Welcome to Marketing and the Business Environment.
This is a contemporary course designed to help both those of you who may feel that you have a limited knowledge of marketing and those of you who feel that you would like to acquire a deeper understanding. In truth, marketing – in some shape or form – is all pervasive, and consumers – like you and me – are very literate marketing creatures. We know when we are being sold something and we’ve never been more empowered to shop around in global markets and look for the best buys. For marketers, this presents enormous challenges – competition has never been so intense and expectations have never been so high. So, while you may have an intuitive understanding of marketing, you may not have explored the underlying theory or considered themes in the business environment that are throwing up new opportunities and reshaping whole industries and markets, even as you read this introduction.
This is a course divided into five sessions, each of which will explore one or more themes relating to Marketing Management and the environments in which marketing plans are conceived and executed. The text suggested for this module is Kotler and Keller’s 15th Global Edition of Marketing Management, which will offer you a broad understanding of marketing principles and give you access to contemporary global insights and case studies. For each session, we will suggest some chapters which you can study; outside of this core reading, we may also suggest some additional reading which can help you to address discussion questions. For each session, we’ll also recommend a number of video clips which you can watch at your leisure, and we encourage you to read widely and critically in preparation for your final assessment. It’s never been easier to get access to a wide range of free-to-access sources – many of these sources are very valuable. However, you should also keep in mind the provenance of the sources you refer to. Just because someone says something interesting or compelling on a blog, for example, don’t just take this as read. If you are making an argument, it’s going to strengthen your hand considerably if you can support what you’re saying by citing one or more credible sources, such as published academic books, industry websites and peer reviewed journals.