Introduction to Marketing

Introduction to Marketing
PGPRM - I
2006 - 08

Course Instructor - Prof. M N Tripathi
Room No.222, Ext .222
e-mail - mnt@ximb.ac.in

Introduction

This is a beginner's course in Marketing and shall cover the basics. Participants are expected to follow up on this course depending on their areas of interest in the electives that may be offered at a later stage. While most of the concepts would remain the same the course would be tweaked to give it a rural management flavour to deal with the particular problems that are expected to be encountered by participants of this course on the field. The course serves to familiarise participants with basic marketing concepts,environment,strategies and methodology. The aim would be to develop skill sets to tackle marketing applications under different business situations.

METHODOLOGY

It shall include selected readings and cases. The pedagogy would be a combination of lecture sessions and case discussions. The course participants are expected to read all the background readings before coming to class so that they can effectively participate in classroom discussion. It is expected that all participants must sufficiently be knowledgeable enough to discuss meaningfully in class to internalise the various nuances in the concepts.

The course would be covered in 20 sessions of 90 minutes each.

The following topics would be covered in the sessions

Introduction to Marketing - Needs and wants, Marketing Myopia
Marketing Mix, PLC
Segmentation and Positioning
Marketing Research and Sales Forecasting
Product development, Packaging
Brand Management
Pricing
Distribution and Logistics
Retailing
Sales Management
Consumer Behaviour
Communications and Advertising management
Sales Promotion, PR
B2B Marketing
Marketing Information and Systems,
Monitoring and Control

Session Plan

Session	To be covered	Readings	Case
1	Introduction to Marketing, Needs and wants, Marketing Myoepia, Orientations to market, Strategic Planning models	Chapters 1 & 2
2	Consumer Behaviour, Consumer Decision Processes, What influences Consumer Behaviour?	Chapter 6	ABC Corporation
3	Understanding the marketing mix, Customer value and satisfaction, Customer Lifetime value	Chapter 5
4	Marketing segmentation, Market targeting and Target marketing, Segmentation strategies	Chapter 8
5	PLC and elements of differentiation	Chapter 10	Vora and Company
6	Elements of product positioning, Positioning strategies	Chapter 10
7	Marketing Research, Quantitative and qualitative research, The Research process, Estimating and forecasting demand, Forecasting models	Chapter 3 & 4
8	Product strategy, developing new products,Product levels and hierarchies, Product mix strategies, Packaging	Chapter 12 & 20
9	Branding and brand building, Managing Brand equity	Chapter 9
10 &11	Services marketing, 7 P's of Services, Characterisitics of services, managing service quality, Managing service brands	Chapter 13
12,13, 14	Pricing, setting the price, pricing strategies, rseponding and adapting to price changes	Chapter 14	The case of the Pricing Predicament
15,16	The role of Distribution, Marketing channel management, Wholesaling, Retailing and managing logistics	Chapter 15 &16
17 & 18	Marketing Communications management, IMC, Advertising, sales Promotion, Public Relations, Direct marketing	Chapter 17 & 18
19	Social Marketing, CSR, Cause marketing	Chapter 22
20	Marketing Control, Market effectiveness and audit,	Chapter 22

The following cases would be discussed in class

1) ABC Corporation
2) Vora and Company
3) The Case of the pricing Predicament
4) Gaskets and Radiators

Cases would be given a week before it is taken up in class. Participants are advised to thoroughly analyze the case prior to coming to class. Any participant may be invited to present the case in class.

EVALUATION

Attendance and class participation	15%
Three quizzes @10%	30%
Midterm Examination	25%
End term Examination	30%

The quizzes may be taken without notice. Participants are advised to be ready to take the quiz at any time during the classes. The tests would assess both conceptual understanding and applications

READINGS

Books

1) Marketing Management - Philip Kotler & Kevin Lane Keller 12th Edition

Optional readings

1) Positioning - Al Ries and Jack Trout
2) Marketing Warfare - Al Ries and Jack Trout
3) The Hidden Persuaders - Vance Packard

Magazines and Newspapers

1) Business India
2) Business World
3) Business Today

1)The Economic Times
2)The Financial Express
3)The Business Standard