This course provides an overall view of marketing in a customerdriven firm focusing on essential marketing skills needed by successful managers in all business functions Topics include how individual and organizational consumers make decisions segment markets estimate the economic value of customers to the firm position the firms offering effective marketing research new product development and pricing strategies communicate with consumers estimate advertisings effectiveness and manage relationships with sales force and distribution partners The course also studies how firms must coordinate these different elements of the marketing mix to insure that all marketing activities collectively forge a coherent strategy The importance of combining qualitative and quantitative concepts in effective marketing analysis is also examined The course uses a combination of lectures class discussion and case analysis Marketing is a core course and assumes no prior knowledge of marketing However there are certain concepts from Firms Markets that students should have mastered including price elasticity of demand price discrimination marginal cost marginal revenue efficient scale for production capacity diminishing returns utility functions and utility curves.