HAIFA UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

COURSE: MARKETING STRATEGY
GENERAL MBA PROGRAM

Professor: Dr. Kimberlee Weaver Livnat

Room: 617 Jacobs building
tel: 04-828-8292
email: klivnat76@[Link]
office hours: by appointment

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Marketing is the process by which firms, organizations, and other agents of influence attempt
to “create, communicate, deliver, and exchange offerings that have value for customers,
clients, partners, and society at large” (American Marketing Association, 2013). Note that
this definition applies not only to “for profit” business contexts but also to nonprofit contexts
and even to the marketing of ideas themselves. In this class we will examine and discuss
principles of marketing strategy that have been developed in order to increase our potential to
think strategically about novel marketing problems. We will start by examining in depth the
concept of customer value. Then we will learn the basic frameworks of human judgment and
decision making and marketing strategy. Along the way, we will situate these concepts in the
context of real world marketing problems that have been (or currently are being) faced by
organizations. Given the global nature of business today, we will emphasize international
contexts when possible.

OBJECTIVES
1. Learn fundamental principles of human judgment and decision making and marketing
strategy.

2. Use case studies and other real world examples to examine how the fundamental principles
of human judgment and decision making and marketing strategy have been implemented in
strategic marketing contexts. Our ultimate goal here is to extract principles from these
specific examples that we can then apply to new strategic marketing problems that we may
face in our own professional lives.

3. Practice analyzing marketing situations and making decisions.

 LEARNING METHODS

In this class, we will learn theoretical approaches to understanding consumer behavior and
marketing strategy and observe how those principles have been implemented successfully
(and unsuccessfully) in the real world via case studies, videos, and in class examples. We will
then use these examples to help us begin to practice thinking about marketing in new
contexts that may be of interest in our own professional lives. Our ultimate goal is to extract
general principles that may be broadly applicable across other cases in the future.

READING MATERIALS

Readings for class will come from chapters from textbooks, research articles, articles from
the popular press, and Business School cases. You are required to do the reading for each
week before the class session in order to be prepared to discuss the material in class.

GRADING

Attendance and participation: 10%

Case summaries: 40% (3 case write ups worth 13.33% each)
Group presentation: 20%
Group paper digital marketing: 30%

CLASS ATTENDANCE AND ACTIVE PARTICIPATION

Your thoughtful contributions to class discussion and constructive responses to others’

discussion points are particularly important to class. Students should do the assigned readings
before class and come ready to discuss them. The grading for this component will depend on
the quality and not just quantity of contributions in class.

CASE SUMMARIES

Completing the three case summaries is an individual assignment and each student should
do his/her own work on it. There are three cases for which we will have written assignments
this semester (Nike and Maersk). To help you think about and process information about the
cases in advance of class, you will prepare and hand over a preparation sheet that answers the
case questions (posted on Moodle) and submit it to Moodle PRIOR to the start of the
relevant class. These will be graded on the basis of the quality of the analysis. If you are not
able to turn in a case assignment by the due date please contact me beforehand. Please do
your own work on these assignments.
 GROUP PAPER AND PRESENTATION

For the final paper, you will form groups of 2-5 people. Your goal in this project is to design
a digital marketing strategy for a product / cause / or idea of your choice that currently has a
suboptimal digital presence. For the purpose of this assignment, the “product” can be a for
profit product or a brand (either B2C or B2B) (e.g., a clothing brand, a sports team, a country
or city where you want to encourage tourism), or it could also be an “entity” (e.g., an
attorney, doctor, business consultant, expert in a field, college professor), or an idea (e.g.,
reducing screentime among children, conserving water, promoting recycling), or a cause
(e.g., encouraging donation to nonprofit organization, encouraging blood donation,
promoting volunteering). Please choose something that is of interest either in your own
current or past business life or of intrinsic interest to the members of your group. For this
project you will first closely examine the digital marketing practice of at least two companies
or entities with successful digital strategies and summarize the main points you learned
from these in 1.5 single spaced pages. You will then describe your proposed digital strategy
for your chosen topic, including preparing a section on the general company background as
well as your proposed digital marketing plan. A group project information sheet describing
the project in greater detail will be available on Moodle during class week 2.

COURSE CONTENT

1 Outline of the course

Introduction: ▪ What is consumer value?
The concept of ▪ Psychological foundations of human motivation
Consumer Value ▪ Hierarchy of needs
▪ Product positioning strategies
▪ Formation of groups

2 Reading Due on this Class: Nike Football World Cup 2010

Marketing *CASE ASSIGNMENT DUE before class: Nike case write up
research and
marketing ▪ Identifying segments and targets
segmentation ▪ Effective targeting: where, when, how to reach a target audience
▪ Differentiation strategies
▪ Business versus consumer targets
▪ Types of marketing research

3 Reading Due on this class: Sony Case: Sony Targets Laptop Consumers in
Marketing China: Segment Global or Local
segmentation +
fundamental ▪ In depth analysis of segmentation, why do we do it, how do we do it
marketing ▪ Applying marketing frameworks to a uncovering unique value
frameworks proposition: STP, SWOT, PEST, 4P’s
▪ Analyzing competitors
 ▪ Crafting a positioning strategy
▪ Points-of-parity and points-of-difference
▪ Differentiation strategies

4 Reading Due on this class: Maersk Line case

Pricing *CASE ASSIGNMENT DUE BEFORE CLASS: Maersk Line

▪ Social media B2B

▪ Current issues in pricing
▪ Product life cycle
▪ Value proposition
▪ Digital marketing strategy

5 Reading Due on this class (Note: We will also listen to an audio of this case
Branding during class): Aqualisa: Simply a Better Shower

▪ Product innovation
▪ Developing a strong brand
▪ Differentiating from competitors

Reading Due this class: Predicting Consumer Tastes with Big Data at the Gap
6 * CASE ASSIGNMENT DUE BEFORE CLASS: The Gap
Consumer
Behavior ▪ Defaults
▪ Innovation and adoption of innovation
▪ Consumer judgment and decision making
▪ Consumer behavior
▪ Choice overload
▪ Social media word of mouth

Reading Due this class: HBR article Marketing in the Age of Alexa
7
Culture + New ▪ Culture: East v. West; collectivist vs. individualistic
directions in ▪ Branding + positioning: costs & benefits of local vs. global positioning
marketing strategies
▪ Examples of successful and unsuccessful extensions

8 ▪ Group presentations
Group Project ▪ Course wrap up
Presentations

Summary

Meeting 1 (22/5/20): Introduction: Consumer Value: What is it?

(29/5/20): NO CLASS SHAVUOT VACATION

Meeting 2 (5/6/20): Marketing Research and Marketing Segmentation
*Nike case assignment DUE

Meeting 3 (12/6/20): Marketing Segmentation (continued) in the Context of Fundamental

Strategic Marketing Frameworks
Sony case (read by this class)

Meeting 4 (19/6/20): Pricing

*Maersk case assignment DUE

Meeting 5 (26/6/20): Branding + Market Response to Product Innovation

Aqualisa case (read by this class)

Meeting 6 (3/7/20): Consumer Behavior

*The Gap Big Data case assignment DUE

Meeting 7 (10/7/20): Culture and Marketing Developments

Meeting 8 (17/7/20): Group Case Presentations