Welcome to the Global Business-to-Business Marketing module. Business-to-Business Marketing is about marketing to business and/or organisations globally and managing relevant marketing activities to this group of customers in contrast to individual consumers. This module aims to help you better understand the exchanges that take place between organisations, that is, when one business markets something or some service to another business (could also be a government agency or not-only-for-profit organisation). The module aims to shed light on the activities that marketers operating within these exchanges undertake and how they select which activities to undertake.

This module aims to open up a ‘less visible’ but vast area of marketing – and to help you understand how ideas familiar to you as marketers apply in business-to-business settings. The module has been designed to encourage you to engage with this less visible area of marketing. Hence a great emphasis isplaced upon ‘what is happening NOW’. This should allow you to engage with the commercial world around you and also with the course material. It should help you succeed in the course and also build up your strengths in the employment world.

1. An understanding of the characteristics of business markets and global business-to-business marketing.

2. An ability to analyse and solve managerial problems relating to business market management.

3. To introduce and integrate key theories and concepts relating to organisations as purchasers and to marketing to organisations.
4. To consider the application and differences in application of core marketing ideas to global B2B markets.
5. To critically consider theory against practice in business markets

6. Acquired personal and team working skills in planning, research, analysis and presentation.

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The course readings and activities are designed to help blend theory and practice. Cases will allow you to apply theories to real marketing problems. In addition, literature extracts (from scientific journals) will demonstrate the development of theory and provide empirical insights into global B2B related topics. For case analysis and presentations, students will form teams (the number of individuals per team will be confirmed in the class).

Evaluation and grading

Group work:

• Team case study presentations (25%)
• Discussion (moderation) during team case study preperations (10%)
• Group Project Presentation (40%)

Individual:

• Active participation in class (5%)
• Exercises/Individual homework (10%)
• Peer rating on Presentations (10%)

Cases will be prepared for class and some cases prepared in class. Each case will be presented by one/two team members and this should be rotated so that each member of the group has presented. Other team members must be prepared to discuss questions on the cases.

For the Group Project Presentation (40%) grades will be influenced by the team presentation and team discussion. The presentations must include 3 core elements: (1) presenting the core theoretical concept(s), (2) presenting the application of this concept to the case, (3) developing an interactive activity to engage with the audience. Be as creative as you can in your presentation – demonstrate original and innovative‘out-of-the-box’ thinking!

Research & references: The students are expected to draw on adequate resources from academic journals, books and trade press to support their presentations.

Any Individual homework will be collected by the instructor at the beginning of the following class

For successful completion of the course, students must not miss more than one session. The course will be supported by Learn@wu, thus students are required to hand in assignments via the Learn@wu plattform; teaching material will be made available too.

r.chakrabarti@lancaster.ac.uk