Marketing is a crucial function in all businesses and organizations, and is becoming increasingly crucial to success in our modern global economy. The goal of an introductory course to marketing is to teach the core concepts and tools to help students better understand and strive in marketing. The course can cover a variety of topics, including the importance of marketing research, marketing strategy, brand strategy, pricing, or integrated marketing communication. As such, all models in Enginius could be relevant, but some are more central than others.
At the core of all marketing strategy is the understanding of customers’ preferences. Of course, all customers would like the best products, with the highest quality, and at the lowest prices. But when it comes to trading off between these attributes, customers vary widely, and no company can please everyone with a single offering. Conjoint analysis helps students gain a different perspective about customer preferences, and how to quantify them to guide managerial decisions.
Once students have understood the heterogeneity of customers’ preferences, what should a company do about it? One answer is to divide the market into homogeneous segments, and decide which ones to address. That’s what the segmentation module of Enginius will help you teach your students. Different case studies, such as Kirin or Dürr, also allow to integrate conjoint analysis and segmentation.
When it comes to how products and brands are perceived, customers’ perceptions are far more important than realities. What does it matter if you have the highest-quality product if your customers do not perceive it that way? Positioning analysis allows to map customers’ mind, and makes crystal clear that, when it comes to customer perceptions, you can’t be everything to everyone.
Price is one of the most important elements of the marketing mix. Pricing a product or a service correctly can make or break a company. Yet, it is one of the marketing decisions that is so often executed badly and with limited data insights. The price optimization module will allow your students to identify the optimal price level of a product or service based on simple survey data. Zach’s garage is a simple yet effective case study to show the usefulness of such model.
