BUS-M 550 Consumer Insights

• 7 weeks
• 1.5 credits
• Prerequisite(s): None

Understanding customers is fundamental to the success of any organization. More importantly (to your careers), success of marketing initiatives hinge on achieving desired customer responses, which in turn lead to “good” financial outcomes. The purpose of this course is to provide you with a structured approach to understanding customer responses in its many forms.

Such a “customer-orientation” necessitates keen knowledge of customers and the design of appropriate strategies that will help sustain a competitive edge. The first part of this course will focus on gaining an in-depth understanding of customers and their behavior, by answering three questions: (1) Who are my customers? (2) What do my customers want? (3) How do customers buy my products. These are critical questions asked by marketing managers, regardless of industry. Our approach will focus on structuring potential answers to these questions, and how these answers may differ across industries. The second part of the course will focus on how firms can design and implement appropriate strategies based on an understanding of customers. We will contrast three specific strategies in terms of their assumptions and evaluate how firms might implement these strategies. Hence, the overarching goal of this course is to show that customer focus leads to sound marketing strategies.

The course emphasis will be on the hands-on use of information obtained from customers to craft marketing programs. As a result, the course should be particularly relevant to those seeking careers in marketing management and product management and also in business strategy in both industrial products and services firms.

Course objectives are:

• To heighten your appreciation of a customer orientation to marketing strategy.
• To provide you with specific tools to structure and analyze customer issues.
• To develop your ability to recognize relevant customer issues that underlie marketing problems and form solutions based on an understanding of potential customer responses to marketing actions.