Marketing 301: MARKETING CONCEPTS

Sections C and D

University of Washington

 

 

CLASS MEETINGS:

Mondays and Wednesdays 1.30 pm – 3.20 pm (Section C), 3.30 pm – 5.20 pm (Section D)

Location: DEM 102


PROFESSOR:

Hema Yoganarasimhan, Ph.D.

Office: Paccar 481 (4th floor)

Email: hemay@uw.edu


TAs:

Eugene Pavlov                         Katie Spangenberg

Email: pavlines@gmail.com               Email: katies9@uw.edu

 

OFFICE HOURS:

Instructor (Hema Yoganarasimhan)

Friday 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm

Location: PCAR 446

 

TA (Eugene Pavlov)

Thursdays 4 pm – 5 pm or by appointment

Location: MKZ 347

 

TA (Katie Spangeberg)

Tuesdays 4.45 pm – 5.45 pm or by appointment

Location: MKZ 337

 

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the fundamental marketing concepts and their application by businesses.  The goal is to expose the students to these concepts as they are used in a wide variety of settings, including consumer goods firms, manufacturing and service industries, and small and large businesses.  The course will give you an overview of marketing strategy issues, elements of a market – company, customers, and competition, as well as the fundamental elements of the marketing mix – product, price, placement (distribution) and promotion. In addition, the course adopts a modern, customer-centric view of marketing and will, via managerial marketing models, prepare students to comfortably apply the marketing strategies in a quantitative, precise, and informed fashion. The course will cover both traditional marketing strategies, as well as new developments in digital marketing and social media.

 

As with any class, the knowledge that you take away from the class will be determined in large part by your enthusiasm and investment in the course.  This includes reading the assigned materials, attending classes, asking informed questions, doing assignments, and productively interacting with your peers in class.

 

Learning Objectives

·      To understand marketing as a framework for analyzing real-world situations

·      To understand and be able to critically evaluate basic elements of a marketing program

·      To acquaint you with some behavioral and managerial tools used in marketing situations

·      To develop your skills in defining marketing problems, analyzing alternatives, identifying opportunities, and interpreting their implications

·      To understand that marketing is a process and explore the relationships among its elements


COURSE WEB SITE:

https://apps.canvas.uw.edu/wayf

FIRST TIME USERS: Use your UW user name and your password is set to your student id number. If you have problems contact bacshelp@u.washington.edu.

 

TEXTBOOK:

Kotler, P. and Armstrong, G., Principles of Marketing. 16th edition.  Prentice Hall, Inc. The text is available at the student bookstore.

 

A few important points regarding the text:

·      It is easy to read and full of timely, interesting examples. It is designed to provide you with a general background of the topics we will discuss in more detail in class.

·      Doing the assigned readings thoroughly before each class will help you benefit the most from the course.

·      We will not cover everything in the textbook and we will cover topics not in the textbook.

·      You can share the textbook or read the materials from the library copy.

·      For exams, you need not memorize or know everything in the textbook. Exam questions will only come from the sections highlighted in the exam study guide.

 

STUDENT EVALUATION:

Your grade will be calculated as follows:

 

Assignments and Cases (4)                                                                  40%

Midterm                                                                                              20%

Final                                                                                                     25%

Class Participation and Discussion Board                                          10%

Research Requirement                                                                           5%

Total                                                                                                   100%


You must also complete an Assurance of Learning quiz to get credit for this course.


CLASS ATTENDANCE

Class attendance is VERY important: This is so elementary as to not warrant mention, but given the importance of this point, I will risk belaboring the obvious. Most of the learning in this course comes from actively engaging in the class sessions. If you’re not in class, you miss the single greatest opportunity for improvement that this course offers. Therefore, it is your responsibility to attend classes. As such, you are responsible for all the material covered in class.  Given how quickly we will cover material, it will be very easy to fall behind if you miss class.

Please Help Me Learn Who You Are: Use your name cards, even when you know that I know your name. It helps me give credit for participation effectively and efficiently. Please also fill out the Introduction survey on Canvas.

Laptops: Laptops are permitted in class, but please use them to take notes. I understand the temptation to multitask by using class time to catch up on e-mails, news, Facebook, or YouTube videos. This is an unwise use of class time. It is distracting for you and for the students around you. I reserve the right to ask you to close your laptop if I deem your behavior to be distracting to the learning environment within the classroom.

Please come to class on time: It is very disruptive to your classmates and me if we have people coming into class late. You are expected to attend every class on time and to stay for the entire class session. If you have an unavoidable conflict, please do not disturb your classmates by arriving late, leaving early, or asking to have information you missed repeated during the class.  If you are late, or have a one-time conflict, you have the option to attend one of the other sections of the course.


CLASS PARTICIPATION

Your class participation grade depends on two types of class engagement:

1.     In-class participation

2.     Participation in the Canvas discussion board


In-class Participation: For effective in-class participation, it is important that you come to class prepared! Class sessions will be a combination of lecture and discussion. The more interactive the sessions are the more you will find the material interesting and the more you will learn. I strongly encourage you to ask questions and make thoughtful comments about the material being discussed. This requires you to listen carefully to what is said in class. It also requires a mutual respect for one another.

 

Evaluating the quality of class discussion is necessarily subjective. The list of questions below summarizes the criteria I will use to evaluate class participation:

 

If you feel uncomfortable talking in class, please see me during office hours. One of the best ways for you to feel comfortable participating in class discussions is for you to think about the material before class. One way of doing so is to prepare notes and bring those notes with your questions and comments to class. If in spite of these preparations, you remain uncomfortable talking in class, consider increasing your contribution to the Canvas discussion board, in order to improve your class participation grade.

 

Canvas Discussion Board: In addition to the opportunities for you to participate in class, you can contribute by sharing relevant news articles that you read daily on Canvas. I have created an open discussion forum called “Relevant Articles and Videos”. You can share the link to useful articles, videos and explain how you think it is related to the class in a few words. Sharing interesting articles accompanied with your thoughtful comments is very valuable and is rewarded.

 

A few points about discussion board grading:

·      You should to participate and engage with your fellow students regularly throughout the quarter. For example, posting 10 articles in the last week of the class is unlikely to get you a high grade.

·      Posting articles is just the first step. Reading and responding to what others have posted is key to getting a good grade. Remember that the goal of the discussion board is collaborative learning, which means that you are learning from each other. To truly achieve that, you need to read what others have posted and learn from it.

 

The last post/response on the discussion board is due on December 9th 2015 midnight. Posts made after this date will not receive credit.

 

LECTURES

Lectures notes will be posted on Canvas at least one day before the class. You can bring a printout of the lecture notes with you to class or open it in your tablet/laptop to take additional notes in class.

 

NOTE: The in-class lecture will contain additional materials, over and above what is in the lecture notes.

 

ASSIGNMENTS

Cases: To promote active learning and application of marketing concepts to actual business situations, three case studies will be assigned. The cases are intended to help you focus on the key issues in the readings and to prepare for active in-class discussions. Cases will be discussed in class and turned in at the beginning of the class on the due dates noted on the syllabus. Each case is worth 10% of the grade.

 

The instructions for each case will be given with the Assignment in Canvas.

 

CLV Assignment: In addition to the cases, you will work on a Customer Lifetime Value assignment  (worth 10% of the grade). This will help you apply concepts learned in class to real data, and derive the value of each customer.

 

Submission of Written Assignments: All assignments should be submitted online. If you have trouble figuring out the online submission system, please contact one of the TAs (at least a day before the submission) for help with the system.

 

Read the submissions guidelines document for additional details on assignment submissions.

 

EXAMS

The midterm is on 4th November during class.

The final exam is on Saturday, December 12, 2015, 4.30 pm – 6.20 pm. The location for Section B is PCAR 192 and for Section D is DEM 102.

·      You should not register for this course if you have a conflict with these exam times. 

·      Make-up exams must be requested in writing and will require written proof or medical or family emergency.

·      All make-up exams (midterm and final) will be scheduled in the week after the finals. In the interim few days, your grade may show as Incomplete. After your make-up exam has been graded, your grade will be updated at the Registrar’s office.

 

Before each exam, you will be given an exam study guide and sample questions to help you prepare for the exam.

 

RESEARCH REQUIREMENT

University of Washington faculty conduct research on many of core concepts that MKTG 301 will cover. As one of the requirements of the MKTG 301 class (5% of your grade), students will experience this research process first hand in one of the two ways (read the Subjects’ Rights and Obligations form attached for more details). To fulfill this requirement, students must choose one of the following options and complete two tasks (two experiments or 2 article analyses) or a combination of the two options (one research session and one article analysis).

I encourage students to participate in the research sessions rather than analyzing journal articles because I believe the sessions provide an interesting insight to how marketing research is done. The researchers will be delighted to discuss the results of their research and the application to the real world either individually or in your MKTG 301 class (if time permits). However, you will receive credit if you decide to do the written assignment instead.

Additional details of the research requirement are available in the Research Requirement folder in Canvas. If you have more questions or need additional guidance, please email mktgpool@u.washington.edu.

GRADING

The business school requires that the median grade for all introductory courses is between 3.1 and 3.3. As such, the final grades will be on a strict curve. The final grades will be assigned according to deciles (where each decile represents 10% of the students in the class).

 

Final Grade                                                                             Grade Point

1st decile (top 10% of performers in the class)                                   4.0

2nd decile                                                                                             3.8

3rd decile                                                                                              3.6

4th decile                                                                                              3.4

5th decile                                                                                              3.3

6th decile                                                                                              3.2

7th decile                                                                                              3.0

8th decile                                                                                              2.9

9th decile                                                                                              2.8

10th decile (bottom 10% of performers in the class)                           2.7 or below

 

After each exam, the cutoff scores for each decile will be reported.

 

FOSTER SCHOOL UNDERGRADUATE CODE OF CONDUCT

“I will uphold the fundamental standards of honesty, respect, and integrity, and I accept the responsibility to encourage others to adhere to these standards.

HONESTY— I will be truthful with myself and others.

RESPECT— I will show consideration for others and their ideas and work.

INTEGRITY— I will be a leader of character. I will be fair in all relations with others.”

 

ASSURANCES OF LEARNING

You are required to complete a catalyst quiz for this course, which measures how the Foster School of Business is delivering Assurances of Learning. Assurances of Learning help the Foster school evaluate how well we are teaching you and they allow us to fine-tune the curriculum to make sure we are meeting goals and objectives of the course. Additionally, the overall results help the Foster School remain accredited through the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).

 

The quiz is not graded, but you must complete it to receive a grade in the course. Students who fail to complete the quiz by the end of exam week will receive a grade of Incomplete until completion can be verified. You should complete the quiz as diligently as possible so that the results are significant and impact the Foster curriculum. Thus, you should approach the quiz as a closed note, closed book quiz. You should not seek assistance from other students or faculty. Please, do not discuss the quiz with fellow students.

 

The quiz is administered by the Undergraduate Programs Office. An email announcement will be sent out the by the last week of the quarter. The quiz is administered through Catalyst. To ensure that you receive the quiz you should log-in to http://catalyst.washington.edu/ and under Manage

Profile check that your email address is set to your UW NetID email address.

 

RE-GRADING POLICY

For re-grade requests:

·      Please submit a written request to me (ccing the TAs) explaining why you believe your grade should be different.

·      I will set up a meeting with you to discuss your grade and re-grade the materials.

·      All re-grade requests should be made within 3 days of the return of the assignment/case/exam. After the 3 day window, re-grade requests will not be considered.

When students complete this course they should be able to accomplish the following:

 

¨     Integrate strategic thinking and leadership into the practice of marketing.

 

¨     Define marketing and understand its impact on collaborators, customers and competitors.

 

¨     Recognize environmental forces and their impact on strategic marketing decisions.

 

¨     Learn the marketing mix variables and how best to manage them.

 

¨     Understand customer markets and buyer behavior.

 

¨     Gain an appreciation of ethical and socially responsible marketing.

 

¨     Understand the relationship between segmentation, targeting, and positioning.

 

¨     Appreciate the importance of building and managing profitable customer relationships and creating customer lifetime value.

 

¨      Research, analyze, and manage marketing information.

 

¨     Learn the cutting-edge methods in marketing in the digital world, leveraging social    media, and using big data to make better marketing decisions.