course will consist of lectures, discussions, written assignments, a group project, and a final
exam. The lectures are designed to reinforce and expand upon, not to substitute for, what you
learn from the assigned readings.
Your grade will be calculated as follows:
x Class Participation 15% (individual)
x HW assignments 20% (individual)
x Group Project 30% (groups of 5-6)
x Final Exam 35% (individual)

Class Participation:
A significant portion of class time will be devoted to group discussion, in-class
exercises, and analyzing assigned cases. This discussion forum provides an opportunity to
present your position and analysis as well as learn from others by listening to their comments
and criticisms. Constructive contribution to the class discussions and active listening are
important elements of this course. It is therefore essential that you are fully prepared for case
discussion and participate actively in class. Keep in mind that quality, not quantity, is the goal
when it comes to class participation (i.e., it’s not how much you talk but what you say that
counts!) Twenty percent of your final grade will be based on constructive participation in
discussions. I will sometimes call upon students who raise their hand and wish to participate, and
at other times ask students who have not volunteered to contribute. Although I realize it can
occasionally be unpleasant, I have found that this format significantly improves the quality of the
discussions.
Attendance:
Attendance is not mandatory, but will be reflected in your class participation evaluation
(if you’re not there, you can’t participate!) If you miss a class, you will be responsible for
making up material that you miss and for making arrangements to get any handouts that have
been distributed that day. The final exam will contain information that is discussed in class but is
not necessarily in the text, so regular attendance is optimal.

Homework Assignments:
To promote active learning, homework will accompany reading assignments from the
W3021 Marketing Management (Fall 2009) 2 Professor Leonard Lee
textbook and the reading packet. These written assignments are intended to help you focus on the
key issues in the readings and to prepare for active in-class discussions. Homework will be
discussed in class and turned in at the beginning of the class on the due dates noted on the
course schedule. The homework assignments will determine 20% of your final grade. Twenty
percent of the grade will be deducted for each day the homework is late.

Group Project:
The primarily purpose of this project is to give you hands-on experience developing a
marketing plan for a new product for an existing or a completely new (hypothetical) company.
You will have an opportunity to apply marketing concepts and research techniques learned in the
class. By the end of the second week, you should have formed a project group of five or six
students to work with during the semester. This project is different from a traditional pure library
type research that you may have done for other classes. You will have to combine findings from
both primary and secondary sources to fulfill this requirement. Additionally, a secondary
objective of this project is learning how to work effective as a group on a practical business-
related project; thus, be sure to select your group members prudently (e.g. based on common
interests as well as complementary skill sets and time schedules) as you have to work with them
throughout the semester. All disputes between group members should be resolved internally.
The project is to be typed with 12-point font, double-spaced, and with one-inch margins.
Conciseness, logic, along with content and creativity will be considered in the evaluation. Your
ability to clearly explain and diagram your results is also important. Finally, do not forget to
apply marketing concepts and link marketing terminology to your analysis – this is the key part
of the assignment. Reports should include diagrams or graphs explaining the results of your
research. Your report should be no longer than 10 pages in length, not including the title page,
appendices, tables, figures, references, etc. Each group will make one in-class presentation (with
up to 5 pages of support material, e.g. powerpoint slides, to be handed in on the day of the
presentation). The presentations will take place during the last class on December 10, 2009. The
group project will determine 30% of your final grade.

Final Examination:
The final examination will be a two and a half-hour, in-class exam. The exam will be
designed to test your ability to understand and analyze difficult marketing problems. This will
require a good grasp of marketing concepts and methods. Therefore, the best way to prepare for
the exam is to attend and be well prepared for each class session. The final exam will be based
on all the material covered in class as well as all the assigned readings.
The construction of reliable, discriminating and valid exams is a very difficult endeavor,
and returning exams precludes the use of those or similar test questions in the future. Since the
primary goal of the final exam in this course is to evaluate students’ knowledge, returning exams
would make it more difficult for that goal to be achieved. Therefore, final exams will be
available in my office for all of next semester, either during office hours or by appointment. I
will provide appropriate feedback and learning when you come in to see your exam.

Laptop Policy
The school laptop policy will be observed: laptops, cell phones, PDAs, and any other wireless
devices are strictly prohibited. Please print out any quantitative or qualitative analysis you may have
prepared and bring it to class in order to facilitate discussion.
W3021 Marketing Management (Fall 2009) 3 Professor Leonard Lee
 Class Schedule – Fall 2009
Week Date Topic Assignments for class
1 9/10 What is Marketing? 1. Read Chapter 1*
2. Read “Basic Quantitative Analysis for Marketing”***
3. Read 2 articles: “Memo to Marketing” and “The Secrets of Marketing in a
Web 2.0 World”**
2 9/17 Situational Analysis – The 3 Cs 1. Prepare case: Federal Express (B)***
“The Ideas Marketplace” 2. Read Chapters 3-5*
3. Read “Analyzing Cases”**
3 9/24 Customer Analysis & Behavioral 1. Submit HW1 – Observational Research
Economics 2. Read 3 articles: “To Understand Your Customers, You Have to Know How
They Think,” “The End of Rational Economics,” and “How to Design
Smart Business Experiments”**
4 10/1 Customer Lifetime Value 1. Submit group project proposal
Customer Service & Satisfaction 2. Prepare case: Starbucks – Delivering Customer Service***
3. Read Chapter 2*
4. Read 3 articles about customer service and loyalty: “Developing an
Effective Customer Loyalty Program,” “Customer Service Champs” and
“Hotels Take ‘Know Your Customers’ to New Level”**
5 10/8 Segmentation, Targeting & 1. Prepare case: Polyphonic HMI – Mixing Music and Math***
Positioning (STP) 2. Read Chapters 8 and 9*
3. Read “Notes on Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning”**
4. Read “For Plus-Size Women, More Chic Choices” and “Does the Smell of
Your Coffee Brewing Remind You of Your Mother?”**
6 10/15 New Products, Product Decisions, & 1. Submit HW2 – Quantitative Marketing
Branding 2. Read Chapters 11-13
3. Read 3 articles about branding: “Best Global Brands,” “Getting Brand
Communities Right,” and “What’s in a Name?”**
7 10/22 No Class (Business School Break + Group Project Meetings)
8 10/29 Pricing 1. Submit HW3 – Segmentation
2. Prepare case: The Medicines Company***
3. Read and prepare: “Legal and Ethical Issues in Pricing”**
4. Read Chapter 14*
5. Read: “Pricing New Products”**
9 11/5 Promotion Decisions & Marketing 1. Read Chapter 15*
Communication 2. Read 5 articles about advertising and promotion: “The Ultimate Marketing
Machine,” “When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Don’t Skimp on Their
Ad Budgets,” “The New Pitch,” “The Continuing Power of Mass
Advertising,” and “A Strategic Perspective on Sales Promotion”**
10 11/12 Marketing Channels 1. Submit HW4 – Article Review
Customer Relationship Management 2. Prepare case: Harrah’s Entertainment, Inc.***
(CRM) 3. Read Chapters 17 and 18*
4. Read 2 articles about marketing channels: “The Long Road to Wal-Mart,”
and “Retailing: What’s Working Online.”**
11 11/19 Course Review
Cutting Edge Research in Marketing
12 11/26 No Class (Thanksgiving Day – University Holiday)
13 12/3 In Class Final Exam
14 12/10 Final Session – Group Project 1. Prepare group project presentation
Presentations 2. Submit marketing plan
* Capon’s Marketing Framework by Noel Capon
** Download article from Courseworks
*** Purchase from Harvard Business Publishing
W3021 Marketing Management (Fall 2009) 4 Professor Leonard Lee