This course examines fundamental concepts and issues in marketing. Students will learn to analyze an organization’s marketing environment and its potential customers. Based on these insights, students will discuss the key functions of marketing, which consist primarily of decisions related to the 4Ps of product, price, place (distribution), and promotion as well as the 4Cs of cost, convenience, communication, and consumable. The course presents a wide range of related topics including:
- The marketing environment, including the emerging electronic environment
- Segmentation, targeting, and positioning
- Customer behavior
- The 4Ps and 4Cs of the marketing environment
The course has eight sets of module-specific assignments that link the assigned readings to a selection of assignments that include discussions, chapter quizzes, and case studies and/or short papers. Relying upon the assigned materials and using real-world examples of marketing, student understanding of marketing concepts will be enhanced.
Course Learning Objectives
- Explore how marketing operates within an organization and how marketing practices and ethics may differ across cultures.
- Conduct a marketing environment analysis to understand how marketing is performed in conjunction with other business practices across different business and cultural environments.
- Analyze consumer decision making given their behavior and beliefs.
- Explain marketing segmentation and how segmentation influences marketing practices.
- Analyze an organization’s current product strategy.
- Differentiate between pricing strategies and analyze factors that affect pricing.
- Conduct an analysis of an organization’s marketing distribution channels and make recommendations for improvement.
- Analyze an organization’s marketing communication and create a targeted communication for a market segment.
- Identify the advantages and disadvantages of e- and m-marketing.
Students must purchase a text that includes an access code to a web-based, interactive resource called CourseMate. CourseMate will be used to administer chapter quizzes and case studies. There is a specific timeframe for which the access code will be active, so it is important that all students purchase materials at the JIU bookstore to ensure a valid, active access code is acquired.