COURSE NUMBER: EWMBA299M-1

COURSE TITLE: Marketing Strategy

UNITS OF CREDIT: 3 units

INSTRUCTOR: Miguel Villas-Boas

E-MAIL ADDRESSvillas@haas.berkeley.edu

PREREQUISITE(S): EWMBA 206 Marketing Organization & Management

CLASS FORMAT: Lectures + MARKSTRAT simulation + Cases + Guest Speakers

CLASS WEBSITE: bCourses.

REQUIRED READINGS: Case packet /Reader

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: Class project + In-class participation + MARKSTRAT

CAREER FIELD: General management, strategic management consulting, marketing, technology, M&A, broad applications to a range of careers and industries

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES: 
This course provides the opportunity to sharpen strategic analytic skills by exploring in greater detail selected concepts covered only briefly in the core MBA courses. Furthermore, the course takes you out of the theory books into the real world as you play a 10-week long business game, the MARKSTRAT simulation. 

MARKSTRAT is the ultimate strategic decisions simulation where multiple teams manage all dimensions of a firm strategy decisions in a competitive market, with short and long-term implications, and is a lot of FUN. The simulation allows you to apply concepts learned in different courses to run an actual company. The simulation involves the processing of rich amounts of market and competitive intelligence, and requires players to make decisions on targeting of selected market segments, positioning of products, R&D decisions on the design and development of new products. Furthermore, you need to launch, improve or withdraw existing products, interface with the production department and production planning, take decisions on pricing, advertising messaging, distribution channels, sales force deployment, and market research. An important aspect of the simulation is also to be good at resource allocation as your budget is limited. 

Overall, you’ll feel like you are running an actual company, formulating and implementing its long-term strategy. Top managers that have gone through MARKSTRAT have felt that they are back at running their company. Students going through MARKSTRAT have found it to be one of their most vivid memories of the MBA experience.

Topics to be covered include, but are not limited to:
-                 strategic market planning frameworks 
-                 causes of strategy underperformance: the “strategy-to-performance” gap 
-                 causes of strategic decline 
-                 strategic growth options and their relationship to profitability 
-                 business context analysis and scenario planning 
-                 managing evolutionary versus disruptive strategic change 
-                 organizational responses to environmental uncertainty 
-                 identifying and articulating unique customer value propositions 
-                 aligning internal operations with external strategic vision 
-                 understanding the process of strategy formulation and strategic thinking 
-                 valuing and implementing strategies 
-                 building strategic capability; the build/buy/ally decision 
-                 managing strategic alliances

The course is cross-functional in its focus, attempting, where appropriate, to integrate marketing, financial, leadership, and operational strategy issues.

The course is designed to be essential for students interested in careers in general management, in strategic management consulting, in marketing or brand management, in technology markets, or in mergers & acquisitions, and has broad applications to a range of careers and industries.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Miguel Villas-Boas is the J.Gary Shansby Professor of Marketing Strategy at the Haas School of Business, UC-Berkeley. He obtained a Ph.D. at M.I.T., an MBA at INSEAD, France and M.Sc. in Economics at the New University of Lisbon, Portugal. Professor Villas-Boas has published extensively in the areas of marketing strategy, organization design, and customer relationship management. He has been involved in consulting projects in banking and in telecommunications. Professor Villas-Boas has been nominated for, or has won, the Cheit Best teaching Award for several years, and has won the ISMS Long-Term Impact Award among other research awards. He has published in the Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, RAND Journal of Economics, Management Science, Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Journal of Business, and in other top journals in management. Professor Villas-Boas has been the Chair of the Marketing Group, Director of the Haas Ph.D. program, and been the Department Editor or Associate Editor at Management Science and Marketing Science, and is a founding member of SICS-Summer Institute in Competitive Strategy.

Website: http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/villas/