Successful management requires a thorough understanding of market and consumer responses. This course emphasizes the behavioral principles of customer decision making which are driving the relationships between customers and competing companies in a variety of markets. This course intends to develop in-depth knowledge for the assessment of opportunities and threats and for making well-grounded predictions of market outcomes.

In particular, our course will cover the following modules:

- Recap and introduction to marketing strategy

- Basic theories, terms and concepts of market orientation and behavioral decision theory

- The irrational customer:

•      Positioning and the competitive set: Individual products, assortments and timing strategies
•      Positioning and market communication: Differentiation and market response, product presentation strategies

- The digital customer:

•      Social contagion theory and virality of digital content
•      Choice overload and recommendation engines

- The ethical customer:

•      Positioning based on emotions: Demand for ethical attributes and the influence of ethical cues
•      Decision conflicts and the role of ethical attributes along the customer decision journey

The course will be based on marketing articles in leading academic journals, case studies and several guest lectures from marketing practice.

After completing the course, you will have gained proficiency in analyzing customer decision making and relevant trends in marketing. This course also intends to develop in-depth knowledge for the assessment of opportunities and threats and for making well-grounded predictions of market outcomes.

In particular, the following skills and capabilities will be trained:

- Proficiency in various means of market orientation.

- Application of recent scientific evidence on conscious as well as subconscious cognitive and emotional processes for assessing market potential and targeting customers.

- Learn how to compete over the structure of consumer preferences and how to develop a successful competitive positioning.

- Understand how to conduct experimental market studies and how to base market-oriented decisions based on statistical evidence.

In addition you will have developed your professional skills in developing a synthesis and story from a research question, creative thinking, and working in teams.

Participation in all sessions is mandatory. You may miss up to max. 20% of class hours, but please note that content is build-up in a modular way. Thus absences should be minimized to ensure your optimal learning outcomes.

- Self-study (reading of scientific articles, case studies, and own researches of articles to prepare group project case study)

- Lectures and in-class discussions

- Team presentation of group project

Your grade will be the sum of the following components (max. 100 points)

- Written exam: 60 pts

- Group project work: 30 pts (group presentation analyzing a practical case-study related to the course content)

- In-class participation: 10 pts

The written exam and in-class participation is graded at the individual level, while the group project work is graded at the group level.

Grades are as follows:

90 pts or more: 1 (= excellent), 80 pts or more: 2 (= good), 70 pts or more: 3 (=satisfactory), 60 pts or more: 4 (= sufficient), 59 pts or less: 5 (= fail). 

No specific analytical skills and software knowledge required; statistical knowledge, especially regarding behavioral experiments a plus.

(Exact date of guest lectures to be announced.)