I have covered many ideas relevant to strategic marketing in my blog over the last eight years, e.g., here. I also teach this topic at Terry College, University of Georgia where I work, see here. There is, I believe, a lot of opportunity to improve the teaching of marketing especially on the strategy side. Given many ideas link to business practice they often aren’t perfectly thought through. Academics often don’t spend as long thinking about teacing as we do research.
Firstly, let me say that it is important not to treat this as a military endeavor. (Despite the origins of the name). It is also important to challenge many of the basic ideas in marketing strategy teaching. Some of them are pretty dubious.
My Advice Is A Work In Progress
Over time I will add a few tools here to help people consider the discussion of strategy in marketing. These are all works in progress so please do critique. If what I am saying does not make sense you would be doing me a great favor by telling me this. This is beacause I do not think I am perfect. (Although sometimes I act like I believe this. After all teachers sometimes have to do that).
I am hoping these will be useful to teachers looking for ideas for the classroom. Ideally, marketing students will also find the topics worth a look. Managers might recall their studying days and may find some new ideas.
Marketing Strategy Topics to Cover
The first topic I have covered is a classic. The idea of segmentation, targeting and positioning. These ideas are linked. Yet they can be challenging to put together. I have tried to produce a clear visual explanation that links them all into the same picture. I have added in research. (Because that seemed to work pretty well in the picture. As well as it helping to place research in the process).
I address measurement of national culture. This gives my (relatively robust) view on the usefulness (or otherwise) of measures of national culture. Okay, I think they are really silly. They allow users to embrace the simplicty of bigotry. Users can do this without the unpleasant feeling that they are bad people. I would love to see a proper defence of this. I haven’t.
This page below covers ideas on evolution that are relevant to marketing. I cover how we can think about evolution. One point being that we can use such ideas as to aid imagination rather than needing to take the ideas whole into marketing.
My page on rationality discusses what is meant by this. How might views impact marketing choices?
