Course
The strength and well-being of an organization is intimately tied to its ability to recruit, satisfy, and even delight customers. While customer-focus and market orientation are important and increasingly practiced throughout organizations, the marketing function is most especially responsible for ensuring customer satisfaction. The purpose of this course is to introduce students to marketing concepts, ideas and applications which are useful to organizations. 

Goals
1. Professional Preparedness.  The vocabulary, concept and practices of marketing are covered in breadth.

2. Cross-functional Relationships. In the overview of the class and through-out the course, the role of marketing in the organization, likely tensions between marketing and other departments, and knowledge from other functional areas that enhances marketing analysis and practice are highlighted.  The connection of marketing to learning from general education courses -- especially social sciences courses -- is highlighted as well.

3. Lifelong Learning.  Marketing is not a static field.  While some ideas and concepts (the 4 Ps, segmentation and the promotional mix for instance) are relatively timeless, their application and practice changes along with environmental forces.  Moreover, new concepts are continually being developed and applied by managers and scholars. Students are encouraged to visit the sources (below), browse my Favorites, and to read Business Week, and the Wall Street Journal. 

4. The Environment of Business.  The viability of marketing strategies is intimately affected by the social, cultural, demographic, technological and regulatory environment in which organizations operate.  The changing environment is a strong reason for students to begin to read and pay attention to business publications and news.

5. Ethical Understanding. Knowledge of the code of ethics developed and followed by marketing practitioners is particularly important to business students.  Marketing (particularly sales) is commonly and probably unfairly, thought of as one of the least ethical of fields. Ethical practices are particularly important in an era of "relationship marketing."

Grading
Exam #1....................22.5%
Exam #2 ...................22.5%
Exam #3.................. .22.5%
Exam #4 (final).........22.5%
Pricing Assignment....5%
Take home essay........5%

Exams
Exams consist of 50 -100 multiple choice questions. These questions will cover material from class lectures AND the textbook. In an introductory class, there is much material to be learned; accordingly, you will be required to learn from me AND the textbook. I design exams to include 30-40% of material from the textbook. Therefore, if you do not read the book, it will be difficult to pass the class. You will not automatically receive a C, will not receive extra credit assignments, and your failing grade will not be changed at the end of the semester for any reason except for a clerical error on my part.

Be aware that whether I ask multiple choice questions or essay questions, that I choose questions that are essentially of two types: (1) purely informational questions and (2) diagnostic questions. The purely informational questions require less thought, as they merely test your exposure to, and memory of, the material. Diagnostic questions, however, often cause some degree of discomfort for those who are not accustomed to them. Their purpose is to determine whether you have learned the material adequately to be able to recognize its applicability in a given situation. These questions ask you to search your memory banks to determine what you have learned that is useful and appropriate to apply to the situation with which you are faced.