Postgraduate Courses

Strategic marketing objectives and implementation of strategies through pricing, distribution channels, promotion and new-product decisions. This is a core course for MBA.

This course aims to explore and integrate the ancient Eastern wisdom into modern Western management science and apply to modern business competition. To achieve this goal, this course will use Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" as a vehicle to introduce the foundation of Eastern wisdom (Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism) to management executives. Sun Tzu's "The Art of War " has proved to be a classic work on strategy, applicable to both military and business situation. This course is to crystallize some concepts and ideas put forth in "The Art of War" into a few business strategic principles and an innovative framework of 4Stop so that these can be more easily understood and applied.

This course focuses on the interface between marketing and social well-being. It tries to understand how marketers and policymakers can influence behavior using the principles of consumer psychology and behavioral economics. It is relevant for future marketers interested in social issues, future policymakers interested in influencing individuals' behavior, and businesspeople interested in issues of social responsibility and sustainability.

The objective of this course is to introduce the most relevant quantitative techniques required for Marketing in general and Product Management in particular. These techniques will be useful for several areas of product management such as segmentation, positioning, preference measurement, and product modification decisions. The specific techniques include regression, factor analysis, experimental designs, conjoint analysis, cluster analysis, and decision trees. Students will have hands-on experience with SAS Program for all these analysis after completing the course.

The course intends to provide students both with a general overview of consumer psychology principles, and also a specific sense of how these principles can benefit marketing strategies in China and India.

This intensive block week course addresses the unique properties, opportunities, and challenges of the luxury industry by studying issues relevant to the field in the various aspects of the business, from production and management to distribution and promotion. Students will have the unique opportunity to interact with senior executives from a renowned luxury brand as they feedback on students' research and recommendations, and guide them to understand their brand strategy and implementation.

This course will provide a high level overview on the operating environment in the China market today, and to underscore the challenges and solutions faced by company executives whose aim is to capture market opportunities in China. The course will begin with an overall understanding of the cultural background of today's Chinese consumers, address market entry obstacles peculiar to China, and focus on executional elements ranging from sales team management to distribution and supply chain options. The instructor will use case studies to facilitate learning from mistakes and best practices, and will draw on the instructor's personal experience and insights to enhance knowledge sharing.

This course combines an in-depth exploration of consumer psychology with elements of advertising and marketing research, with the goal of enhancing students' understanding of marketing tactics and strategy.

Methods of structuring, analyzing and measuring major classes of marketing problems; quantitative aspects of demand, consumer reaction to product characteristics, advertising effectiveness, effectiveness of competitors' strategies.

The course provides an overview of the concepts and methods that are used to formulate and implement strategic decisions at the product management level. The focus is on operational aspects of putting strategic plans into action, followed by strategy modification in response to evolving market conditions. The MARKSTRAT business simulation is a primary means of instruction, along with lectures and discussions. Overall goals are to help the student to 1) understand the environment in which strategic decisions are made, 2) analyze market information with the objective of gaining strategic insight, 3) formulate sound strategies and plans and 4) allocate resources for effective implementation.

The course provides students with an understanding of what brand equity is and then uses a structured approach for managing and leveraging it to gain competitive advantage. The emphasis is on actual decisions a manager makes and the long-term effects of these marketing actions on brand equity. Cases and a simulation game are used to demonstrate common types of pitfalls that must be avoided in order to build brand equity.

This course will explore how market perceives an offering, how a company is different from the competitors, whether there is ability to deliver value to the target markets. Students will learn that as the market situation dramatically changes across time, they have to understand how such dynamics influence buyers' preferences and competitive response, and be able to present an appropriate value proposition in order to remain competitive.

Overview of the literature on modeling marketing phenomena.

Survey of firm decision-making models in marketing strategy from both theoretical and empirical perspectives.

Overview of selected topics in psychology and consumer behavior. Topics include perception, information processing, and attitude theory.

Overview of advanced topics in psychology and consumer behavior research. An information processing approach is used to help students develop expertise on a range of diverse topics such as attitude formation and change, culture, information processing, motivation and goals, emotion, consumer decision making.

This course will introduce behavioral research methods and the relevant statistical techniques for doctoral students in the business school with a behavioral research focus.

This course is aimed at PhD students who intent to conduct experimental and quasi-experimental research in business (e.g., marketing, organizational behavior). The primary objective is to master the concepts and tools needed for collecting and analyzing behavioral data. In addition, the course provides an introduction to SAS, one of the most widely used statistical programming languages for manipulating and analyzing data.

Advanced seminar covering current research and theory in consumer behavior and marketing. Topics will vary with the term, but may include areas related to consumer judgment and decision processes, attitude formation and change, reactions to advertising, consumer information procession, affective, motivational and cognitive determinants of consumer behavior, and cultural and individual differences in consumer behavior. May be repeated for credit. Graded P or F.

Study of selected areas in marketing knowledge and thought; topics may vary by term; individual projects and reports.

Study of selected marketing issues under the supervision of a faculty member. (Special permission from the Associate Dean is required for MBA students to take this course.)

Master's thesis research supervised by a faculty member. A successful defense of the thesis leads to the grade Pass. No course credit is assigned.

This seminar focuses on special topics in marketing; possible topics are measurement and structural equation modeling, agency theory, channel structures, diffusion modeling, group decision making, information processing, attribution theory, philosophy of science and categorization theory.

Original and independent doctoral thesis research. A successful defense of the thesis leads to the grade Pass. No course credit is assigned.