Marketing Curriculum

Chicago GSB students choose from a broad array of marketing courses, supplemented by courses in other areas, such as strategy and entrepreneurial studies. Students also have the opportunity to complement courses with meaningful real-world experience.

The James M. Kilts Center for Marketing provides faculty with support for curriculum development.

37000 Marketing Strategy

37101 Consumer Behavior

In this course, we will use theories of consumer behavior to develop a managerial decision framework for the development and launch of new products, segmentation, brand management, and ultimately managing the customer experience and customer relationships. Special emphasis will be placed on creativity and its role in the development of new ideas.

37102 Quantitative Marketing Research Methods

The course introduces students who seek positions in general management, consulting, and marketing (e.g. product/brand management, marketing research, marketing strategy) to marketing strategy research methods used by corporations. These methods assist in the development of marketing strategies (product positioning/differentiation, market segmentation) and in optimizing marketing mix decisions (for example, new product design, optimizing advertising spending). The course demonstrates what marketing research can do for marketing decision-making. Students will become better customers of marketing research services and be able to conduct their own marketing research.

37103 Data-Driven Market Analytics

The availability of data on actual market behavior of consumers is revolutionizing the way marketing is conducted as well as the way in which marketing activities are planned and evaluated. The goal of 37103 is to introduce students to these new data sources and provide a set of compatible analytic tools. We will focus primarily on scanner, direct marketing and web browsing data.

37106 Marketing Research

Marketing research is an organized way of gathering and analyzing information for decision-making purposes. The course is structured from the point of view of the marketing manager, consultant or entrepreneur who will use marketing research to inform key business decisions. The goal of the course is to provide you with the knowledge and skills to both determine the scope and direction of research activities conducted on your behalf, as well as to leverage research findings to make key decisions and support managerial recommendations. The course employs a mix of lectures, individual exercises, and cases as well as the team project.

37201 Developing New Products and Services

The primary purpose of this course is to provide marketers with an in-depth understanding of new product development practices, including direction setting, customer needs identification, idea generation, concept development, product design, test marketing and scale-up, and commercialization. This course will cover business-to-business new products and consumer-based new products including recent case experiences from household consumer products, telecommunication services, building products, Internet services, travel services, and utility services. Students will learn about and apply tools for effective new product development. This course will also highlight the different roles and functions required for new product development, including marketing, market research, R & D, sales, finance, manufacturing, etc.

37202 Pricing Strategies

How does a firm determine the price of a new product? How does a firm assess whether the current price is appropriate? What is price leadership? What is value pricing? These are just some of the questions we will address in pricing strategy. The course is a blend of analytic marketing techniques, marketing strategy, and economic theory. In the GSB curriculum, this course is a natural complement to 33001, 37000 and 42001. A combination of cases, lectures, and empirical applications are used in the class. You can expect to get your hands dirty working with real data, analyzing managerial pricing problems. In addition, the course offers a general framework for developing pricing strategies.

37203 Integrative Marketing Communications

Marketing communication is an important component of the marketing mix, and one that is undergoing rapid changes with the development of new media, growth of internet marketing, and globalization. In this course, we develop an understanding of the process of developing and managing an integrated marketing communication campaign for a product or service. Although issues relating to planning and evaluating advertising strategy and sales promotion will receive the most attention, we also briefly discuss direct ( including b2b ) marketing and some current issues and trends in marketing communications such as the growth of web-based advertising and emergence of ad-avoidance technologies. The course is intended not only for students interested in pursuing a career in brand management, marketing research, and/or advertising management, but also more broadly for those interested in a consulting career or a marketing career path to general management. The perspective taken in the course is typically that of a category/brand manager/strategy planner, with underpinnings of psychological theories. The course employs a mix of case discussions and lectures/class discussions. Whereas class lectures and discussions provide an exposition of key concepts, class participation and case analysis are a vital aspect of learning and provide an opportunity to apply the theories, concepts, and analytical devices developed in the lectures.

37205 Going to Market: Managing Channel Strategy

How should a firm go to market? That is, how can an institution effectively and efficiently transmit value from points of conception, extraction, and/or production to points of consumption? Product proliferation, media fragmentation, retailer power and the Internet have conspired to place a premium on strategic channel design and management. This course offers a framework to understand the issues and trade-offs that firms face as they design and manage their distribution channels. The framework can be used for consumer product sales, business-to-business sales, and sales of services. We will apply it to topics such as managing channel conflict, direct vs. indirect sales, strategic alliances, joint ventures, and franchising.

37303 Marketing of Services

This course provides students with an overview of the fundamentals of marketing services. We will examine issues such as concept innovation, segmentation, and positioning with an emphasis on organizations that provide services as opposed to discrete products (including professional services, management consulting, not-for-profit, and consumer services).

37400 Advanced Marketing Strategy

The objective of this course is to present a dynamic view of marketing strategy. The overarching framework used in the course is the Product Life Cycle. The course content focuses on understanding, developing and evaluating marketing strategies for each stage of the Product Life Cycle. This includes strategies for pioneering brands, later entrants, strategies for growth, mature and declining markets. Current topics such as the Technology Adoption Life Cycle, Hypercompetition and Customer Relationship Management will be discussed at the appropriate stage of the Product Life Cycle. From an industry perspective, the course has a broad span, covering traditional consumer packaged goods, high-technology products and services. The course uses a blend of qualitative and quantitative approaches with a strong emphasis on the latter. Students should be very comfortable using analytic techniques such as regression. Material is presented using a mix of cases and lectures. A business simulation may also be used to complement the class material. The course carries a heavier than usual workload and students should expect to commit a significant amount of time to the class.

37701 Laboratory in New Product and Strategy Development I

This course complements the GSB's strong training in business theory by providing a problem-solving experience for a small but diverse group of students. The course accelerates the process by which students learn to manage themselves and others when developing solutions to real-world business problems. It provides students with tools for solving complex problems and detailed feedback regarding their performance as managers, team players, and problem solvers. Students who complete this course report they learn a great deal about their abilities as business professionals and find themselves better prepared to manage complex problems and situations in the workplace.

37702 Laboratory in New Product and Strategy Development II

Occasionally a client sponsors a project that extends over two quarters. This is the second half of such a two-quarter project. Refer to the description of 37701 above for a description of this course.

37800 Marketing Management (Executive MBA)

This course introduces the substantive and functional aspects of marketing management. Specific course goals are as follows: (1) to introduce students to marketing strategy and the elements of marketing analysis: customer analysis, competitor analysis, and company analysis; (2) to familiarize students with the elements of the marketing mix (product strategy, pricing, advertising and promotion, and distribution), and to enhance their problem-solving and decision-making abilities in these operational areas of marketing; and (3) to use marketing case studies to provide an opportunity (both written and oral) to develop, present, and defend a student's own recommendations, and to examine and discuss the recommendations of others critically. The course employs a balanced mix of case discussions and lectures/class discussions. Class lectures and discussions provide an exposition of key concepts, and wherever possible are supported by research on current marketing practices. The case studies provide an opportunity to apply the theories, concepts, and analytical devices developed in the lectures.

37902 Advanced Marketing Theory: Quantitative Perspective

This course is meant for Ph.D. students with marketing as dissertation or minor area. The focus of the course is on understanding the methods currently available for analyzing household purchase behavior using scanner panel data. The course begins with an introduction to the various aspects of household purchase behavior and the econometric models currently available to study them. The remainder of the course will focus on specific advances in such analysis. These include, but are not limited to, the study of purchases across product categories, the analysis of dynamic purchase behavior and accounting for price endogeneity in such models.

37903 Advanced Marketing Theory: Behavioral Science Approach

This is a Ph.D.-level seminar. We will discuss two general topics: (a) an introduction to recent consumer behavior research, especially related to behavioral decision theory; (b) an overview of experimental research method. The format of the class will be similar to a research workshop, where students present their analysis on assigned readings, and the other participants serve as discussants and consultants. The professor acts as a moderator and pundit. Students are also expected to generate and present their own research ideas, and write a paper for the course.

37904 Marketing Topics: Bayesian Applications in Marketing and MicroEconometrics

This course will cover a comprehensive introduction to Bayesian inference with special emphasis on micro-data and marketing applications. The course will be based on the instructor's textbook. Topics include: Bayesian Essentials, Practical MCMC methods, Hierarchical Models, Non-standard Priors, Models for data with Discrete Components, Bayesian treatment of Simultaneity, and Dirichlet Process Priors. The course will also emphasize statistical computing in R. For all models and topics discussed in the course, examples of R/C code will be provided. In the homeworks, students will be asked to modify existing R code and write their own code to extend some of the ideas covered in class. R is the most important statistical language which is similar to, but with more extensive capababilites, as MATLAB.