MARKETING STRATEGY (BUS 6720)

Term: 2018-2019 Graduate Spring

Description

MARKETING STRATEGY

Contact and Response Times and Office Hours:

  • My preferred method of communication is e-mail.
  • If you e-mail any day Monday through Friday by 5 pm, you can expect a response within 24 hours.
  • If you e-mail after 5 pm Friday or on Saturday or Sunday, you can expect a response by Monday noon.
  • I will do everything possible to respond to you sooner than the above if at all possible.
  • Rather than hold set virtual office hours, in addition to email/phone availability, you may request a face-to-face Zoom meeting at any time during the term and as many times as you wish. I'll do my best to accommodate your schedule on these. I'd love to interact with you face-to-face in real time discussions...they are the best way to communicate when you need further explanation of material.
  • (Please don’t hesitate to use my cell number if you need to talk to me. However, I prefer e-mails to texts. Please try to keep any calls to before 8 pm if at all possible.)

Office Phone: (863) 680-4274

Cell Phone: (803) 269-9918

E-mail address: mbernthal@flsouthern.edu

Note: please do not purchase older versions of the first two books (the third book is a first edition).

  1. Ferrell, O. C., & Hartline, M. D. (2017). Marketing strategy: Text and cases. (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

You can purchase this book (either the digital or the digital plus print bundle, whichever you prefer) by visiting the following link:

https://www.cengage.com/c/mindtap-marketing-strategy-7e-ferrell.

Note that Cengage, the publisher of the text, now has "Cengage Unlimited" for $119.99. If any of your other professors are using Cengage texts this semester, this means that you can purchase Cengage Unlimited and have access to online versions of all Cengage texts for four months. That's a great deal because this text alone is $100 for digital access (which itself is very reasonable for a textbook in the current market).

The digital access to the book is provided through Cengage’s MindTap (the publisher’s interactive site). If you are asked to register for a course in order to gain access to the digital text, the link that will take you to the MindTap registration for this course is: https://studentdashboard.cengagebrain.com/#/course-confirmation/MTPNC78NP377/initial-course-confirmation. Our course itself, however, is administered through the FSC portal, not MindTap, so don’t look for any assignments or course information on MindTap.

  1. Scott, D. M. (2017). The new rules of marketing & PR. (6th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

You can purchase this book ($12.68) from Amazon by visiting the following link:

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/1119362415/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

  1. Godin, S. (2018). This is marketing: You can't be seen until you learn to see. New York, NY: Portfolio/Penguin.

You can purchase this book ($14.94) from Amazon by visiting the following link:

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0241370140?pf_rd_p=c2945051-950f-485c-b4df-15aac5223b10&pf_rd_r=HY8XFVGK8BD42VQSDCVG

This course provides an overview of issues involving marketing strategy. The course covers essential topics including but not limited to strategic planning, secondary market research and analysis, competitive advantage, consumer behavior, market segmentation, building brand equity, and digital marketing. You will learn to analyze marketing challenges and respond with effective goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics. Since each student in this course enters with different levels of marketing education and experience, the course assumes very little prior knowledge. The course is structured so that both those with and without prior marketing knowledge and experience will learn and benefit from course content and work. The course involves regular readings on various aspects of marketing strategy and viewing of narrated PowerPoint lectures, discussion boards, assignments (including case analyses), and one major team consulting project (a “living” case analysis developing marketing strategy for Downtown Life, an Ocala publication). The format of the course is online, with three synchronous meetings related to the consulting project required; one of these meetings will be an “all-team” meeting (all teams in the course together in one meeting), the other two meetings with individual teams.

We educate and inspire leaders to have a positive, consequential impact, by fostering an entrepreneurial mindset in teaching business disciplines through highly engaged, experiential practices.

Upon successful completion of the course, the student will be able to:

  • elaborate on how marketing has changed throughout the years
  • discuss how marketing activities flow from an organization’s mission
  • discuss and apply important concepts involved in marketing strategy, to include
    • organizational mission
    • brand equity
    • competitive advantage
    • strategic focus
    • consumer behavior
    • secondary marketing research
    • market segmentation
    • services marketing
    • promotion
    • marketing plans
  • analyze and provide solutions to marketing strategy opportunities and threats using conceptual, analytical, and decision-making skills
  • use, in consulting (living case) application, concepts and tools commonly applied by successful marketers