• Analyze a company’s situation and challenges, internal as well as external, in relation to its current and future marketing efforts – using relevant tools and frameworks for such analyses
• Identify relevant overall marketing options for the company while considering implications for the company, its network and supply chain
• Propose viable marketing strategies solidly aligned with the imperatives identified through analyses of all relevant factors
• Understand the increasing importance of various driving forces in the market place, such as a focus on sustainability and CSR, intercultural differences etc. and how these drivers impact on company options
• Apply their insight in order to develop a general-type marketing strategy for a company addressing and incorporating the above issues

Overall course objectiveis to introduce students to the basics of Marketing as well as the wider context for a company’s marketing efforts. The course will introduce students to a combination of

1) the Essentials of Marketing

2) the wider business context in which Marketing Management must navigate.

The course will focus on introducing students, in fairly equal measure, to BtB and BtC markets and the factors influencing both markets, i.e. the driving forces affecting the company’s options in the marketplace, such as shifting consumer preferences and the need for continuous innovation, social responsibility etc.

Highlights of course contents

The course will introduce students to:

- Tools for understanding and analyzing internal and external factors influencing the company’s choice of marketing approach

- The relevance and difficulties of designing best fit between the company’s overall strategies and choice of marketing strategies, i.e. the strategic role of marketing for the company

- The importance of aligning marketing efforts with the company’s overall supply chain considerations - i.e. the company’s marketing efforts in a wider perspective

- Tools for aligning the company’s marketing efforts with intercultural characteristics of target markets

- The basics of relationship management in a corporate perspective, i.e. the importance of understanding the company’s role and impact in its networks and how the company can optimize on its marketing efforts through such relations

Teaching materials, literature etc. will appear from the course plan handed out at the beginning of the course.

In addition to hand-outs, slidepacks, exercises etc., a textbook choice along the lines of:

Hollensen: Marketing Management, A Relationship Approach. Financial Times/Pitman Publishing. 2010.