Marketing

Marketing the Product

Every business, organization, and consumer inherently engages in marketing activity. Marketing – including sales, advertising and product development - occurs at every stage of the commercial exchange process. It is the primary revenue-generator of the firm; unless there are buyers for the goods and services produced, nothing else matters.

Is a Career in Marketing for You?

Marketing is a broad field offering myriad opportunities for you to apply your unique aptitudes. Some marketing careers require more quantitative, technical, analytical, or organizational abilities, while others utilize creativity, perceptiveness, insight and verbal ability. Explore different marketing careers....

Career possibilities include:

• market research - conducting focus groups, gathering and analyzing survey data, and creating complex quantitative models of purchase behavior using retail scanner data;
• market analysis - the study of environmental trends, competition and markets to better identify and understand unmet customer needs;
• product management - responsibility for marketing a specific product or product line;
• category management - responsibility for managing the selection, purchasing and merchandising of an entire product category;
• customer business development - cultivating and managing relationships with customers;
• channel management - designing, developing and organizing a network of firms to collaborate in the production and marketing of products to customers;
• business-to-business relationship management - cultivating and managing relationships with suppliers, resellers, and other organizations involved in the marketing network;
• management consulting - particularly in areas related to the identification of customers, competitor analysis, and the development of marketing activities and networks to create and provide value to the target customers.

Marketing Faculty

Marketing encompasses many diverse activities, and the MU marketing faculty has similar breadth and diversity. One characteristic they share, however, is that they are recognized leaders in their academic fields. MU faculty members hold prestigious editorial board positions at three of the top four marketing journals and the top international business journal academic journals.
Other ongoing research projects include

• the study of new product introductions' impact on shareholder value,
• trade shows' role in an integrated marketing communications strategy,
• the assessment of fairness in business-to-business relationships in diverse cultures,
• effects of goal-setting and organizational climate on salesperson performance,
• global marketing strategy and export performance,
• the role of aesthetics in product design,
• the impact of materialism,
• how consumers use the internet to gather product information, and
• consumption decision-making in households in which a woman is the primary wage-earner.

Courses:

• 8001 Topics in Marketing (1-3)  Selected topics in marketing.  Recent topics have included Relationship Marketing, Consumer Behavior, and Database Marketing.
• 8050 Marketing Strategy (3)  This course focuses on how a firm can a market-driven business strategy in a competitive environment and the planning and implementation of marketing programs based on this strategy.
• 8280 Advanced Marketing Research (3)  Methods for generating and using information related to marketing decisions.  The course is aimed at the manager who designs, conducts, and/or uses the research.  Emphasizes the design of research studies ti inform managers' decisions and techniques for gathering and analyzing primary and secondary data.
• 8350 Business-to-Business Marketing (3)  Advanced study of the marketing of goods and services to business customers; customer relationship management and functionally integrated approaches to solving business problems.
• 8420 Sales Force Management (3)  Overview of the theory and practice of sales management, determinants of sales performance, and managers' actions to direct, influence, and control sales performance.
• 8480 Relationship Marketing (3)  Focuses on the development of relationship marketing strategies and programs.  The relevant business models, the concept of customer lifetime value, and financial as well as behavioral aspects of managing customer relationships.  Database marketing methods and interactive tools for profitably managing customer relationships are also discussed.
• 8520 Services Marketing (3)  Focuses on service marketing problems and strategies of gods and service organizations.  Subjects covered include the nature of services, organizing for service delivery, managing demand, tailoring the customer mix, and managing supply.
• 8580 Product Management (3)  Focus is on new product/service decisions and development processes.  Discussion emphasized analytical approaches to new product portfolio decisions and the research needed as input to such decisions.  Program strategy, opportunity creation, concept development, product testing, demand estimation, and results evaluation are stressed.
• 8720 International Marketing (3)  Strategic and managerial issues associated with international trade and international marketing.  The course focuses on managerial decision making in the differing and complex environments across foreign markets, alternative methods by which firms enter foreign markets, and the development and implementation of international marketing strategies.