COURSE NUMBER: MBA268C.1

Renumbered from MBA267.1

COURSE TITLE: Social Media Marketing

UNITS OF CREDIT: 2.0

INSTRUCTOR: Zsolt Katona

E-MAIL ADDRESS: zskatona@haas.berkeley.edu

CLASS WEB PAGE LOCATION: http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/zskatona/someclass.html

INTRODUCTORY VIDEO FROM INSTRUCTOR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXFmz2VQO10

MEETING DAY(S)/TIME: Mondays/Wednesdays, 11:00AM-12:30PM (First 7-weeks, 8/25-10/13)

Please note the following:

· This course will be taught in a new hybrid fashion, with some of the above classroom time substituted with online activities.

· 21 hours will be spent in the classroom as scheduled above

· The remaining 9 hours of class time has been replaced by online activities, including instructional videos and asynchronous discussion. 

· These activities will be completed at student's own convenience within the given deadlines of the week.

· Online participation will be tracked and will count as part of the class participation grade.

PREREQUISITE(S): MBA206

CLASS FORMAT: Mix of case discussions, lectures, exercises, guest speakers, online material, and a group project.

REQUIRED READINGS: Cases, Course Reader.

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: Mixture of class participation, individual and group projects.

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES: Businesses worldwide face a fundamental change in the ways that consumers interact with brands and each other. Social media has helped give consumers a voice, connect them with their friends and other like-minded consumers, and has given them considerable power over marketers and brands. This course offers an overview of how marketing has (and has not) changed due to the rise of social media. It will equip students with the relevant knowledge, perspectives, and practical skills required to develop marketing strategies that leverage the opportunities inherent in social media and consumer-to-consumer social interactions for achieving business and marketing goals. The emphasis of this course is on understanding consumers’ social interactions, the various social media channels available to marketers, how to build social marketing strategies, and how to track their effectiveness. Also, since social media is heavily technology-driven we will cover relevant related aspects in digital marketing more broadly, as well as emerging topics in electronic commerce, mobile marketing, and social media startups.

From a marketing perspective, consumers now have louder voices than they used to, they are more socially connected than they ever have been, they expect more from brands, and information reaches them faster than ever before. In light of these fundamental changes, the overarching goal of this course is to help you get a clear perspective on what’s really going on in marketing in the age of social/digital/mobile so that you can start to see where the true value – to consumers, to marketers, and to other corporate stakeholders – lies. The course covers a number of topics including

• The differences and interaction between traditional and social media

• Two-sided markets and social media platforms (including verticals such as gaming, shopping and entertainment)

• Basic theory of social networks online and offline (graph theory, sociology, information diffusion)

• Consumer behavior and digital media

• Brand strategies on social media

• Best marketing practices for paid and unpaid social media

• B2B marketing and social media

• Analytics and measurement of ROI

Since this is a new topic and the “jury is still out” on best practices for social media marketing and using social media to support business operations (e.g., CRM) the emphasis is on covering important fundamental principles, identifying areas of opportunity, and pointing out challenges (and developing plans for overcoming challenges).

The class will be one of the first new, hybrid online-offline format classes. Some of the classroom time will be replaced by online activities, such as instructional videos exercises, but we will spend most of the allocated time in the classroom. The online material will serve mostly as a supplement and as primary tool for lectures and exercises that can be conducted better online.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: Zsolt Katona is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Haas School of Business. Before joining UC Berkeley in 2008, he received his PhD in Marketing from INSEAD. Prior to that, he had studied mathematics and he completed a PhD in Computer Science in his country of origin, Hungary. Zsolt's current research focuses on how the Internet and especially social media transform marketing. He studies how the new technologies enabling wide-spread social interaction affect the firm’s marketing strategies. His research has been published in the top academic marketing journals including Marketing Science, Management Science, Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal of Marketing Research.