MBM400A Research for Brand Decisions

• Topics

  Good decisions require good information. Therefore, the course introduces basic marketing research principles to make sure that students are able to assess decision relevant information. Further, the course focuses on a couple of central brand decisions to improve the ability of students to request and analyze necessary information to improve marketing decisions involving the brand. Students will also be presented common research techniques used to inform brand decisions.

   

  Themes:

  Basic Marketing Research Principles

  Presentations of Concepts and Research Techniques to Support Brand Decisions Involving:

  Experiments

  Factor Analysis

  Selection of Target Market (Market Segmentation)

• Learning outcome

  Knowledge - upon successful completion the student

  • will know basic marketing research principles
  • will have some knowledge about central metrics useful for making brand decisions
  • will have an understanding of research processes and techniques

  Skills - upon successful completion the student can

  • define research problems and questions
  • develop research design relevant for answering research questions
  • assess and revise measurement of relevant concepts
  • apply relevant tools and techniques to solve brand research problems              

  General competence - upon successful completion the student

  • can initiate and supervise marketing research processes
  • can evaluate information produced by market research
  • can plan and evaluate the research methodology approach for the master thesis

• Teaching

  Flipped classroom approach. Group assignments. Only a few plenary sessions.

• Recommended prerequisites

  A basic background in statistics may come in handy. However, this is not a requirement.

• Requirements for course approval

  Approval of group assignments.

• Assessment

  There are three different components. One individual multiple choice test (1 hour) (early in the semester). Furthermore, students that are marginally below a higher grade level on the multiple choice test are allowed an opportunity to argue their case for one of the wrong answers. If they make good sense, they will be given the extra points needed for a better grade. For those who choose to take the opportunity to argue for extra points will forfeit the right to appeal the grade on this assessment element.

  One group term paper (10 pages) and finally one group presentation (15 min) based on the group term paper.

  The individual multiple choice test (1 hour) counts 25%, the group presentation (15 min) counts 25% and the written group term paper (10 pages) counts 50%.

• Grading Scale

  Grading scale A-F

• Computer tools

  None.

• Literature

  Students get access to the course material on Canvas. An alternative (but not required) to the available course material is the following text book:

  Dawn Lacobucci (2013): Marketing Models: Multivariate Statistics and Marketing Analytics, South-Western, Cengage Learning