Online Master’s in Marketing Curriculum at the Leavey School of Business

This residency course introduces key CMO and marketing technology issues that marketers face in their firms every day. It discusses the use of online dashboards for tracking, evaluation, and reporting, and it outlines the underlying technology and data that feeds into the dashboards. The course also focuses on broad technological advances in marketing, highlights the CMO/CFO interface, looks at the latest trends in marketing automation, and evaluates the role of outsourcing as part of the overall marketing resource mix.

This course is an introduction to business ethics that focuses specifically on the kinds of ethical issues that marketing managers typically encounter. Course topics include the psychological factors that influence moral decision-making, normative approaches for dealing with ethical issues in management, and application of these concepts to cases involving the use of customer data, customer privacy, online engagement and addiction, deceptive advertising, and pricing.

Focuses on decisions faced by managers concerning market segmentation, targeting, and positioning. Covers concepts such as new product development, pricing strategies, distribution channels, customer relationships, and performance metrics within a strategic planning framework. Students apply these key concepts and frameworks to cases and to formulating a comprehensive marketing plan centered on sustainable profitability and capabilities. Cases cover various environments and industries, especially those of concern to Silicon Valley firms.

Topics include frameworks for understanding how customers make decisions and adopt innovations; metrics for assessing customer attitudes, satisfaction, and loyalty; methods for segmenting a market; and measures of brand equity. The focus throughout is on techniques for gathering and analyzing data on customers and markets in both online and traditional channels. Addresses B-to-B and B-to-C decision processes in rapidly changing markets.

Prepares managers to 1) identify the competitive advantages that come from leveraged analytics, 2) apply the tools and evaluate the advantages and limitations of each, 3) implement these tools and ask relevant business questions that could be solved with them, and 4) interpret the input and communicate the output from such tools and models to achieve more profitable business decisions.

The profusion of information available to the buyers, thanks to the internet, has fundamentally altered the marketing landscape. Marketers now need the power of technology to engage with buyers in a meaningful and consistent way, and drive results. The purpose of this course is to introduce students to core technology platforms at the intersection of marketing and information systems and to present an overview of some popular platform solutions including Salesforce, Oracle’s Eloqua, Adobe’s Marketo, and more.

Brand development and brand management are not only potentially powerful weapons in the marketing arsenal, but also a major business resource and a key intangible financial asset for beating the competition. Yet many Silicon Valley marketers rely only on technology, attributes, and/or price and overlook the strategic and tactical benefits that a well-managed brand provides. Achieving brand leadership provides a framework and tools for marketers to successfully brand products and services and add an additional layer of advantage within the competitive environment.

This course defines and examines the concept of branding through a theoretical and conceptual framework and in a number of business contexts. Beginning with a fundamental review of the core branding elements, we weigh the importance of both the promise and the experience aspects of branding in building and sustaining trust. An examination of brand measurements illuminates the power of metrics and highlights different aspects of branding strategies. A look at past cases of successful and unsuccessful branding brings out variations in approaches to such issues as master brands, sub-brands, and the branding of services. Finally, the impact of branding architectures and creative positioning on brand equity are considered.

The course will use both management readings and current articles to provide a solid foundation for analysis. A series of cases drawn from both the product and service arenas will enable students to apply this analytical framework to actual situations. Brand equity and its related metrics provide a standard basis in evaluating various strategies for establishing and growing brands. A final individual course project offers an opportunity to integrate various facets of branding for a specific product or service.

Presents the product manager or marketer as a generalist with responsibility for the multifunctional, multidisciplinary approach required to develop, launch, and manage successful products. Includes in-depth treatments of product life cycle analysis, buyer utility, competitive set, customer and market analysis, pricing, and the product launch process. Appropriate for those interested in high-technology and/or consumer product markets.

Provides the student with user-level knowledge of sales concepts and management methodologies necessary to effectively perform and manage the sales function. In the role of a sales or marketing manager, enables the student to apply these concepts to selling consumer products as well as high-tech industrial products. Includes concepts related to organizational structuring, territory plans and reviews, resource management, sales incentives, and compensation programs.

Programmatic advertising is the software-driven, algorithmic transaction of display advertising space in real time. As advertising rapidly shifts from traditional to digital formats, and as this digital advertising itself becomes increasingly programmatic, the industry needs technologists who are able to harness this constantly evolving and complex domain.

This course will transform programmatic novices into experts who can apply knowledge and experience to real-life scenarios. The course will provide foundational knowledge of the programmatic advertising landscape, an understanding of how it fits into marketing strategy, and the necessary skills to be able to navigate the space from various perspectives.

This course introduces the concepts critical to understanding contemporary B2B marketing and the emergence of account-based marketing (ABM) as a go-to-market strategy. You will learn why account-based marketing has recently become important, and you will gain an understanding of when it is appropriate to employ an ABM strategy and what types of companies utilize this approach. You will gain hands-on knowledge and experience in developing and evaluating effective ABM strategies. By successfully completing this course, you will be able to use cutting-edge marketing technologies in the implementation of an account-based marketing strategy, including their use for measuring the effectiveness of the program.

Examines the role of social media in business and brand strategy, digital advertising, and overall marketing mix. This class introduces students to the current social media landscape, explores how it can be used for maximum results for both corporate and individual branding, and evaluates which social platforms are the best fit for their organization's marketing goals. Topics to be covered will include an overview of platforms, current social media trends and their implications, developing social media strategy, measurement, and challenges.

The purpose of this course is to equip students with critical thinking regarding the challenges and opportunities in today’s e-commerce practice. The class time will be a combination of lectures of key e-commerce related concepts and frameworks, discussions of case studies to examine the effective internet-based business models, and hands-on experience in developing and evaluating key elements in e-commerce practice. The course prepares graduates to create, analyze, and manage an internet-based business.

The success of a marketing campaign or overall strategy ultimately depends on how a company's end customers perceive, accept and adopt a product value proposition/ positioning/resulting messaging. Especially in high technology markets, where new purchases are capital investments measured by impact to the business and return on investment, a product value proposition has to be extremely clear, tangible and differentiated in order to achieve vendor preference, as well as maintain desired pricing and margin levels. This 2-credit-hour course focuses on proven, effective strategies for understanding customer requirements and translating them into clear, digestible and differentiated messaging statements. We will provide strategies and examples to achieve strong competitive positioning, as well as how and when to (re-)define an entire market vs. just differentially positioning your products. Specific topics will include best practices for positioning and messaging creation, competitive landscape modeling and developing differentiation, translating customer requirements into effective positioning/messaging, and wholesale market (re-definition). Additional focus will include an overview of core media assets to effectively drive adoption of positioning/ messaging in today's increasingly Web 2.0 world.

The purpose of this new course in the MS in Marketing program is to provide conceptual frameworks and analytical skills on the effective management and strategic deployment of multi-channel decisions for consumer products, business-to-business, and services organizations. The course covers channels functions, structure, and the evaluation of their efficiency. It also examines collaboration, relationship, conflicts, and sustainable strategy. Organizing channel members as comprehensive and dynamic systems concludes the course. The majority of course content uses case studies that are set in electronics and high-tech contexts and are pertinent to Silicon Valley businesses.

This course will explore the impact of digital modernization, cyber malice, and data privacy mandates on the modern marketer. Marketers must now adopt modern MarTech approaches to help businesses thrive, while navigating complex data regulations, security requirements for cloud-based marketing tools, and complex and evolving ethical lines brought about by a hyperconnected and immediately consequential technology and business environment.

The purpose of this course is to provide conceptual frameworks and analytical skills on the effective management and strategic deployment of distribution channels for consumer product, business-to-business, and service organizations. The course covers channels functions, structure, and the evaluation of their efficiency. It also examines collaboration, relationship, conflicts, and sustainable strategy. Organizing channel members as dynamic systems concludes the course. The majority of course content uses case studies set in contexts pertinent to technology and Silicon Valley businesses. Students may take either this course or MKTG3590 but not both for credit.

This course covers key issues in internet advertising. Provides an in-depth understanding of search ads, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, display ads, retargeting, ad auctions, and programmatic implications. You will also gain a deep understanding of critical measurement methods and issues relating to paid advertising. Also discusses advertising on mobile devices.

Data and Analytics have led to a paradigm shift in the practice of Marketing. This course builds upon and extends from the first Marketing Analytics course, and introduces students to the most recent developments in data-driven applications in marketing decisions. In this course, not only the classical marketing concepts will be revisited from the data perspective, the modeling techniques developed for these marketing decisions are introduced for the students to understand them intuitively, rather than mathematically. Real-world data are applied and analyzed using Excel, which allows easy adaptation for students to apply the knowledge and tools in other contexts using their own data. Topics include marketing attribution, behavior-based targeting, customer lifetime value, and experimental design.

Retailing is a dynamic and ever-changing industry. This course examines rigorous tools that help retailers develop a competitive strategy to survive and thrive in today's marketplace. The topics include product assortment planning, SKU optimization, private label management, visual merchandising, data-driven mark-up, and mark-down strategies, as well as big data practices and BI (business intelligence) tools that advance modern retail analytics.