This course aims to teach basic skills in marketing decision-making based on a systematic analytical approach to harnessing data that help managers to increase the effectiveness of marketing decisions. The course is tailored towards students who are not trained as computer engineers but rather as business professionals who have to acquire know-how in using data to improve marketing decision-making in their everyday tasks (e.g. deciding which customer segments should be targeted, how to evaluate the potential costs versus return-on-investing in different marketing activities e.g. from online or offline campaigns, or testing how to develop a new product and improve the existing one).

We use an “Explain-Show-Do-Practice” approach to learning that encompasses explanations in the lectures followed up by a combination of class discussion, case study analysis and practical hands-on exercises with practice datasets in using statistics software. We do not go deeply into the statistics and mathematics behind the methods used in the academic models behind the tools, but rather provide you with an understanding of what the model could be used for, intuitively how it works and which data do you need to have as an input and how to evaluate the output that you would get from the software. We use an add-on module in Excel to make this course highly relevant and applicable to manager’s actual decision-making.