The Paul Merage School of Business marketing faculty is recognized worldwide for its excellence in research, teaching, and service. Three members have won national awards for research publications: Imran Currim - the William O'Dell Award for the best paper in the Journal of Marketing Research (1987); Alladi Venkatesh - the best paper in the Journal of Consumer Research (1998); and John Graham - Lauder Institute Citation for the best paper in International Business (1993). All six faculty members have each published several articles in the most prestigious academic journals in marketing and other fields. Faculty research has been supported by substantial and multiple grants from agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, and the Marketing Science Institute. Imran Currim has been an area editor for both Marketing Science and Management Science, and Alladi Venkatesh is editor of a new journal, Consumption, Markets and Culture.
Imran Currim, Connie Pechmann, and Rajeev Tyagi have won school-wide teaching awards. Imran Currim has also been recognized for his excellence in teaching by the UC Irvine Academic Senate, and in 1998 he received the first ever American Marketing Association/Houghton Mifflin Distinguished Teaching Award as the best Marketing instructor in the country. Finally, Connie Pechmann is on the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy seven-member experts panel, and Mary Gilly is the President of Academic council of 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 the six ladder faculty members can provide expert opinion on it based on years of research and teaching in the area. For example, 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; marketing data base mining or advertising and public policy -- ask Connie Pechmann; new product development and high-tech marketing -- ask Rajeev Tyagi; and marketing on the Internet or international consumer behavior -- ask Alladi Venkatesh. Whatever the marketing topic, we've got it covered.
Required Courses
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.
Elective 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
Provides an understanding of the problems and perspectives 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 international marketing are emphasized.
255 Database Marketing
Database marketing leverages information technology, together with established analytical methodologies, to facilitate highly targeted marketing. Informs students about database marketers’ general strategies and objectives, their analytical methods, and the technologies they employ.
256 Design Management and Innovation
Design Management presents a design-driven approach, from design as organizational vision to strategic innovation to managing the design process. The students are exposed to design fundamentals and work in teams that involve creativity workshops and real world projects.
257 Marketing on the Internet
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
The course objectives are: 1) to increase student understanding of the important issues in planning, implementing and evaluating brand strategies; 2) to provide relevant theories, models and tools for the making of brand decisions, and 3) to enable students to apply these principles and see the results in a computer simulation of brand management.
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
Develop marketing plans for specific retail locations and neighborhoods based on past purchases and demographics. Topics include retail site selection, product category management, promotion management, shelf space allocation, and targeted advertising. Hands-on experience with Retail Sales Analysis and Geographic Information Systems software.