In increasingly dynamic environment companies requires a capacity to continuously learn about and swiftly respond to markets. Fundamental to this is the customer perspective, the recognition that company success comes from delivering superior customer value. Marketing traditionally has advocated the customer focus; yet, today, marketing needs to take on a more strategic, coordinative role within the firm to craft more interactive strategies about consumers and partners. Thus, it is an imperative for both marketing and non-marketing specialists to grasp how marketing helps the firm design strategies starting from the customer.
We will take the viewpoint of the senior marketing manager to address the issues of (1) the nature and value of market orientation vs. other firm orientations, (2) uncovering customer value: value disciplines, (3) achieving and sustaining competitive advantage: sources and positions, (4) developing marketing capabilities and assets: market learning, customer relationships, alliances, (5) innovating strategies, (6) reaching markets: dynamic distribution channels strategies, (7) aligning the organisation to the market: processes, capabilities, and structure. This course takes a very business oriented setup with many real-life examples. Students can improve their analytical, teamwork, presentation, and communication skills.

Description: This course focuses on designing strategies from the market back to create, deliver, and sustain customer value. To do so, this course views marketing as both a general management responsibility (building capabilities and firm processes) and an Organisational orientation (culture and structure). Thus, the course will not pay attention to the tactical decisions (e.g. sales, advertising, pricing) or formal models of marketing decision- making (e.g. forecasting or product diffusion models) featured in other marketing courses. Finally, our level of analysis will be on the business unit and its network of channels, customer relationships, and alliances.

Competences: In increasingly dynamic environment companies requires a capacity to continuously learn about and swiftly respond to markets. Fundamental to this is the customer perspective, the recognition that company success comes from delivering superior customer value. Marketing traditionally has advocated the customer focus; yet, today, marketing needs to take on a more strategic, coordinative role within the firm to craft more interactive strategies about consumers and partners. Thus, it is an imperative for both marketing and non-marketing specialists to grasp how marketing helps the firm design strategies starting from the customer. We will take the viewpoint of the senior marketing manager to address the issues of (1) the nature and value of market orientation vs. other firm orientations, (2) uncovering customer value: value disciplines, (3) achieving and sustaining competitive advantage: sources and positions, (4) developing marketing capabilities and assets: market learning, customer relationships, alliances, (5) innovating strategies, (6) reaching markets: dynamic distribution channels strategies, (7) aligning the Organisation to the market: processes, capabilities, and structure. This course takes a very business oriented setup with many real-life examples. Students can improve their analytical, teamwork, presentation, and communication skills.

The basic textbook for this course is Kerin, R.A. and Peterson, R.A. (2013). Strategic Marketing Problems: Cases and Comments (13th edition). Pearson Education Limited. This textbook is supplemented by a limited set of articles. Cases will be used for the analysis of real life situations.

Explanation: Through student evaluations it was revealed that students desired over the years a basic textbook that guides better their study into the theory of strategic marketing.