• • Understand and apply various perspectives and theories pertaining to markets and market dynamism, with regard to their inherent differences and particular contributions, as well as their implicit challenges and opportunities, from a marketing perspective
• • Classify the elements of an excellent marketing organization (e.g., culture, capabilities, configuration, human capital) and its main activity levers, according to recent developments in literature and practice
• • Describe the scope, nature, and contribution of the marketing organization to firm performance
• • Outline the essential marketing capabilities for marketing excellence and how such capabilities can be developed.
• • Link the detailed configuration of marketing (e.g., structure, metrics) with company performance
• • Discuss the impact of culture versus the impact of leadership on driving and delivering marketing excellence
• • Summarise issues associated with market dynamism and marketing excellence for a particular case in a readable, well-structured mini-project that meets academic requirements

In most companies, marketing represents a core business process, a key function, and a strategic value orientation. As is true of most strategic orientations (e.g., innovativeness, total quality management, corporate sustainability), there are two sides to marketing: an expression of strategic decisions and tasks being enacted but also foundational premises that support and enable excellence. This course focuses on the latter dimension. Following recent research into marketing management and leadership, this course proposes that there are four essential elements that constitute any marketing organization: its capabilities, culture, architecture, and human capital. For the last element, special weight will be attributed to managers’ mind-sets about how to strengthen marketing’s accountability in business and for society.

Through lectures, workshops, and case analyses, the emphasis will be on applying frameworks that depict market dynamism and the organization of marketing. Some frameworks are available in extant literature; others will be developed during the course. By applying these frameworks, students will learn to describe and discuss the implications of using frameworks as strategic development tools for particular companies, detailed in cases incorporated in the learning process by both lecturers and students. With the overall experiential learning approach, this course will encourage student learning through a process of experiences gained by linking academic knowledge about market dynamism and marketing excellence with insights about particular cases (markets and marketing organizations of existing or potential firms). In line with the evolution of this theoretical field, this experiential approach also regards students as significant co-creators of knowledge in the classes, workshops, and project work. The project work will involve applying market dynamism and marketing organization frameworks to a particular case (existing or potential venture) to provide a foundation for answering the central questions associated with market dynamism and market excellence: What should the scope, mission, and vision of marketing be? What are the foundational premises and capabilities for marketing that are required to deliver excellent, original contributions to the company’s performance

This course is part of the minor in Entrepreneurial Marketing for Corporate Business