Great Ideas for Teaching Marketing
Ideas and resources for teaching marketing
Preferred format: This teaching activity is designed for small groups of students to discuss aggressive competitive strategies, particularly on a head-to-head basis.
Student audience: This exercise is more suitable for students of marketing strategy.
Exercise time: The group discussion time should be around 10 minutes, plus additional time for an overall class discussion.
The following points are Apple’s own description of aspects of their corporate strategy, as presented in one of their public documents. Review the points in order to identify the role of their strategic capabilities.
ACTIVITY/TASK
Aspects of Apple’s corporate strategy, in their own words:
Gillette has long been the leader in the razor market. However, to maintain their position they have had to make some tough decisions along the way. Review the following situation – if you were the CEO, would you have made the same decision?
ACTIVITY/TASK
Gillette has always prided their firm on razor technology innovation. Therefore, it was no surprise two … See the full activity...
Below are five different examples of how firms can structure their new product development project teams. Can you identify which team structure approach would be the most effective?
ACTIVITY/TASK
The ability of firms to generate new product concepts is a key factor in new product success. Some firms appear to be more successful at this task than others. The firm below is not very good at it – see if you can identify why.
ACTIVITY/TASK
John:
Good morning everyone, I hope that you have all come prepared with … See the full activity...
CRM success is highly reliant upon the motivation and performance of a firm’s customer contact staff. Considering this point, review the situation below – do you think that the management has made the right decision?
ACTIVITY/TASK
Assume that you have just started working at a supermarket, in their marketing department. the supermarket’s management team has just introduced a ‘… See the full activity...
Assume you were the marketing manager for a bank and you are planning a major new product launch, with a substantial advertising and direct mail budget. As you need to rely upon the bank’s branch and call center staff to complete the sales, you will need to develop an internal marketing program (use the checklist below as a guide).
ACTIVITY/TASK… See the full activity...
Below is an excerpt from a manager’s meeting at a large department store chain. They are discussing the merits of introducing a system of greater staff empowerment. Unfortunately, there are good arguments both for and against and the team cannot decide what to do – can you help them?
ACTIVITY/TASK
Kristi:
Personally, I think greater empowerment for our sales staff … See the full activity...
The following is an excerpt from a monthly ‘performance’ one-on-one meeting. Regular communication, teamwork, and individual motivation are important factors in the success of internal marketing. Review the following discussion. Who do you think is at fault? How can this situation be improved for the future?
ACTIVITY/TASK
Jackie:
Hi John, as you know I’m here for your monthly performance assessment.… See the full activity...
An insurance firm is looking to upgrade its operating software system. They are faced with three alternatives, which are listed below. In this ‘role-play’ activity, you will play the role of either:
Often firms seek to modify their corporate culture, as part of their overall internal marketing program. For this exercise, assume you are a consultant brought into a Fortune 1000 firm with the project of dramatically altering the firm’s corporate culture in order to improve its level of marketing orientation. Your task is to determine which of the possible activities identified … See the full activity...
In this activity, a firm is deciding on whether or not to invest in a major new product. In order to illustrate the influence of top management values, the profiles of four different CEOs are presented. Your task is to identify whether the management style of the CEO would influence the firm’s decision to pursue the new product opportunity.
