Course Category: General Education

Powered by Harvard Business Publishing, this module covers fundamental concepts, theories, and frameworks in marketing. This module begins with an overview of marketing communications strategy and then presents a framework for designing strategies to optimize consumer engagement. This framework offers marketers three broad phases for developing a marketing communications plan: strategic intent, strategic execution, and strategic impact. Crafting such a plan ensures that coordinated and complementary messages are delivered in an integrated marketing communications plan across all consumer touch points. This module contains two Interactive Illustrations, “Budgeting for Marketing Communications,” which illustrates the objective-and-task budgeting method with a hierarchy of effects perspective, and “Viral Effect of Marketing,” which explores the likelihood that a shared YouTube video will “go viral.” The Reading also contains links to two video clips, the Taco Bell “Routine Republic” advertisement, a classic example of a conflict-based story, and “Cracking the Code of Super Bowl Ad Effectiveness,” which describes research linking viewers’ brain activity to the emotional connection of effective ads. Please note: This module does not cover the complexity of digital marketing. Its influence on marketing communications is covered in greater depth in Core Reading: Digital Marketing, a recommended pairing (assignment) with this Reading.

Powered by Harvard Business Publishing, this module covers fundamental concepts, theories, and frameworks in marketing.  Digital technology has changed how consumers search for information, buy products and services, and interact with companies and each other. These technologies also have made it possible for companies to understand better their customer’s decision journeys and subsequent word-of-mouth recommendations. Digital marketing requires new approaches to reach and engage consumers. This module highlights four key elements of digital marketing: outbound marketing (search advertising, display ads, and video ads), inbound marketing, social media networks, and mobile technology. The module explores each element, explaining relevant tools and how to assess their effectiveness. It also covers advanced topics such as online-offline interaction, managing search ads and bidding for keywords, assessing the effectiveness of digital campaigns, and linking measurements to customer lifetime value (CLV). This module contains an Interactive Illustration, “Search and Display Advertising ROI,” which helps students understand the relationships among measures of the efficiency of search and display advertising, as well as the dependence of advertising campaign profit and ROI (return on investment) on its measures of efficiency. The module also contains links to four video clips on the implementation of digital marketing techniques, including “Coca-Cola Hong Kong Multiscreen Ad Campaign,” a creative combination of TV and mobile marketing; “HubSpot CEO Interview on Inbound Marketing,” about the importance of creating noteworthy content that will attract customers; “United Breaks Guitars,” an example of negative word of mouth via social media; and “Advertising Symbiosis: The Key to Viral Videos,” describing why certain customers are likely to share ads.

Powered by Harvard Business Publishing, this module explores the multi-faceted nature of channels of distribution. The module provides guidelines for how producers of goods and services should cultivate, execute, and manage their go-to-market strategies. They can achieve success by implementing the notion of channel stewardship and by applying its three main disciplines: mapping the industry channels, building & updating the channel value chain, and aligning & influencing the channel value chain. Managers are guided on whether to pursue direct and/or indirect distribution channels. The author presents a seven-step framework for building the channel value chain. In aligning & influencing the channel system, readers discover the importance of aligning the network of suppliers and intermediaries to address customer needs and how participating members should be rewarded commensurate with their efforts. Hard and soft power as key influential levers are discussed, and readers are also introduced to a four-step alignment process for programming a high-performance channel system. This discipline also involves managing horizontal channel conflict. The module closes with an eCommerce supplement, which discusses how online channel capabilities have caused varying degrees of disruption among specific product categories.

This module contains two interactive illustrations: “Channel Margins,” which provides an overview of the effect of markups and margins that are added as the product or service winds its way through the distribution-channel system, and “Channel Profiles,” which enables readers to apply the seven-step value chain framework to build a sample distribution system, and to explore three different financial scenarios of a hypothetical company case example. 

Powered by Harvard Business Publishing, this module introduces (1) the importance of sales force design in implementing organizational strategy and (2) the role of sales force management in linking structures and processes to behaviours. The material combines theoretical perspectives with real-world examples drawn from the business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C) and nonprofit sectors to illustrate the range of challenges and opportunities in this field.

The module includes an interactive illustration enabling readers to test varying levels and combinations of fixed and variable compensation components. Three videos address the topics of (1) aligning strategy and sales, (2) engaging employees, and (3) using customer feedback metrics in evaluation systems.

Learning Objectives

Powered by Harvard Business Publishing materials, this module introduces the fundamentals of getting prices right. First, it introduces value pricing, which requires a detailed understanding of a firm’s product’s true economic value (TEV) for a specific customer. Value pricing also requires a decision to divide that value between the firm (providing the firm with its incentive to sell) and the customer (providing the customer with an incentive to buy). After covering the key elements of the value-pricing approach, the Reading explains the concepts of price customization, consumer sensitivity to price, and the impact of price on the organization’s profitability. Readers also learn how quantitative research and managerial judgment are used to make optimal pricing decisions.

The Reading includes three Interactive Illustrations: “The Value-Pricing Thermometer,” which explores how the setting of a product’s price affects the allocation of value between a customer and the firm; “Breakeven Analysis,” which helps readers understand the output required to cover the fixed and variable costs in various scenarios fully, and the impact on company revenues and profits; and “Marginal Math,” which explains marginal math and the interplay among price, margin, unit sales, and price elasticity in low-margin and high-margin settings.

Powered by Harvard Business Publishing materials,  this module focuses on the three issues a company must address in developing its product policy: 1. Product mix breadth refers to the variety and number of product lines offered. 2. Product line depth is the number of items in a product line. 3. Product item design refers to each product’s specifications. This module contains two Interactive Illustrations: the first, “Altius Golf Ball Positioning,” explores the effect of product positioning on market share in markets with different degrees of cannibalization from the perspective of a golf ball manufacturer that plans to extend its product line. The second, “Product Bundling,” explores how pricing “bundles” of products and services is influenced by their perceived value, using the example of hotel accommodation prices in different locations and for different segments of hotel guests (business travellers, vacationing families, and budget-minded students). The module also contains two videos, one on strategies for creating new product categories and one on using a customer feedback loop to manage the uncertainty of product innovation.

Powered by Harvard Business Publishing materials, this module sheds light on the dynamics of companies in competition and offers a process for planning and executing marketing strategies to compete in a rapidly changing marketplace. The module enables marketers to make decisions that account for competitors’ likely responses. The module introduces processes for understanding the opportunities and challenges of competitive play, guiding choosing contexts that enable success while avoiding those in which profitability will be elusive. It also examines how marketers can create opportunities by restraining competitive forces and opening up new ways to compete more conducive to growth, bringing insights into how consumers respond to marketplace competition and examining how companies can frame competitive games to their advantage in brand positioning and marketing communications.

This module includes an Interactive Illustration that explains how the prisoner’s dilemma theory applies to pricing issues in industries with two dominant competitors (Pepsi and Coke). It also includes 3 video clips: (1) “The Two Choices to Make in Strategy,” which distills strategy into two basic questions: “Where will you play?” and “How will you win there?”; (2) “Marketing Myopia,” an animation presenting Theodore Levitt’s concept of marketing myopia and identifying ways to avoid it; and (3) “Porter’s Six Forces,” which explains the key elements of Michael Porter’s strategy model.

Powered by Harvard Business Publishing, this module features updated descriptions of global brand valuation methodologies and rankings of worldwide brands.  The “Brands and Brand Equity” module reviews the fundamental concepts and theories in branding and introduces key concepts, issues, and terminology related to creating, nurturing, managing, leveraging, and defending strong brands. Students will learn the many components that make up a brand, the value that brands provide for consumers and firms, how firms create brand equity, and the key decisions and challenges that brand managers face across the life cycle of a brand. This module combines theory and practice by summarizing and integrating ideas and models in branding research and illustrating them with examples from diverse industries, including the success and failure of well-known brands.

Finally, the Reading includes two videos covering specific aspects of branding: achieving resonance in branding and brand personality.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this module, you can:

Powered by Harvard Business Education Publishing materials, this module addresses brand positioning principles. It demonstrates how companies can strategically craft powerful, resonant, and unique brand positions to help products stand out amidst the cacophony of the marketplace. Strategic brand positioning provides consumers with the answer to the all-important question, “Why should I buy?” The module discusses how to craft a brand’s value proposition for competitive advantage through analysis and synthesis of consumer, company, and competitive factors. It highlights the types of brand positions that companies can stake out in the minds of consumers, providing insight into the many creative ways brands can be differentiated from one another. It guides defending a market position by illuminating the competitive dynamics of brand positioning. Finally, it presents the challenges associated with repositioning brands and the tension between maintaining consistency in a brand’s meaning and adjusting to changing consumer preferences.

This module features an Interactive Illustration demonstrating a technique for visualizing consumers’ mental landscapes: “Perceptual Map of Watch Brands.” It also contains links to three video clips: “Hiring Milkshakes for Breakfast,” which describes how consumers “hire” a product or service to meet a specific need, and 2 TV commercials: “1984,” for the Apple Macintosh computer, and “No Cages,” for the Harley-Davidson “Build Your Freedom” custom motorcycle program.

Powered by Harvard Business Education materials, this module introduces two integral parts of any marketing strategy: segmentation and targeting and features topics such as demand space segmentation and segmentation based on multiple consumer channels and touchpoints. It also expands on how segmentation and targeting can heavily impact an organization’s product offerings and corporate structure. The module covers methods and techniques that enable businesses to unleash a full range of potential customers and the distinction between them. Furthermore, this module discusses how a company judges the potential of each market segment, selects the segments worth pursuing, and designs marketing programs to serve them.

The module includes two interactive illustrations instigating the learners to think critically about segmentation and targeting. The first, “Segmenting the Dog Food Market,” shows how successfully marketing a product consumed by dogs depends on first understanding and segmenting their owners. The second, “Segmenting the Market for Early Pregnancy Test Devices,” shows how the most important category for segmentation is not demographic or geographic but concerned instead with consumer psychology and motivation. The module also includes a six-part video mini-case study on how GE Healthcare developed and applied segmentation for its Imaging Systems business.