marketing and business analytics

Academic year 2020-2021 Maastricht University School of Business and Economics

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School of Business and Economics

Bachelor

COURSE Manual

Marketing and Business Analytics

Course Code

Academic Year: 2020-2021

Course Period: 4

Marketing and Business Analytics - Course Code20xx-20xx of 13

Table of Contents

Introduction ..................................................................................................................................3

Course team ..................................................................................................................................3

Course objectives...........................................................................................................................4

Course structure ............................................................................................................................4

Literature ......................................................................................................................................5

Assessment and Grading ................................................................................................................5

Fraud and Plagiarism......................................................................................................................7

Comments and Complaints.............................................................................................................8

Course schedule ............................................................................................................................9

Lectures & Tutorials ..................................................................................................................... 10

Presentation Evaluation Form....................................................................................................... 12


Introduction

The course Marketing and Business Analytics aims to provide you with an introduction to

the core principles of marketing, as well as introduce typical analytical methods used to

inform marketing decisions. While you are probably thinking about advertising when it

comes to marketing, the range of activities covered by the marketing discipline is much

larger than that. The American Marketing Association defines marketing as “the activity,

set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and

exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at

large.” In other words, marketing is the study of value exchange.

In the course, we will be mainly concerned with marketing from a consumer (such as

yourself) perspective. The course starts with a definition of marketing and markets in

general. Next, we focus on marketing segmentation, a crucial step to bring offerings to

market. We then focus on market selection, followed by positioning. In this final step, the

marketing mix comes into play: Using price, product, promotion and place (the ‘4Ps’), an

organization tries to appeal to its selected target market to the greatest extent in order

to create the most value.

To make the best possible decisions in each stage of the marketing process, decision

support given by analytical tools is indispensable. Therefore, each of the topics is coupled

with a suitable method that can assist managers in taking a decision based on data

collected by the organization or third parties. Any modern marketing organization will

make use of such tools in one way or the other, given the wide availability of data

generated by organizations and customers alike.

After this course, you should have obtained an understanding of the core principles of

marketing, as well as some of the most commonly analytical techniques in the marketing

discipline. In the eLab following this course, you will built upon the knowledge obtained in

this in a different setting. We hope you enjoy the course!

Course team

- Dr. Niels Holtrop: Coordinator ([email protected])

mailto:[email protected]


Course objectives

There are two main objectives in this course:

1. Students are familiar with the core principles of marketing

2. Students can select and work with a select set of marketing research methods

The first objective is achieved through a weekly series of lectures and/or tutorials

focusing on marketing theory. In each week, a specific marketing problem takes the

stage. Next to that, for selected marketing decisions we will discuss relevant analytical

methods to support these decisions. You will work on and present assignments related to

these methods during tutorials focused on the selected method and marketing problem.

This way we also achieve the second objective.

Course structure

The course consists of 1 lecture and 13 tutorial sessions. Each tutorial session will discuss

a relevant core marketing principle or marketing research technique. The structure of the

course is such that a marketing research technique is preceded by a session explaining

the relevant marketing theory. This way, you will first be exposed to the relevant

theoretical thinking, after which you will be taught an approach to put the learned theory

into practice using a data-driven approach. Together with a group of students, you will

work on a small, data-driven assignment and present your findings to the group during

dedicated tutorial sessions.

Special attention to presentation skills will be paid in this course. During six sessions,

presentations will take place where two or three students will present their solution to

the data-driven assignment. During the first tutorial session, we will discuss what

important presentation skills are. After each presentation session, extensive feedback will

be provided to the presenters in order to foster mastery of the presentation skill.

The course starts with a survey which all students are requested to fill in. The data

obtained from this survey will be used in some of the assignments throughout the

course. This way you will get hands on experience with both collecting and analysing

primary data obtained for market research purposes.


Literature

The literature for this course consists of the following:

- Kotler, P. & G. Armstrong (2017), Principles of marketing, Pearson Education

[KA]

- Lilien, G. L., Rangaswamy, A., & De Bruyn, A. (2013). Principles of marketing

engineering. DecisionPro. [LRB]

The course literature consists of two complimentary textbooks. Both textbooks are

available in digital or physical version. While the KA book focuses on explaining the core

marketing principles, the LRB book provides relevant methods to inform core marketing

decisions. As you will see in the course schedule, the chapters in these books are tightly

aligned.

Assessment and Grading

You pass the course if your final grade is 5.5 or higher, and if you pass all minimum

restrictions for the partial scores. The final grade is calculated as the weighted average of

two elements. In the schedule below, you will find an overview of the elements, the weight

they get in your final grade, the minimum restriction per partial grade, and the alternative

assignment per element that you will have to do in case you score lower than the minimum

restriction for the component. All partial grades will be rounded to the nearest half or full

point.


Elements Weight Passing Norm Resit

Participation

Activity during class

discussion

Quality of contribution

during class discussion

Filling in course

questionaire

20% None

Presentation

Quality of presentation

(see evaluation form

Appendix)

10% None

Final exam

Understanding and

analysis of problems

Solution to problems

70% ≥5.5 Resit exam

Validity of partial results

WRITE TEXT FROM CURRENT EXAM REGULATIONS.

Re-sit

If you do not pass the class participation requirement of the course, you will be given

course assignments to compensate for each session in excess of two you did not pass. A

course assignment will typically focus on reviewing the material from the course using

exercises, summaries of complementary literature and/or a critical evaluation of material

presented during the course.


Fraud and Plagiarism

In order to protect the reputation of the degrees that you – as students – receive,

instances of cheating or plagiarism are treated extremely seriously.

Fraud, including plagiarism, is understood as a student’s act or failure to act that makes

it partially or fully impossible to correctly assess his/her knowledge, insight and skills.

Plagiarism is understood as the presentation of one ’s own or other people’s ideas or

words without adequate reference to the source.

Any assignment is an individual piece of work, which means that plagiarism is strictly

forbidden. Equally, the use of mobile phones, communication devices or any other

information carrier (whether the phone or other device is turned on or off, used or not

used, etc. is irrelevant) during an examination is also forbidden.

If the Board of Examiners concludes that anything has occurred in an examination that

makes it partially or fully impossible to correctly assess his/her knowledge, insight and

skills, they may impose a sanction in accordance with SBE’s policy on fraud, including

plagiarism.

More information can be found on MySBE Intranet.


Comments and Complaints

If you would like to make a comment on the examination itself or file a complaint about

your examination results, there are procedures in place to do this.

Please refer to MySBE Intranet via the Student Portal for more information.

Comment

Within five days after the examination date you can submit comments on the content

and design of the examination (questions) to the course coordinator. The coordinator will

inform you how you can submit your comments via a remark on the front page of the

exam and/or via the Student Portal > My Courses > Course Details.

Inspection

Within ten working days of the publication of your examination results, you will be able

to have a look at your assessed work.

The date and time of the inspection will be published on the ‘Student Portal > My Courses

> Course Details’.

In case of a multiple choice examination you can request a copy of your answer sheet via

Surfyourself (SYS).

Complaint

Students can lodge a complaint during the inspection by using the complaint form.

Appeal

For information regarding an appeal procedure, please read the information on MySBE

Intranet.


Course schedule

Below you see a full overview of the meetings and other activities of this course. Please

note that this overview is only INDICATIVE because changes may be required throughout

the course. Every time a change to the schedule has been made, you are informed via an

announcement on the student portal. Of course, for your convenience, we will try to reduce

the changes to an absolute minimum.

Week

1

Opening lecture

Session 1

The marketing process

KA Chapter 1+2

2

Session 2

Market segmentation & targeting

KA Chapter 7

Session 3

Segmentation approaches

LRB Chapter 3

3

Session 4

Pos itioning approaches

LRB chapter 4

Session 5

Products & NPD

KA Chapter 8 + 9

4

Session 6

Conjoint analysis

LRB chapter 6

Session 7

Pricing

KA Chapter 10 + 11

5

Session 8

Pricing methods

LRB Chapter 7

Session 9

Advertis ing

KA Chapter 14 +15

6

Session 10

Market response models

LRB Chapter 1

Session 11

Retailing and channels

KA Chapter 12 + 13

7

Session 12

Marketing attribution

LRB Chapter 8

Session 13:

Q&A

Table 1: Overview of the course


Lectures & Tutorials

Week 1

The introduction lecture will introduce to the structure and workings of the course. The

first tutorial session will be used to be acquainted with the group, and we will discuss the

basic principles of marketing and markets using an introductory task.

Week 2

The theme of the second week is market segmentation. We start with an overview of

segmentation theory, and relevant variables to segment on. Next, in the data-driven task

you will perform a segmentation analysis yourselves, using some of the clustering

techniques learned in Knowledge Discovery and Data Visualization. The data for this

exercise derives from the survey you all filled in before the start of the course.

Week 3

Building on the last week, we start with an overview of techniques to visualize brand and

product positioning (e.g. perceptual mapping). Here, we draw on the visualization

techniques learned in Knowledge Discovery and Data Visualization. The data for this

exercise again derives from the survey you all filled in before the start of the course.

The focus of the course then switches to ways to influence this positioning, starting with

the product itself. We review theory on what products are, and focus on new-product

development and the steps involved.

Week 4

As a way to evaluate new products prior to market introduction, you will be introduced to

conjoint analysis as a tool to do so. Using regression analyses from Statistics, we will

analyse the conjoint data you provided at the start of the course in the survey, and show

these findings can be used in a market simulation to evaluate the performance of existing

products and the introduction of new (hypothetical) products.

The second session moves on to another salient aspect of the marketing, namely the

price. We review ways to determine price, and the consequences they have for

consumer’s perceptions.

Week 5

To implement effective pricing in practice, several ways to determine and evaluate prices

have been developed. We review these methods, and study how to implement these in

consumer surveys such as those seen in Introduction to Business Analytics and the start


of this course. We also return to conjoint analysis in relation to price determination.

Based on these methods, you will make pricing recommendations for the existing and

new products we’ve discussed last week.

The second tutorial shifts the focus to advertising, discussing its role in the marketing

process, the difference between various types and channels of advertising, and the role

of integrated marketing communications for effective implementation of advertising

strategies.

Week 6

To evaluate advertising’s effectiveness, we introduce market response models as a tool

to do so. Building on your knowledge of regression analysis from Statistics, we estimate

these models on actual sales data from a well-known chocolate brand.

The second part of the week shifts to marketing channels, the final marketing mix

element. Understanding the role of marketing channels, and in particular those of on-

and off-line channels, is important in today’s world with its focus on omnichannel

retailing.

Week 7

Building on your knowledge of market response models, we study the marketing

attribution problem, determining which channels are most effective for a business. Again

we use regression based tools for this exercise, in combination with data provided by the

admissions office of SBE relating to the channels that prospective students use to inform

themselves about the school. The course then ends with a Q&A session in preparation for

the exam.


Presentation Evaluation Form

A. Evaluate the presentation by answering the following general questions (space on back)

1. In general, what did you like about the facilitation?

2. In general, what would you do differently/could be improved?

B. Evaluate the presentation by answering the following questions

1 = Strongly disagree; 2 = Disagree; 3 = Neutral; 4 = Agree; 5 = Strongly agree

Structure of the session 1 2 3 4 5 The opening caught my interest

The purpose and structure were clear to me

The session was well structured and time wise well organized Internal summaries were provided and transitions from topic

to topic were clear to me

1 1 1 1

2 2 2 2

3 3 3 3

4 4 4 4

5 5 5 5

Appearance and delivery

The session was lively The presenters were intelligible, enunciated clearly and spoke

loudly enough

The presenters were aware of the audience

The presenters used effective and creative ways to stimulate input from the group and evoked and facilitated group discussion

The slides were readable, clear and attractive

The slides were effectively used to aid clarity and heighten impact; the presenters allowed enough time to read them

The presenters effectively used other materials such as the whiteboard, hand-outs, case materials etc.

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

Content of the session

The presenters fostered my comprehension of the material The presenters adequately analyzed (related) and synthesized

(combined and integrated) the literature

The presenters sufficiently applied (transferred) their knowledge and understanding to a particular setting using examples and cases

The presenters fostered developing my own opinion and helped me in making value decisions about issues based on specific criteria

The presenters focused on key issues

Questions from the group were adequately addressed

1 1 1 1 1 1 1

2 2 2 2 2 2 2

3 3 3 3 3 3 3

4 4 4 4 4 4 4

5 5 5 5 5 5 5

marketing and business analytics

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