(all courses in this certificate program will be customized and made directly relevant to your firm and industry)
Core Courses:
Principles of Marketing
Marketing Research
Developing a Promotion Plan
Interactive Marketing
Public Relations
Sales and Sales Management
Global Marketing
Strategic Market Planning (capstone course)
| ^top |
Principles of Marketing - Course Description:
Because of the accelerated growth in the technology aspects of our business, exponential gains in information processing capabilities, the globalization of markets, and increasing competition, insulated and loyal customer relationships are more important than ever before. There is no place in our society for high pressure, confrontational, manipulative marketing. The marketer of today is a problem solver, bent on meeting the highly individualized time, convenience, fear reduction, or risk reduction needs of the customer. We are to be the provider of value added services, relationship builders who anticipate customer needs.
The marketer of today must be able to create distinct competitive advantages (firm specific advantages) and communicate them through a mix of marketing communications tools. Our objective must be to identify and meet finely targeted customer needs and exceeding customer expectations must be our standard for success. If we are successful, our customers will not only be loyal, but also less sensitive to price and competitiors sales promotions.
We must break old paradigms which were based on gaining "market share" through one dimentional mass marketing approaches and instead, seek to gain 100% "customer share" through the application of integrated marketing communications.
| ^top |
Marketing Research - Course Description:
This course is designed to provide students with a working knowledge of marketing research techniques and their applications in business and business decision making. The emphasis of the class will be on practical applications and completing a detailed marketing research campaign for the student's organization. The course will cover the following major topic areas:
o An overview of the marketing research process and its role in business and business decision making.
o Problem definition and research planning.
o Competitive Benchmarking.
o The uses of exploratory research and secondary data.
o Research designs for collecting primary data.
o The collection and measurement of primary data.
o Data analysis and presentation.
This course will provide students with the unique opportunity to conduct marketing research for their real life practical business applications. Students will be expected to challenge the company's core assumptions, identify the true research problem, create a research methodology, conduct the actual research, and in a formal meeting, present research findings and recommendations. Students will be challenged to look at the corporation's internal database in an attempt to make pre-existing data relevant in new ways.
Students will learn the difference between marketing research and M.D.S.S. (Management Decision Support System), and will learn that today's strategic market planning is driven by an on-going customer needs-driven research process.
Marketing research is no longer project oriented, but rather a strategic decision from the very top of the organization. An M.D.S.S. generates strategic marketing objectives, gains feedback from the external environment regarding the relative success of those objectives, disseminates the information throughout the organization, and leads directly to the fine tuning and adjustment of strategic marketing objectives.
| ^top |
Developing a Promotion Plan - Course Description:
This course covers the manager's role in developing a Sales Promotion Program. Emphasis is on selecting and utilizing integrated marketing communications techniques: Other topics include; how to justify the sales promotion expense, how to measure the results of the promotional plan and how to evaluate the effectiveness of the sales promotion plan within the overall integrated marketing communications plan.
Developing a Sales Promotion Plan is a challenging course which will provide you with the opportunity to examine real life corporations and the existence (or non-existence) of integrated marketing communications strategies within those organizations. During the course, there will be an emphasis on creating a Promotion Plan for the student's organization. Students will develop their own plan during the course and make an oral presentations of each section of that plan during the course.
It will be extremely important for students to demonstrate their ability to implement sales promotion programs which directly motivate a client response, yield measured marketing results, and integrate well into the overall marketing communications mix. Students must also demonstrate their ability to be highly creative and "conceptual" in their sales promotions strategy.
| ^top |
Interactive Marketing - Course Description:
This course provides a comprehensive presentation of interactive marketing as a new vision and key component of progressive marketing communications programs. It covers direct marketing, integrated communications and new technologies, such as the internet, interactive kiosks, CD ROM, e-mail, fax-back, etc. Other topics include: program planning, research and testing, creative strategies, database marketing, pre-qualified telemarketing, and customer relationship programs. Students prepare a plan and learn applications of interactive marketing such as, front-end response motivation programs, and back-end customer relationship programs.
| ^top |
Public Relations - Course Description:
The course focuses on providing the basic techniques of public relations to business people. It stresses the integrative nature of public relations in reference to all departments and activities of an organization. This class also stresses the integration of P.R. into the overall marketing and promotional mix.
It is not a specialization course. This course provides a foundation with which to make decisions in all departments. Through this course, business people will better understand how to manage both internal and external communications.
Since public relations is a strategic communication activity/process, the focus on the course is on the diverse nature of a firm's publics. Meshed with this fact is the focus on results. Public relations shouldn't just be reactive, rather it should be pro-active and consider long-term and incremental perspectives.
The course gives students a chance to critique existing campaigns, recommend changes, and develop campaigns of their own with full defense and support, along with implementation steps.
This course provides an introduction to the field of Public Relations. Areas covered are media relations, promotion, tools used in developing public relations and publicity, improving customer satisfaction, relationship building strategies, ethics and public relations, and integrated marketing communications (IMC).
Topics include:
o The role of public relations in organizations.
o Public relations resources.
o Marketplace and environmental considerations.
o Tools and techniques of public relations management.
o Crisis prevention and management.
o Publics
| ^top |
Sales and Sales Management - Course Description:
Because of the rapid growth in technology, exponential gains in information, the globalization of the marketplace, and increasing competition, relationship skills are more important than ever before. There is no place in our society for high pressure manipulative selling. The salesperson is a problem solver, and a provider of value-added services to the client, a relationship builder.
The salesperson of today creates distinct competitive advantages and communicates these advantages through a unique selling proposition. Our objective is to identify and meet finely targeted customer needs, and exceeding customer expectations is the standard for success. If we are successful, we will create relationships which are insulated from competition and from price wars.
We must break old paradigms which were based on gaining share of market through one-dimensional mass marketing approaches and seek to gain 100% "share of customer" through the pro-active and strategic use of personal selling as an integrated marketing communications tool.
This course entails significant outside research to identify specific customized customer needs and also to apply personal selling techniques to the marketing of your product or service.
The use of interactive marketing techniques (i.e. the internet) for both research and marketing is highly recommended. Brainstorming, idea generating exercises, and other practical application techniques will be used throughout the course.
| ^top |
Global Marketing - Course Description:
This course will prepare the professionals for doing business in the rapidly changing global environment. Students will gain an understanding of how cultural and national differences affect the marketing strategy of a global company. Students will apply these concepts to exporting their U.S. products or services to a foreign country and determining foreign entry strategy and local marketing strategy (pricing and distribution). The strategic market planning process will be an integral part of targeting international business opportunities. Some of the key components which must be covered are foreign entry methodology, local marketing strategy, pricing and distribution.
Much of this course is devoted to the discussions related to the degree of standardization and global marketing a company can utilize, and also to the amount of local market adaption and specialization necessary for foreign market success.
The manager's perspective in the fields of international business, are analyzed. Emphasis is given to the materials and concepts that illuminate the strategies, structure, practices, and effects of multinational enterprises. We will learn to differentiate between global, international, multinational and transnational organizations.
At the completion of the course, students should be able to plan and implement an integrated international marketing strategy which is driven by their analysis of, and adaptation to, the remote and changing external environment.
| ^top |
Strategic Market Planning (capstone course) - Course Description:
Strategic Market Planning is a challenging course which will provide you with the opportunity to examine real life actions plans, strategies and decisions which bear directly on the total organization and upon its ultimate success or failure. During the course, there will be an emphasis on problem-solving within the context of complex business cases that put you in a key Marketing Director's role. Students will break into case study discussion groups and will lead the class discussion of individual case studies. In addition, each group will develop their own Strategic Marketing Plan during the course and make an oral presentation of that plan at the end of the course.
