Ultimately, the course provides students with strategic and analytical skills to:
1. Describe the implications of the digital revolution for business model formulation.
2. Develop a digital marketing program for a given organization.
3. Explain and work with the basic concepts of several methodologies (e.g. market response models, field experiments, observational studies) used to evaluate digital marketing actions.
4. Explain and understand the basic digital marketing concepts and methodologies published in the academic literature.
5. Select and apply a suitable method to address a specific digital marketing problem
6. Interpret the results of (own or prior) digital marketing research.
7. Report in writing about the solution to a digital marketing problem, and its managerial implications.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE INFORMATION ABOUT THE TEACHING AND ASSESSMENT METHOD(S) USED IN THIS COURSE IS WITH RESERVATION. A RE-EMERGENCE OF THE CORONAVIRUS AND NEW COUNTERMEASURES BY THE DUTCH GOVERNMENT MIGHT FORCE COORDINATORS TO CHANGE THE TEACHING AND ASSESSMENT METHODS USED. THE MOST UP-TO-DATE INFORMATION ABOUT THE TEACHING/ASSESSMENT METHOD(S) WILL BE AVAILABLE IN THE COURSE SYLLABUS.

Digital Marketing focuses on the new challenges and opportunities marketers face in the digital age. Digital marketing encompasses more than adding new channels (e.g. social media) to the marketing mix: It also gives rise to new ways of doing business. As such, this means that firms should focus on integrating digital marketing into their existing marketing mix. For example, major players such as Proctor & Gamble have shifted considerable amounts of their marketing budget to digital channels. However, such firms also have to take into account differences in consumer behaviour in digital channels, changes to consumer needs due new digital offerings, opportunities offered by developments such as robotization and AI etc., calling for a critical evaluation of the entire existing marketing mix. Moreover, consumer behavior and competition are also reshaped as firms are faced with new, digital-only competitors who successfully translated existing offerings to an online context (e.g. Amazon and Zalando), as well as platforms firm that operate from a complete new business model, for example by directly connecting buyers and sellers (e.g. AirBNB, Alibabba, UBER) or changing the way products are consumed (e.g. Spotify, WhatsApp).

Beyond the existence of new marketing channels and business models impacting consumer behavior, a third change is the vastly increased amount of data available for evaluation of the effectiveness of marketing actions. Given the inherent digital nature of the marketing actions taken, it has become commonplace to evaluate the effectiveness thereof using market response models, field experiments and observational studies. A particular focus has been on causal analysis: How does a change in some marketing variable X impact marketing outcome Y? Thus, this course will not only review the strategic implications digitalization has for businesses, but also equip students with the (statistical) tools to evaluate the causal effectiveness of digital marketing actions. To achieve this, students will get hands-on experience running statistical analyses in the digital domain during two assignments based on real-life data. The course is based on a set of readings from the academic literature in the digital marketing domain. Beyond the basic insights these readings provide with regard to successful digital marketing initiatives, they also provide an introduction to the academic literature on marketing modelling and causal methods. An explicit objective of this course therefore is also to become familiar and comfortable with this literature and type of analyses involved.

A set of readings from the academic literature will be made available to students.