Marketing

This course talks about what marketing means both for the strategic planning of a successful business and for the everyday chores of keeping up with customers and competition. The focus is on high-tech companies facing the new rules of global marketing.

Course Info
Syllabus
References
Policy
Exercises
Grades

Course Info

Lecturer: David Talby

Bodeket: Galit Yehiel

Getting in Touch: david@talby.com

Reception Hour: Friday after class

Time: Friday 8-10:30, 10:45-13:15

Syllabus

• Strategic Marketing
  
  • Introduction - Create value, fulfill needs, center of of business
  • Strategy and strategic planning
  • Principles of the "new internet economy"
  • The E-commerce market and enablers

• Evaluating Opportunities
  
  • Starting a business
  • The marketing environment
  • Identifying profitable business opportunities
  • Business plans
  • Starting a business

• Market Research & Customer Behavior
  
  • Market research techniques
  • Business intelligence and competition research
  • Customer behavior: Influences on buying habits
  • Customer behavior: Models of decision making
  • Low versus High involvement products
  • Corporate and government customers
  • Segmentation and Coverage
    
    
• Product Management
  
  • Target Marketing: Segmentation, Coverage, Positioning
  • Brand Management
  • Product design: packaging, coupled services, product line
  • Pricing
  • Advertising and public opinion
  • Distribution channels
  • Control and evaluation of the marketing plan
    
    
• International Marketing
  
  • Multi-national marketing
  • e-commerce legal issues: Taxes, security, service
  • Patents and business plan patenting

References

Books:

1. Principles of Marketing, by Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong
2. Marketing 1:1, by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers
3. Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey Moore and Regis McKenna
4. Kotler on Marketing, by Philip Kotler.

Web References:

Marketing and business strategy:

• On Target: The book on marketing plans
• Hurdle: The book on business planning
• The Canadian Institute of Marketing
• Synergy - a consulting company, offering advice and articles

E-Commerce:

• Business 2.0 - resources about the e-commerce world
• Enabling technologies and companies - from Business2.com, includes links to companies

Entrepreneurship:

• Yazam.com - a venture capitalist, also offering advice and newsgroups for startups
• Garage.com - another venture capitalist
• Israeli Incubators Center - describes all active startup incubators and companies
• Government assistance for startups in Israel - from Yazam.com
• Art of Management - much advice about management in general, in Hebrew
• Smart Start - tips for startups from Business2.com, includes many links to companies

Business plans:

• Business plans - sample plans, starting costs and strategy analysis for startups
• How to prepare a business plan - by Yazam.com

Market research information:

• Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics
• Information Technology Site of the Israeli Government
• U.S. Census Bureau

Patents and legal issues:

• Franklin Forge Patent Research - do patent search and registration
• Arent Fox Advertising Law - resources about legal issues in the American business arena
• The United States Patents and Trademarks Office
• Amazon's one-click patent 
• The Israeli Institute of Standards

If you encounter another a useful reference, please inform us about it.

Documents:

• Sample test
• Proposals for final project

Policy:

The course will have two exercises, worth 10% of the final grade, and a final test that will determine the remaining 90%. In order to pass the course, all exercises must be submitted.

Exercises should be submitted in pairs. Submitting late costs 3% per day. This can actually be checked since submissions will be by email alone, letting us save a few trees.

Exercises:

Exercise One - Business Plan
Prepare a four-page business plan for a new project, either as a new or an existing company. The project and company must be in the software field. Use the guidelines given in class and the examples given in the web references above as starting points; build your plan according to these well-known standards. You may change the order of things or make certain parts longer than usual, if they are more crucial to the proposal, but remember that this will require you to make other parts much shorter. The criteria is the need to be as convincing as possible. Try to find statistics, graphs and reports supporting your strategy and idea; when using such data, always give their exact source.

Exercise Two - Positioning and Branding
Prepare a four-page marketing plan for a new software product - either the one from the previous exercise or a new one. Do not make a full plan, but instead build your document as follows. First, offer a market segmentation for your original market, based on one or more variables; explain why you chose the variables that you did. Try to find and show numeric data about the size and growth rates of the major market segments. Second, decide which segment(s) you will cover in the first release of your software, and which one(s) you will cover in the second release (usually about half a year to a year later). Explain your choices shortly.
Then, describe the positioning and brand-name decisions for the segment(s) that are targeted (covered) in the first release. This should include a short description of all decision related to those subjects (image, main benefit to customers, brand "tricks", etc.) that were discussed in class. As in the previous exercise, make your important points longer and the simple ones shorter. The last thing you must do is make these same decisions for the second release of your software - this release will target different market segments, will (hopefully) have a little of a brand name to lean on, and so on. Explain how these factors are used.

Good Luck!