This course covers the same topics as the regular Marketing Strategy class (37000) with two main differences. First, the cases we will use will be slanted towards topics involving marketing and social impact. So while we will cover the same concepts as 37000 in the lectures, we will focus on cases that touch on social initiatives of firms and on nonprofits. This is NOT a class about CSR & Sustainability per se so we will not be covering frameworks relating to those topics within the course (beyond what you will see in the cases). The second difference is that we will be using a computer simulation called SABRE Sustainability in the last 5 weeks of the quarter. In weeks 5 through 9, you will manage a firm with your group and make marketing decisions for your firm. The SABRE Sustainability Business Simulation is specifically designed to place students in a decision making role as they transform their enterprise from “business as usual” to a business that can thrive in the new sustainable market. The decisions to be made each week include product decisions (creating and launching new products, managing existing products), pricing decisions, channel decisions and promotion decisions. Additionally you will have to decide whether or not to cater a new and growing sustainability segment in the market. Note that the sustainable segment in the simulation only represents a new emerging segment with different attribute preferences. There are two features of this simulation –first, your decisions will be data based, i.e., you will purchase marketing research data and use these data to make your decisions. Second, you will be competing with firms (i.e., groups) in the class. So your performance, as in real markets, will depend not just on your decisions but on those of your competitors. The idea is to simulate an experiential component to the class.
