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2015/2016  KAN-CCMVI2023U  Strategic Market Management: Marketing Processes, Practices and Pitfalls in an Era of Hypercompetition

English Title
Strategic Market Management: Marketing Processes, Practices and Pitfalls in an Era of Hypercompetition

Course information
Language English
Course ECTS 7.5 ECTS
Type Elective
Level Full Degree Master
Duration Summer
Start time of the course Summer
Timetable Course schedule will be posted at calendar.cbs.dk
Study board
Study Board for MSc in Economics and Business Administration
Course coordinator
  • Course instructor - Dr Rob Morgan, Cardiff University, U.K.
    Patricia Plackett - MPP
Main academic disciplines
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • Strategy
Last updated on 10/08/2017
Learning objectives
To achieve the grade 12, students should meet the following learning objectives with no or only minor mistakes or errors:
  • Comprehend that strategy is a dynamic and iterative organizational process of development.
  • Develop an appreciation that there are multiple interpretations and explanations of strategic phenomena.
  • Understand how to craft different types of business strategy for particular market realities.
  • Demonstrate the skills to identify, analyze, and explain a strategy success as an exemplar.
  • Apply theoretical concepts, frameworks, and models to cases, illustrations, and examples.
Course prerequisites
Students must have completed a basic Principles of Marketing course and a Principles of Management course.
Prerequisites for registering for the exam
Number of mandatory activities: 1
Compulsory assignments (assessed approved/not approved)
Mandatory Mid-term Assignment: This assignment will require students to work in groups to research, analyze, and write a case analysis of a “strategic success story”. This assignment will be due at the beginning of Class 6.
Examination
Strategic market management: Marketing processes, practices and pitfalls in an era of hypercompetition:
Exam ECTS 7.5
Examination form Home assignment - written product
Individual or group exam Individual
Size of written product Max. 15 pages
Assignment type Written assignment
Duration Written product to be submitted on specified date and time.
Grading scale 7-step scale
Examiner(s) One internal examiner
Exam period Summer
Make-up exam/re-exam
Same examination form as the ordinary exam
Course content and structure

The process of strategic market management centers on the full set of commitments, decisions and actions required for a firm to achieve strategic competitiveness and earn above-average returns. Analysing its external environment and internal organization to determine its resources, capabilities, and core competencies—the sources of its “strategic inputs”—is the first step the firm takes in this process. With the results of these analyses at hand, the firm develops its vision and mission and formulates its strategy. To implement this strategy, the firm takes actions toward achieving strategic competitiveness and above-average returns. The effectiveness of the firm’s implementation and formulation actions increases when those actions are effectively integrated. This process is dynamic in nature as ever-changing markets and competitive structures are coordinated with a firm’s continuously-evolving strategic inputs.

 

Increasingly important to a firm’s success, strategy is concerned with making choices among two or more alternatives. When choosing a strategy, the firm decides to pursue one course of action instead of others. The choices are influenced by opportunities and threats in the firm’s external environment as well as the nature and quality of the resources, capabilities and core competencies in its internal organization. We are exposed to daily examples of how strategy is a dynamic phenomenon and as firms try to gain strategic competitiveness and earn above-average returns, others try to attack, flank or destroy the basis of this advantage. An effectively formulated strategy marshals, integrates and allocates the firm’s resources, capabilities and competencies so that it will be properly aligned with its external environment. A properly developed strategy also rationalizes the firm’s vision and mission along with the actions taken to achieve them. Information about a host of variables including markets, customers, technology, and the changing world economy must be collected and analyzed to properly form and use strategies. In the final analysis, sound strategic choices that reduce uncertainty regarding outcomes are the foundation for building successful strategies.

 

We will use the strategic market management process to explain what firms do to achieve strategic competitiveness and earn above-average returns. These explanations demonstrate why some firms consistently achieve competitive success while others fail to do so.

 

For the Preliminary Assignment each student will be required to select one from a choice of several articles from the business media that will be uploaded on the CBS LEARN platform and to prepare a brief written analysis of the content for Class 1. This will form the basis of class discussion and student participation in our first class. In the Mid-Term Assignment students will be assigned to groups and will be required to write a case study illustrating a ‘strategy success story’ – identifying, describing, and analyzing a product, brand, business or corporation of their choice and explaining the reasons for its above-average returns. Further details and methods for approaching this will delivered in class. 

 

Class

Topic

Class 1

Strategic Market Management in Perspective With Customer Value as Focus: considering multiple business orientations; understanding the nature and drivers of customer value

Class 2

Market & Performance Analytics: the structure of the general, industry, and internal environment; tools and techniques to create market insights; creating a strategic dashboard for performance assessment of firms.

Class 3

Strategic Resources & Capabilities: demonstrating that it is not what a firm has but what it does with what it has that matters; exploring different types of resources and capabilities understanding how value is created from them

Class 4

Business Strategy: the three pillars of effective business strategy; how to design a strategy statement; hybrid strategy and the strategy paradox.

Class 5

Competitive Rivalry & Market Dynamics: forms of competition; the commodity trap; pursuing temporary not sustainable advantage; the nature of dynamic equilibrium in explaining market competition; new product category creation.

Class 6

Corporate Parenting & Managing Across The Portfolio: examining how business units and products exist within a portfolio that needs to be managed with scarce resources; corporate growth prospects and managing risk; the nature of corporate and operational relatedness.

Mandatory Mid-Term Assignment due.

Class 7

Strategy & Marketing Leadership: illustrating the nature of career development and the C-suite roles; explaining how the Chief Marketing Officer role has transformed and considering the rise of the Chief Strategy Officer.  

Class 8

Strategic Innovation & Strategic Entrepreneurship: opportunity-seeking and advantage-seeking; sources of innovation and the innovation process; business models and ecosystems; the basis of business model innovation.

Class 9

Alliances, Partnerships, Mergers, & Acquisitions: the strategic case for collaboration vs. organic growth; the basis of coopetition; forms of inter-organizational relationships; exploring different go-to-market strategies

Class 10

Strategy Execution: diagnosing why strategies fail; how to identify, anticipate, and develop work around for resistance to strategy; two models of strategy execution—to ‘leapfrog’ or ‘cascade’; strategic improvisation.

Class 11

Comprehensive Review

Teaching methods
The course will include lectures, class discussions, and group exercises. Video vignettes will also be employed to illustrate examples of academic topics and company practices. Class participation and lively debate will be encouraged and emphasis will be placed on both course content and study skills. Balancing academic rigor and practical analytical skills to use in companies provide the focus of learning on this course.
Further Information

Preliminary Assignment: To help students get maximum value from ISUP courses, instructors provide a reading or a small number of readings or video clips to be read or viewed before the start of classes with a related task scheduled for class 1 in order to 'jump-start' the learning process.

 

The timetable is available on http://www.cbs.dk/uddannelse/summer-university-programme/courses.
Expected literature

A portfolio of articles and readings will be recommended that will be used to illustrate, reinforce, and explain the ideas and concepts conveyed in class.

 

Textbook

  • Volberda, Henk, Robert Morgan, Patrick Reinmoeller, Michael Hitt, Duane Ireland, Robert Hoskisson (2011), Strategic Management: Competitiveness & Globalizaton (Concepts and Cases), South-Western (Cengage Learning).  ISBN: 978-1-4080-1918-4.

 

Selected articles

  • Boyd, Eric, Rajesh Chandy, and Marcus Cunha Jr. (2010), “When Do Chief Marketing Officers Impact Firm Value? A Customer Power Explanation,” Journal of Marketing Research, 47 (4), 1162-1176.
  • Campbell, Andrew, Michael Goold & Mark Alexander (1995), “Corporate strategy: the quest for parenting advantage”, Harvard Business Review, March/April, 120-132.
  • Collis, David J. & Michael G. Rukstad (2008), “Can you say what your strategy is?”, Harvard Business Review, April: 82-90.
  • Dawar, Niraj (2013), “When Marketing Is Strategy,” Harvard Business Review, December, 101-108.
  • Day, George S. (2011), “Closing the Marketing Capabilities Gap”, Journal of Marketing, 75 (July), 183-195.
  • Eisenhardt, Kathleen M., & Don Sull (2001), “Strategy as simple rules”, Harvard Business Review, January: 106-116.
  • French, Tom, Laura LaBerge, and Paul Magill (2011), “We’re All Marketers Now”, McKinsey Quarterly, July, http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/marketing_sales/were_all_marketers_now
  • Groysberg, Boris, L. Kevin Kelly, and Bryan MacDonald (2011), "The new path to the C-suite," Harvard Business Review, March, 60-68.
  • Kachaner, Nicolas & Sam Stewart (2013), “Understanding the role of the Chief Strategy Officer”, BCG Perspectives, https://www.bcgperspectives.com
  • Kehrer, Daniel (2013), “Why ROI Is Often Wrong For Measuring Marketing Impact”, Forbes, 7/09/2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesinsights/2013/07/09/why-roi-is-often-wrong-for-measuring-marketing-impact
  • McGrath, Rita Gunther (2013), “Transient advantage”, Harvard Business Review, June, pp.62-70
  • Morgan, Neil (2012), “Marketing and business performance”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 40, 102-119.
  • Thorpe, Eleri & Robert Morgan (2007), “In pursuit of the “ideal approach” to successful marketing strategy implementation”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol.41 (5/6): 659-677.
Last updated on 10/08/2017