Core and Capstone Courses

The course introduces the basic principles of marketing and covers key marketing concepts such as developing marketing strategies (segmentation, targeting, and positioning) and marketing communications (IMC), pricing, branding, and managing customer relationships. In this course, students will critically explore marketing principles, concepts, and models from a theoretical as well as a practical perspective. Contexts for discussion and learning will be global with special reference to markets in Asia and China.

The course focuses on harvesting and applying insights from consumers searching, purchasing and consuming product and services. It centers on the consumer psychological states at the moment of their judgement and decision-making. Seemingly minor incidents and the subtle contextual cues in daily life can trigger these psychological states and exert substantial impacts on purchase, consumption, and investment. This course appreciates key trendy consumption phenomena in Hong Kong and China consumer market (e.g., microphilanthropy, experiential consumption, anthropomorphism), analyze these phenomena from the perspective of in-depth psychological mechanisms, and explore the impact of marketing efforts on consumer reaction using the new technical tool of eye-tracking. The course covers consumer goods, business products, and services. It offers insights to improve firm competitiveness by developing unique consumer-focused strategy and tactics.

The course is to provide a cutting-edge understanding of marketing research methods in today’s marketplace. It will focus on how both qualitative and quantitative aspects of marketing research can help managers to address substantive marketing problems. The course emphasizes the basic methodologies (survey, experiments), as well as introduces a variety of techniques (eye-tracking and digital analytics), and demonstrates how research results can be used to develop innovative marketing strategies. In sum, it combines insights of conventional marketing research with the cutting-edge development in our digital era.

The digital economy has fundamentally altered the nature of and the scope of consumer behavior and marketing practice. This course decomposes developments in digital marketing into three fundamental dimensions; time, space, and connections. In exploring these areas, we cover the concepts, theories, applications, and strategies behind digital marketing with the overarching goal of understanding how to utilize digital data to derive deeper and more meaningful behavioral, scientific, and managerial insights. Substantive topics include: digital advertising, analyzing digital trace data, strategizing with data assets, social network analysis, social media, digital branding, mobile marketing, human mobility, digital platforms and channels, and digital consumer behavior. Lectures, discussions, live data-analysis demonstrations, video pieces, real world cases (including many from the Chinese market), individual and group data exercises, and student-led project presentations are major class components.

As a capstone course, this course integrates knowledge from various marketing courses. It is aimed to provide students with advanced knowledge and experience for the design of effective marketing strategies from a general management perspective. It involves advanced concepts and tools useful for the development of marketing strategies and tactics. This course adopts a teaching philosophy of “learning by doing” and students’ marketing strategic thinking and decision-making skills will be enhanced by participation in marketing strategy simulations.