National University of Singapore
Department of Marketing
MKT2401B Asian Markets and Marketing Management
Course Outline
Instructor: Ping Xiao
Office: Mochtar Riady Building, 8-35
Tel: 6516-6972
E-mail: bizxp@nus.edu.sg
Session: Semester I 2010
Class Time: Tuesday 9AM-12PM, 3PM6PM
Class Location:
Office hours: Tuesday 1:30-2:30PM , 6:307:30pm (Tentative)
Course Description and objectives
This course is designed to improve your skills in analyzing marketing decision problems
and making marketing recommendations. This course consists of case analysis and
quantitative analysis training. The idea of quantitative analysis is to help you develop the
basic skills of building models to analyze marketing decision problems. While case
analysis and discussion help you to learn decision making by putting you in the position
of a decision-maker in the real world, facing all the constraints and considerations s/he
faces. The objectives are:
• Provide you with practical, decision-making experience necessary for a career in
the dynamic global business economy;
• Integrate skills learned in other business courses, in particular, marketing courses,
and apply that knowledge to marketing situations;
• Develop strong logical and quantitative analysis skills;
• Expanding your communication skills by learning to present information and
recommendations in a clear and concise manner.
Required Textbook
Philip Kotler, Kevin Lane Keller, Swee Hoon Ang, Siew Meng Leong, and Chin Tiong
Tan, Marketing Management: An Asian Perspective (Fifth Edition), Published by
Prentice Hall.
Performance Feedback
Coursework
Final exam (Individual)
One assignment (Individual)
Case Write-ups and In-class presentation ( Team)
Course project (Team)
Class Participation
TOTAL
Weight
40
12
20
18
10
100%
1
Exams
There will be a closed book final exam. The exam is to test your understanding of the
materials covered in class. Please make sure that you are available on the dates of the
exam. A make-up exam will only be administered in the case of a job interview, and
participation in a university-sanctioned activity or with a medical excuse signed by a
licensed medical professional.
Assignment
There will be one individual assignment. The goal of the assignment is to improve your
quantitative analysis skills. You should turn in at the beginning of class on the day
specified.
Case Write-ups and In-class Presentation
There are six cases that will be discussed in the class. Each group is required to write two
case write-ups and have in-class presentations. For case write-ups, you may form a group
not exceeding five students. Please report your group members by the end of third class,
Aug 17th. The case analysis has a page limit of 5 pages (1.5 spaced, Times New
Roman, 12 point) at maximum, excluding tables, exhibits and appendices. Case
analysis questions will be provided for each case. You should address all of my case
questions in the case write-up.
A suggested format for a case write-up is:
• Action Plan and Statement of Recommendation-Outline your recommendation
strategy and the action plan which helps implement your recommendation
• Problem Identification-Analyze the current situation and problems relates to
products, price, promotions and places. Provide the analysis and support for the
most relevant 4P factors that your action plan and recommendation solve
• Expected Outcomes- Evaluation of the merits/demerits of the possible courses of
action/strategies and your recommendation for action.
Cases will be evaluated on the following dimensions:
•
•
•
•
Quality of Problem Diagnosis: Have you defined a problem, which is really the
source of identifiable symptoms or the key impediments to attaining valued goals?
Quality of Analysis: Have you identified the 4P factors most relevant to the
problem at hand? How well have you argued the reasonableness of your
assumptions? To what extent have you been able to draw not-to-obvious and
pertinent inferences? Remember that excellent case analyses are dense with good
insights.
Quality of Recommendation: How specific, comprehensive and practical are your
plans? How well have you recognized implementation considerations? You don’t
have to be excessively detailed. Present the main thrust of your recommendation,
assuming that the details can be handled by competent subordinates.
Writing Style and organization: Logical structure, clarity and conciseness.
2
You should turn in at the beginning of class on the day specified. The case write-ups and
presentations account for 70% of the grades for this part. The presentation is about 25
minutes including Q&A.
For the left cases your group is not required to present, you are still required to prepare
the case discussion and write two-page case summary based on the case discussion
questions. The case summary will account for 30% of the grades for this part.
Course Project
Each group will pick an industry. Within this industry, two companies will be chosen:
1.
A company which is doing well, and
2.
A company which is not doing as well as 1.
The task is to:
(a)
Completely analyze and compare these two businesses with regard to their
marketing practices. In particular, you should focus on the analysis of
marketing issues (e.g., customer, competitor, industry, technology, government,
self, product (features), pricing, distribution, advertising, sales promotion
analyses), which you feel are important in explaining the differences between the
performance of two companies. Non-marketing reasons should be briefly
mentioned. Clearly outline your assumptions and thought processes.
(b)
Suggest actions and strategies (on each issue), which you feel would enable the
weaker and stronger company to improve its market position. Clearly outline
your assumptions and thinking.
Your selection of two companies will have to be approved by the instructor (before Sep
7th), although you will be given considerable freedom to follow you own interests. Since
the project will require a significant amount of time and effort it is important that you
select companies in which you are personally very interested.
Some suggestions to increase the probability of generating a very good project are:
1.
Start early.
2.
Define the industry carefully. Don't designate the industry as all
restaurants, and then compare McDonald's to the Steelhead. If you decide
to pick two large companies, such as IBM and HP, carefully constrain the
product class, e.g. laptops, so as to avoid a mega-corporation analysis.
3.
Attempt to develop some structure before you go about collecting
information. The laundry list may be helpful in this regard.
4.
Be flexible on your sources of information. Discussions with key
executives, current and potential customers, competitors, published information
from public sources and the company, personal observations, etc.
3
PowerPoint presentation should be emailed to the instructor at least one day before the
presentation (Oct 26).
Cannon offers the course project opportunity. If you are interested in choosing Cannon as
your project, you could indicate that.
Class Participation
Marketing Management is a participation sport. All students are expected to be present,
punctual, and prepared to contribute to all class sessions. This purpose of this portion
of grade is meant to give you incentives to actively participate in classroom discussion
and cases. Also it is to give you practice in stating and defending your opinions orally.
You will be evaluated on both the quantity and quality of your contribution to class
discussion. If you provide an important point or you provide the right answer to some
specified question, I will give you one point and 10 is the maximum.
4
Course Outline (Tentative to Change)
Date
Week 1 (Aug 10)
Topics
Introduction to Strategic
Marketing Management
in Asia
Readings and Assignments
Chapters 1 and 2
Articles recommended
Introduction 2
Capturing Marketing
Insights—analytical tools of
MM
Chapters 3 and 4
Articles recommended
Deadline to form your group
(of 5 at most)
Week 3 (Aug 24)
Analyzing Consumer Market
Chapters 5 and 6
Articles recommended
Segmentation in-class analysis
Find Right Customers
Chapter 7 and 8
Articles recommended
Case: Biopure Corp
(Case Analysis by Group 1 and
Group 2 and Group 3)
Building Strong Brands
Chapters 9 and 10
Articles recommended
Case: Lenovo: Building a
Global Brand
(Case Analysis by Group 4 and
Group 5 and Group 6)
Project topic fixed
Chapter 11
Articles recommended
Introduction 1
Week 2 (Aug17)
Special Marketing
Management Topic I
Week 4 (Aug 31)
Topic II
Week 5 (Sep 7)
Topic III
Week 6 (Sep 14)
Competition
Case: Carrefour China:
Maintaining its Past Glory Or
Drowning in the Sea of
Competition
(Case Analysis by Group 7 and
Group 8)
After Reading Week
5
Week 7 (Sep 28)
Product Strategy
Chapter 12
Articles recommended
Case: Citibank: Launching the
Credit Card in Asia Pacific
(Case Analysis by Group 1 and
Group 2 and Group 3)
Chapter 14
Articles recommended
Case: Cambridge Software
(Case Analysis by Group 4 and
Group 5 and Group 6)
The assignment is given
Week 8 (Oct 5)
Pricing Strategy
Week 9 (Oct 12)
How to Deliver Value?
Chapter 15 and 16
Articles recommended
Case: Bright Dairy & Food Co.,
Ltd.
(Case Analysis by Group 6,
Group 7 and Group 8)
Week 10 (Oct 19)
How to Communicate Values
(I) and (II)?
Chapter 17, 18 and 20
Articles recommended
Week 11 (Oct 26)
Quantity Analysis Summary
Group Project Presentation
Articles recommended
Course project is due and inclass presentation
The assignment is due
Week 12 (Nov 2)
Group Project Presentation
Articles recommended
Course project is due and inclass presentation
Week 13 (Nov 9)
Exam (the night of Nov 9)
6:30-8:30pm
6