This course involves a broad understanding of customer value maximization and behavior. Successful marketing requires an understanding of consumer’s needs and subsequent behaviors to meet those needs. Products, services, and companies have failed because companies didn’t understand their target consumers’ needs and wants. Customers are the ones who are expected to purchase and use a product or a service. Customers are the ones who pay the firm’s bills. The course focuses on the factors that influence consumer preferences in order to understand the processes in which those preferences are shaped. The objective of the course is to develop students’ skills for understanding, researching, analyzing, and selecting marketing strategies, using current theory and data relevant for the intended value maximization on consumer’s behavior. This will focus will be from psychological and economic points of view. This marketing course is designed to provide an in-depth understanding the job of a typical manager in marketing departments. While the specific duties of a marketing manager vary considerably across industries and companies, the course focuses on the four major activities common to the position: (1) analysis of market information and consumers, (2) understanding consumer behavior to maximize value, (3) developing strategy through the marketing process on consumer behavior, and (4) implementation. The course will draw knowledge and skills from a variety of areas, including market research, brand management and marketing strategy.
The main goals of the course are: to strengthen the understanding how marketing communication is created, managed, delivered and measured; to provide basic theoretical and strategic concepts for effective IMC; to assess strengths and weaknesses of the major marketing communication tools: (advertising, direct marketing, Internet and interactive media, support media, sales promotion, PR and personal selling) and to get familiar with the recent digital marketing tools (SEO/SEA, Online Advertising, Virtual Communities, Viral Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Augmented Reality).
In order to communicate with their customers and other stakeholders, modern marketers have to coordinate and integrate all marketing communication activities and tools within a company. The goal is to create a seamless program in which all marketing communications work together to achieve organizational and brand objectives. Students will be able to develop such integrated marketing communications (IMC) plan, and achieve a keen awareness and understanding of the decisions, issues, and activities involved in developing such a plan.
The course is offering plenty of opportunities for participants’ engagement and for gaining conceptual and hands-on experience. Team work – in and outside the class room – enhances the collaboration and communication skills of the participants. The course blends several teaching methods to create a challenging and stimulating learning environment. Besides the lecture format that presents key concepts and theories, case discussion, role plays, team presentations and in-class exercises deepen the understanding of the course materials.
Objective of this course is to teach students how to apply a certain marketing strategy, starting with problems faced by a marketing manager. These problems are mainly the following: (1) analyzing marketing opportunities, competition and environment; (2) market segmentation, selecting target markets and developing the marketing mix; (3) marketing strategies to maintain competitive advantage in different market circumstances and product life-cycle stages (introduction, growth, maturity, decline). This marketing course is designed to provide an in-depth understanding the job of a typical marketing manager in marketing departments. The course will draw knowledge and skills from a variety of areas, including marketing strategy, consumer behavior, market research and statistics. The key element of this course is Markstrat, the marketing simulation game. The course attempts to simulate the marketing manager’s job through the development and implementation of a marketing plan in the context of Markstrat simulations.
In essence, Quantitative Methods for Managers is a key reference for managers who aim to become skilled in management and marketing. This course is about what to measure and how to measure, when assessing the effects of managerial and marketing tactics. Evaluation and control are essential strategic managerial and marketing processes; and the basis of evaluation and control is measurement. It will be explained how to measure emerging topics such as social marketing, sales force management and brand equity, in addition to explaining indispensable topics ranging from Return on Sales to Cannibalization Rate. The quantification and evaluation of economic theories and hypotheses today represent a vital tool when making decisions on economic policy in conditions of market uncertainty. Since the most pressing question in market today is not simply how to measure any single outcome but understanding how all the various topics interconnect – and the resulting financial consequences of managerial and marketing decisions. Quantitative Methods for Managers move this discussion a major step forward by reviewing alternative integrated measurement systems and how companies are assembling such systems for better diagnostics and more transparent managerial models. Companies who develop a deep understanding of this inter connectivity will gain significant competitive advantage over time.
The main objective of this course is to understand complex issues surrounding the shaping of optimal long-term prices for products and services, resulting in a satisfying outcome. After having completed this course, students will be able to understand the current framework for analyzing questions regarding prices and to get familiar with the main techniques leading to decisions on profitable prices.
Students will, perusing literature connected with Price management, become familiar with main concepts and economic interactions that pertain to the following areas: conventional versus strategic pricing, main building elements of strategic pricing, value creation as the main source of comparative advantage, price structure and market segmentation, etc. Students attending the module will be able to identify key characteristics of the corporate, national and international macroeconomic environment, give insight into how and to what extent features relating to specific environments differ and propose solutions to adapt and react in a globalized world exposed to constant changes.
This marketing course is designed to provide an in-depth understanding the job of an un- typical manager in marketing departments. While the specific duties of a marketing manager vary considerably across industries and companies, the course focuses on digital marketing. How should we transit from traditional marketing to digital marketing? Is brand management dead?
The key element of this course is practice, practice and practice. The course will be done together with practical experts in the field Those experts will work with you through the whole course. Main marketing strategy and tactics will be seen from the other perspective, the perspective from the digital marketing.
Business ethics is not a clear and unambiguous area; it is exposed to numerous interpretations within the context of “what is the right thing to do”. The course comprises discussions on interrelations between economic, legal, political, social, cultural and ethical issues in the definition of the business policy, managerial decision making at the stage of the business policy implementation, and, finally, as an integral part of business activities. Although CSR is a relatively new term, its roots go back a long time and can be traced to a variety of philosophical, ethical, and environmental discourses. Thus there are a number of different approaches to CSR as well as a number of different definitions of what exactly CSR comprises. Furthermore the concept has been extended to apply not just to corporations but to many other (not necessarily profit seeking) forms of organisation. The concept of CSR is therefore complex. It is the purpose of this course to introduce students to this complexity and to the various components which might comprise socially responsible behaviour. In doing so it is intended to provide a framework both for further study and for planning and evaluating the actions and performance of an organisation in the context of sustainable and socially responsible activity. Particularlly: (1) Developing sensitivity to immoral and irresponsible acts in business world. (2) Encouraging proactive behavior in favor of ethical standards. (3) Developing know-how of incorporating ethical standards in business procedures and detecting irresponsible acts in companies.
Services dominate the global economy and are becoming critical for competitive advantage in companies across the globe and in all industry sectors. For manufacturers like GE and IBM, services represent their primary growth and profitability strategies into the 21st century. Over half of IBM’s current revenues and over 60 percent of GE’s current profits come from services. Superior service quality drives the competitive advantage of excellent global companies like Marriott Hotels, Starbucks, and FedEx—traditional service businesses. This is also true of many of the largest Croatian companies including Konzum, HEP, and Zagrebačka Banka. In fact, recent award-winning publications espouse the view that “all businesses are service businesses.” With increased focus on services, traditional manufacturing companies require new ways of developing their offerings, which can include a wide range of physical or interactive products, accompanying services and experiences.
The course focuses on the challenges of managing services and products and delivering quality offerings to customers across industry sectors. In its two parts, the course offers an integrated perspective on both service and product management. In the first part, the focus is on the attraction, retention, and building of strong customer relationships through quality service (and services). In the second part, the course builds on these principles and extends them to various tools that support strategic development and design of product and service offerings. Thus, the course is equally applicable to organizations whose core product is service (e.g., banks, transportation companies, hotels, hospitals, educational institutions, professional services, telecommunication, etc.) and to organizations that depend on services for competitive advantage (e.g., high technology manufacturers, automotive, industrial products, etc.).
Objective of this course is to teach students about problems and techniques to be used during a market research, and enable them to collect information on their own, estimate and use them efficiently when making business decisions. Students will learn how to require a market research and how to evaluate and use the results. There will be also discussions on how to plan, implement and analyze data and reports. The course is primarily created for users, i.e. more for future marketing experts and less for specialists dealing mostly with market research. Students will, perusing literature connected with Marketing Research, become familiar with main concepts and economic interactions that pertain to following areas: research design, defining the marketing research problem, secondary data sources, qualitative and quantitative research approaches, sampling, etc. The students will discover problems and offer possible solutions, as well as identify possible risks of a proposed solution. Through the use of case examples and didactic lecture, students will have knowledge of the ethical principles of research and appropriate codes of conduct in market research as identified by ESOMAR and NIH.
Different forms of leadership are key to the survival of all types of organizations. With the help of practical examples and role-playing, this course emphasizes motivation, understanding, interpersonal relationships, communication models, change management, listening skills, teamwork, conflict resolution, negotiation, time management, goal setting and organizational values.
The aim of the internship is to enable students to apply academic knowledge and skills in a real business environment and to develop the accompanying independence, responsibility, and creativity necessary to perform business and work tasks in situations of practical business activities. Students are encouraged to connect their internship with the preparation of the graduate thesis in a way that through internship they apply the knowledge and skills acquired during their studies, but also in collecting and analyzing primary and secondary data and proposing recommendations based on that data.
The final step in graduate studies is writing a master thesis in the field chosen by the candidate and mentored by a professor teaching in this field. Before embarking on the research project, the candidate has to submit the proposal of his/her topic, including the methodology used in the research. The mentor assists the candidate in the course of his/her research project and the completion of his/her thesis.