APPLIES TO ACADEMIC YEAR 2016/2017 Norwegian version

MAN 3115/3116/3117/3118 Market Oriented Management

Responsible for the course
Bendik Meling Samuelsen, Ragnhild Silkoset

Department
Department of Marketing

Term
According to study plan

ECTS Credits
30

Language of instruction
Norwegian

Introduction
To succeed in today's markets a manager needs the ability to explore updated analytical and theoretical market knowledge. This knowledge ensures the company's ability to exploit its market potential. Challenging and complex customer value demands, aggressive competition and turbulent markets, rapid technological and digital development and global expansion strategies characterize such markets. Central to this is marketers’ responsibility for making strategic marketing decisions that identifies and creates insight into market mechanisms and competition opportunities. Marketers are experts in understanding customer value perceptions, ability to act within ethical and social norms, promote innovation culture and processes, as well as establish and run organizational processes for value creation.

Marketing as a discipline has evolved to include a comprehensive and overall responsibility for corporate value creation. The main focus of this program in new perspectives on market leadership reflects this by concentrating on three decision areas. In the program participants will learn to ( 1 ) organize for market solutions by being trained in how to organize a company to produce customer value , (2 ) explore market opportunities in that they are trained to make decisions that capture and exploit changing markets and ( 3) meet market challenges in that they are trained on how to differentiate and protect products and brands in a market.

Organizing for market solutions: Throughout this program participants will learn how to make decisions that create companies whose purpose is to develop organizations that are supremely good at providing market-based solutions. The ability to consciously make the whole company as co-responsible for the value production is essential in this context.

Exploring market opportunities: In the second part of the program, participants will learn to make decisions with the purpose to exploit market opportunities. Both consumers and business customers expect seamless digital solutions that simplify the interaction with a company. Today's marketers are experiencing a major transformation that requires high level of expertise in marketing innovations, social media, mobile platforms, the ability to explain and assure the quality of market data, the spread of omni-channel distribution, to name a few. This part of the program will add value to marketing managers who want to learn how to ask the critical right questions in today's markets where the aim is to capture, interpret and act on trends and developments in the markets, manage digital communication strategies, and which can assure the quality of empirical, visual and graphical analysis of analysis to make market decisions.

Meet Market Challenges: In the third main part of this program, students learn to make decisions that contribute to a company ability to differentiate itself with the purpose to meet market challenges. Differentiation requires a thorough marketing strategy that specifies customer audiences, brand positioning and brand associations as well as make decisions about appropriate exposure in the market. These decisions are based on knowledge of the customers' perception of value. Based on the understanding that different customer groups have different needs to be covered, participants will learn how to develop a marketing plan that specifies the main selling points for the various customer segments, calculate the profitability analysis of the various segments, knowledge about the brand and its products can be built and strengthened, and knowledge of how a deliberate pricing strategy affects earnings.

The importance of strategic management for a market oriented company's profitability is illustrated by the fact that customer-driven organizations achieve success in a variety of markets and competition situations. Superior customer value, utilization of unique competitive advantage and understanding of the rate of market challenges are all demanding management tasks which require effective marketing strategies that exploit and develop the companies' strategic competitive advantage.

The target audience for this program is middle managers and/or marketing managers in companies that operate in both the corporate and product and service industry. The program will also be a good fit for those working in small and medium-sized businesses, the public sector and those working in the consulting industry.

Learning outcome

Acquired knowledge
Participants will learn to develop basic knowledge and be familiar with the latest research within market-oriented management.
Participants will learn to understand how the environment affects marketing in corporate and consumer markets.
Participants will learn about the latest theories and knowledge concerning corporate organization with the purpose to create customer value.

Acquired skills
Participants will learn to develop the ability to make independent strategic decisions through use tool that detects and evaluates the market potential of a product or service.
Participants will develop the ability to make competitive choices to differentiate products and services in the market.
Participants will be able to use specific tools to organize for market leadership with the purpose of creating customer value.
Participants will be able to conduct a limited research or development project under the supervision and in accordance with ethical standards.

Reflection
Participants will be able to acquire the ability to critically reflect on existing theories, methods and interpretations in the field of marketing and optimization of customer values.
Participants should be able to communicate about issues, analyzes and conclusions in an appropriate discipline with both specialists and the general public.

Prerequisites
Bachelor degree, corresponding to 180 credits, and 4 years of work experience. Please consult our student regulations.

Compulsory reading
Books:
Gripsrud, Geir, Ulf Henning Olsson og Ragnhild Silkoset.. 2010. Metode og dataanalyse : beslutningsstøtte for bedrifter ved bruk av JMP. 2. utg. Høyskoleforlaget. 366 sider
Samuelsen, Bendik Meling, Adrian Peretz og Lars Erling Olsen. 2016. Merkevareledelse. 1. utg. Cappelen Damm

Articles:
Anderson, E., & S. Jap. 2012. The dark side of close relationships. Sloan Management. 7 sider
Biong, Harald, and Ragnhild Silkoset. 2014. The ineffectiveness of corporate brand investments in creating price premiums. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice. 22.2. 169-184
Birkinshaw, Julian, Cyril Bouquet, and Jean-Louis Barsoux. 2011. The 5 myths of innovation. MIT Sloan Management Review. 52.2. 43-50
Hinterhuber, Andreas and Stephan Liozu ,. 2012. “Is it Time to Rethink Your Pricing Strategy?”. MIT Sloan Management Review. Summer. 11 sider
Jaworski, B. J., & A. K. Kohli. 1993. Market orientation: antecedents and consequences.. Journal of marketing. 53-70, 17 sider
Kidwell, Roland E., Arne Nygaard, and Ragnhild Silkoset.. (2007). Antecedents and effects of free riding in the franchisor–franchisee relationship.. Journal of Business Venturing. 22.4. 522-544, 22 sider
Kumar, V., Jones, E., Venkatesan, R., & Leone, R. P.. 2011. Is market orientation a source of sustainable competitive advantage or simply the cost of competing?. Journal of Marketing. 75(1). 16-30, 14 sider
Monroe, Kent B., and Angela Y. Lee. 1999. Remembering versus knowing: Issues in buyers’ processing of price information. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. 27.2. 207-225
Morgan, N. A., Vorhies, D. W., & Mason, C. H.. 2009. Market orientation, marketing capabilities, and firm performance,. Strategic Management Journal,. 30(8). 909-920, 11 sider
Reitzig, Markus. 2011. Is your company choosing the best innovation ideas. MIT Sloan Management Review. 52.4
Silkoset, Ragnhild. 2013. Negative and positive effects of social capital on co-located firms' withholding efforts. European Journal of Marketing. 47 (1/2). 174-197 (23 sider)

Recommended reading

Course outline
Market oriented management
Decision making in business-to-business markets
Strategic decisions and use of market data
Visualization of market data analysis
Analytical framework for branding
Brand positioning and choice of concepts
Growth strategies
Pricing strategy and value creation
Communication strategies
Simulation for marked based decision and managing competition

Computer-based tools
Recommended software is Exce

Learning process and workload
The programme is conducted through five course modules, a total of approx. 150 lecturing hours. Parts of the classes will be held in English.

Project tutorials differ in each Executive Master of Management programme. It will consist of personal tutorials and tutorials given in class. Generally the students may expect consulting tutorials, not evaluating tutorials. The total hours of tutorials offered is estimated to two hours pr. students following an ordinary Master of Management programme. For students taking the programme as their final Master of Management programme the tutorials offered are estimated to a total of six hours per term paper.

Please note that while attendance is not compulsory in all programmes, it is the student's own responsibility to obtain any information provided in class that is not included on the course homepage/ itslearning or other course materials.

Coursework requirements

Examination
The students are evaluated through a term paper, counting 18 ECTS credits and an individual course paper, counting 12 ECTS credits. The written assignment is a collection of 4 elective cases selected from 5 cases that are used in the programme. The term paper may be written individually or in groups of maximum three persons. Both evaluations must be passed to obtain a certificate for the programme.

For students taking this programme as the final Master of Management Programme the following applies:
The students are evaluated through a term paper, counting 24 ECTS credits and an individual course paper, counting 6 ECTS credits. The written assignment is a collection of 4 elective cases selected from 5 cases that are used in the programme. The term paper may be written individually or in groups of maximum two persons. Both evaluations must be passed to obtain a certificate for the programme.
Examination code(s)
MAN 31151 - Term paper; accounts for 100 % of the grade to pass the programme MAN 3115, 18 credits
MAN 31161 - Course paper; accounts for 100 % of the grade to pass the programme MAN 3116, 12 credits
Both evaluations must be passed to obtain a certificate for the programme.

For students taking this programme as the final Master of Management Programme the following applies:
MAN 31171 - Term paper; accounts for 100 % of the grade to pass the programme MAN 3117, 24 credits
MAN 31181 - Course paper; accounts for 100 % of the grade to pass the programme MAN 3118, 6 credits;.
Both evaluations must be passed to obtain a certificate for the programme.

Examination support materials
Examination support materials at written examinations are specifies under "Examination" in the student portal @BI . Please, note the use of calculator and dictionary. https://at.bi.no/EN/Pages/Exa_Hjelpemidler-til-eksamen.aspx

Re-sit examination
It is only possible to re-sit an examination at the next ordinary examination. When a programme is discontinued, the re-sit examination will take place in a replacement programme.

The assessment is mainly based on more than one examination code. Where this is the case, you may re-sit only the assessed components of one of these examination codes. Where this is not the case, all of the assessed components of the course must be retaken.

For students who must retake the course paper, they must submit cases that are handed out during the lessons in addition to submitting a final course paper after the program is finished. It is therefore important that students are enrolled for itslearning both fall and spring to get the information and requirements in connection with the cases.

All re-sit examinations will incur an additional fee.

Additional information