Marketing

Overview

The Paul Merage School of Business marketing faculty is recognized worldwide for its excellence in research, teaching, and service. Each of the eight marketing faculty members has published numerous articles in the most prestigious academic journals in marketing and other fields. Four members have won national awards for research publications: Connie Pechmann -- the best paper in the Journal of Consumer Research (2005), Alladi Venkatesh

- the best paper in the Journal of Consumer Research (1998), John Graham - Lauder Institute Citation for the best paper in International Business (1993), and Imran Currim - the William O'Dell Award for the best paper in the Journal of Marketing Research (1987). Connie Pechmann was awarded the Richard W. Pollay Prize for Intellectual Excellence in Research on Marketing in the Public Interest, 2009.

Faculty research has been supported by substantial and multiple grants from the National Science Foundation, the California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, and the Marketing Science Institute. Imran Currim has been an area editor for Marketing Science and Management Science, and Alladi Venkatesh is editor of a new journal, Consumption, Markets and Culture.

Imran Currim has also been recognized for his excellence in teaching by the UC Irvine Academic Senate, and in 1998 he received the American Marketing Association/Houghton Mifflin Distinguished Teaching Award as the best marketing instructor in the country. Imran Currim, Connie Pechmann, and Rajeev Tyagi have won school-wide teaching awards. Connie Pechmann helped to oversee the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy’s anti-drug ad campaign, and Mary Gilly served as Academic Council President for the American Marketing Association.

Perhaps the greatest strength of the school's marketing area is their breadth of interests. Open up any marketing textbook, pick a topic, and one of our marketing faculty members can provide expert opinion on it based on years of research and teaching in the area. For ideas and information on consumer choice modeling or marketing strategy -- ask Imran Currim; advertising or services marketing -- ask Mary Gilly; industrial or international marketing -- ask John Graham; consumer behavior, culture or affect -- ask Loraine Lau-Gesk; tobacco marketing or public policy -- ask Connie Pechmann; new product development or high-tech marketing -- ask Rajeev Tyagi or Sreya Kolay; and marketing on the Internet or international consumer behavior -- ask Alladi Venkatesh. Whatever the marketing topic, we've got it covered.

Faculty

Visiting & Affiliated Faculty and Researchers

Recent Disciplinary Studies

Schau, Hope Jensen, Mary C. Gilly and Mary Wolfinbarger (2009), “Consumer Identity Renaissance: The Resurgence of Identity Inspired Consumption in Retirement,” Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (August), 255-276.
Cron, William L., Mary C. Gilly, John L. Graham and John W. Slocum, Jr. (2009), “Pricing Decisions and Income of Professional Service Providers: A Focus on Gender,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109 (May), 93-105.
Imran S. Currim, Rick L. Andrews, and Andrew Ainslie, “On the Recoverability of Choice Behaviors with Random Coefficients Choice Models in the Context of Limited Data and Unobserved Effects,” Management Science, 2007.
Cornelia Pechmann and Susan J. Knight [UCI PhD 1999], “An Experimental Investigation of the Joint Effects of Advertising and Peers on Adolescents’ Beliefs and Intentions about Cigarette Consumption,” Journal of Consumer Research, 29, 2002, pp. 5-19.
Rajeev K. Tyagi, "New Product Introductions and Failures under Uncertainty," International Journal of Research in Marketing, 2006.
Mary C. Gilly, John Graham, and Stephanie Dellande [UCI PhD 1999], “Gaining Compliance and Losing Weight: The Role of the Service Provider in Health Care Services,” Journal of Marketing, 68, 2004, pp. 78-91.
Alladi Venkatesh and Eric Shih [UCI PhD 2000], “Beyond Adoption: Development and Application of a Use-Diffusion Model,” Journal of Marketing, 68(1), 2004, pp: 59-72.

Students:

Samantha Cross,* “The Intersection of Cultures: Bi-Cultural Dynamics in Consumption and Decision-Making”, Academic of Marketing Science Conference, 2007. *Received the Jane K. Fenyo Best Paper Award for Student Research, 2007
Dante Pirouz* and Cornelia Pechmann, “The Dark Side of Attachment: Addiction,” Advertising and Consumer Psychology 2007 Proceedings, New Frontiers in Branding: Attitudes, Attachments, and Relationships, Joseph R. Priester, Deborah J. MacInnis and C. Whan Park, Editors, Santa Monica, CA, 2007. *Received a Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program Dissertation Grant, 2009
Liangyan Wang* and Cornelia Pechmann, “Entertainment Education or Entertainment Degradation? The Efficacy of Commercial Television at Conveying Smoking Prevention Messages,” Marketing and Public Policy Conference, Long Beach, CA, 2006. *Co-Winner, Association for Consumer Research-Sheth Foundation dissertation proposal award, 2006

Primary Course

205 Marketing Management
This course serves as an introduction to the field of marketing. Objectives include developing familiarity with terms, techniques, and institutions in marketing environment; and acquainting students with the types of decisions made by marketing managers (regarding products, pricing, distribution, promotion, and research), and the factors influencing these decisions.

Additional Courses

250 Consumer Behavior
Fundamental to all marketing management decisions is an in-depth understanding of the behaviors of the firm’s buyers, whether consumers or industrial customers or both. The course considers buyer decision-making processes with emphases on applications of concepts and research findings from all the behavioral sciences. Topics of discussion are models of buyer decision making, consumer information processing theories of attitude and attitude change, attribution theory, mass communication effects, and sociological and cultural influences on buyer decisions. Buyer behaviors considered are purchase, use, and disposal of goods and services.

251A Marketing Research
Covers conducting marketing research to generate customer insights that will drive sales, market share, and profitability and/or realize other quantitative objectives. Discusses problem formulation, data collection, statistical analyses, formulating managerial recommendations, and implementation.

252A Advertising and Communications Management
Covers integrated marketing communications which includes advertising, sales promotions, public relations and direct mail. Topics include elements of a communications plan, marketing research including copy testing and tracking, creating brand value, media strategies, and measuring return on investment.

252D New Product Development
This analytical course is designed to introduce you to the new product development process and techniques to (i) identify markets, (ii) develop new product ideas, (iii) measure consumer preferences, (iv) position and design new products, and (v) forecast their sales prior to launch. This course will teach/use a number of important and commonly used statistical techniques such as cluster analysis, factor analysis, conjoint analysis, discriminant analysis, multiple regression, etc. We will use SPSS and ACA system software to do projects in analysis of market structure, segmentation of markets, creation of perceptual maps, conjoint analyses, and forecasting. These tools and techniques are quite general, and are also commonly used for addressing practical questions outside the arena of new product development. Thus, students interested in an advanced marketing research course will also benefit.

253 Advanced Micromarketing
Develop marketing plans for retailers and neighborhoods based on past purchases and demographics. Covers retail site selection, category management, promotion management, shelf space allocation, pricing, velocity, promotional field studies, targeted advertising, consumer segmentation, media selection, list management, and retail sales and GIS software.

254 International Marketing
International trade amounts to approximately 25% of American GDP. For many of America’s best companies exports comprise more than half of sales revenues. This course provides students with an understanding of the problems and potentials of marketing across national boundaries, and develops analytical abilities for structuring and controlling marketing programs related to overseas businesses. Financial, legal, and cultural barriers to exporting are discussed in detail and appropriate management implications are outlined.

255 Database Marketing [ITM Course]
Database marketing involves collecting data on individual-level purchase behavior, analyzing the data and then utilizing the results to maximize sales to current and prospective customers while minimizing costs. Database marketers include catalogers, direct mailers, telemarketers, business-to-business sellers, and an increasing number of traditional and internet-based retailers. This course informs students about database marketers’ general strategies and objectives, their analytical and statistical methods, and the opportunities and threats that they face. Students learn to assess whether and how a particular company or industry is likely to benefit from database marketing. Students obtain hands-on experience in using the profit-maximizing quantitative methods that are routinely used by database marketers.

256 Direct Marketing
Direct marketing is defined as “an interactive marketing system that uses one or more advertising media to yield a measurable response and/or transaction at any location.” This course covers all the fundamentals and some of the finer nuances of direct marketing. Emphasized is the use of technology to efficiently and effectively build individual relationships with customers to increase customer lifetime value and bottom-line profitability. Through a balanced mixture of theory, case histories and practical application, students will learn how to bring direct marketing to a company or improve operations and profitability. While the emphasis in Database Marketing (MGMT 255) is on analytical techniques, here using technology to manage ongoing customer relationships is the focus.

257 Marketing on the Internet [ITM Course]
This course examines the impact of the Internet on traditional methods of doing marketing. It explores the existing and future uses of the Internet for the marketing of goods and services across a range of product categories. Investigated is the utility of the Internet as a "tool" for marketing to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and competitiveness. The potential functions for this new technology that will be explored include: Constructing websites; marketing Internet sites; advertising and brand building; prospect generation; customer service; marketing research; distribution channel design; and new product testing. Most businesses cannot use the Internet to serve all of these functions, but instead must evaluate which ones the new medium can perform more effectively than existing alternatives. Business models currently existing on the Web are studied and a framework is developed with which to evaluate the Internet's potential value across a range of business types.

258 Marketing Strategies for High Technology Companies
Framework and tools for managing technology-intensive businesses. Product and pricing policies; network externalities; compatibility concerns; system competition; technological and market uncertainty; technology licensing strategies; contracting in high-tech markets; product line design; product bundling strategies; usage-based pricing.

259 Strategic Brand Management
Increases student understanding of important issues in planning, implementing, and evaluating brand strategies; provides relevant theories, models, and tools for making brand decisions, and enables students to apply these principles in a computer simulation of brand management.

290 Marketing Plan
This course brings together the marketing principles for product positioning and marketing strategy. Emphasis is placed on effective accumulation of relevant data [marketing research], analysis of competition, naming and pricing a product, promotion, media planning and distribution. The course, which is heavily interactive, features extensive use of various marketing tactics from the marketplace. Students will prepare a model marketing plan.

290 Design Management
In the field of new product development, the design of products is considered an important marketing function. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in design, particularly in consumer and technology oriented industries where design is viewed as a strategic resource. As a result, design has even been promoted as the most important competitive tool for successful market performance. The growing importance of design in the sense of product attractiveness must not only be understood as a shift from the product’s technical/functional aspects to its aesthetics, but must also be seen in the light of a reorientation from aesthetics in the sense of surface qualities to aesthetics in the sense of deeper content. Topics include: What is design?, Design as a strategic tool, The role of design aesthetics, Design as a state-of-mind and the management of design, Design in the Experience Economy, Case studies (Ideo, Apple, Alessi, Swedish designers) (Note: The course is not about Industrial Design which is usually taught in the Engineering Schools.)

295B Micromarketing Lab
Students will learn about the growing availability of consumer and marketing data at the disaggregate or “micro” level (meaning at the level of a neighborhood or market) and the ever expanding use of such data to conduct “micromarketing.” Micromarketing involves analyzing demand for products and services by neighborhood or retail trade area and using the information to make strategic and tactical decisions about the four P’s of marketing: place (e.g., retail site locations), product (e.g., micromerchandising of shelf space), promotions (e.g., targeted advertising) and pricing (e.g., localized price reductions). Students will receive extensive, hands-on experience with two widely used and sophisticated micromarketing information systems: A Geographic Information System called “MapInfo” that will be used in conjunction with consumer, business and mapping data sets provided by the US Census Bureau, Experian and Simmons and a Point of Sale (POS) Category Management System from A.C. Nielsen.