Product and Customer Management

Course overview and objectives
The course will run in two theoretical/practical weekly classes. The course will be run in high interactive sessions conducting in a high involvement of the students. Critical sense and the presentation of day to day examples will be appreciate and will contribute to understand the concepts and helps in the process of implementation the ideas. It will be very important the continuous presence of the students all over the several sessions in order to achieve a high comprehension and grades in this subject.

Course Objectives
Marketing is the process whereby an enterprise creates value by meeting the needs of its target customers. A firm is thus defined not only by the products it sells, but also by the customers it serves. This course pretends to help students in the usage and implementation of concepts, tools and principles in order to take the right decisions. Products and services are the vehicles each leads to customer value and should be managed with the value proposition in mind. Firms often spend great resources developing new products only to find that consumer adoption is far less than expected. Sometimes the problem is that the final product fails to deliver on its promises. More often, however, the problem is marketing related - either the firm has not involved marketing effectively early on to understand evolving customer needs prior to committing R&D resources, has not properly estimated the product's market potential, or has not adequately determined the most effective marketing actions to persuade consumers to buy. This course will help students avoid such market failures and foster a cohesive understanding of how marketing activity at all phases of the innovation process can maximize ultimate commercial success.

Course Content
1. The Creation of Value as the Gateway to Achieve Success. 
1.1. What is Value? 
1.2. The differences between commodity, products and services. 
1.3. Differentiating through branding. 
1.4. The concept of Brand Equity 
2. Customer Centric Organization 
2.1. The limitations of product centricity? 
2.2. The customer centric mind set 
2.3. Managing customers as assets 
2.4. Loyalty and customer retention 
2.5. Objectives and pitfalls of a loyalty program 
2.6. Customer Equity 
3. Customer Analysis 
3.1. What we need to know about customers 
3.2. Understanding how customers differ in economic value. 
3.3. The Lifetime Value 
3.4. Identifying the sources and causes of customer defections 
3.5. Differentiation: Mapping the consumption chain 
4. Competitor Analysis: Understand Your Opponents 
4.1. Identifying competition 
4.2. Sources of information 
4.3. Assessing Competitors’ Current Objectives and Strategies 
4.4. The “Served Market” Concept 
4.5. Differential Advantage Analysis 
4.6. Predicting Future Strategies 
5. Market Customization: Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning 
5.1. Gaining focus through market segmentation 
5.2. The basics of multifactor, relevant and effective segmentation 
5.3. Targeting the right segments 
5.4. Positioning the product or service in the minds of customers 
6. Pricing It Right 
6.1. Perception and valuation 
6.2. Pricing Strategies and Business Objectives 
6.3. Eight steps to Better Pricing 
6.4. Factors affecting Price Sensitivity 
6.5. Price bundling 
6.6. Cost transparency 
6.7. How to fight a price war 
7. Promotions 
7.1. Promotions Objectives 
7.2. Consumer, retail and trade promotions 
7.3. Why promotions do fails? 
8. Integrated Marketing Communications 
8.1. The goal of marketing communications 
8.2. Characteristics of communications vehicles 
8.3. The six M’s of marketing communications 
8.4. Errors to avoid in a communication 
9. Service and Quality 
9.1. What is in a service? 
9.2. Differentiation through quality service 
9.3. The consumer chain 
9.4. The role of guarantees 
9.5. The Gaps Model of service quality 
9.6. The Experience Economy 
10. Interactive Marketing 
10.1.The rising tide of online commerce 
10.2.E-mail campaigns and best practices 
10.3.Web-based merchandising best practices 

Grading
Tests (60%). Two tests will be present. One at the midterm season and the other at the end of the semester. 
Class Participation (10%). It will take in account the student presence and his participation in 
the subject’s discussion. It will be more important the quality rather than the quantity of the participation. 
Group project (30%). A group project will be asked during the second half of the semester. 
Students must arrange themselves in groups (max 5 students per group). 

The minimum passing grade is 10 on a scale of 0-20 (9.5 will be rounded up). If a student obtains an average grade between 8 and 9.5, they are required to take a final exam. If a student gets a grade lower than 8, they are automatically excluded from the course.

Bibliography:
• D. Lehmann & R. Winer, “Product Management”, 4th Ed., 2004, McGraw-Hill 
• Sunil Gupta & D. Lehmann, “Managing Customers as Investments”, 1st Ed. 2005, Wharton School Publishing 
• A. Osterwalder, Y. Pigneur, G. Bernarda, A. Smith, “Value Proposition Design” Wiley, 2014 
• J. Goodman, “Customer Experience 3.0”, AMACOM, 2014 
• D. Ryan, C. Jones, “Understanding Digital Marketing, 2nd Ed. KoganPage, 2012
• Collection of slides and articles. 
• David A. Aaker, “Managing Brand Equity”, 1991, Free Press 
• Lynette Ryals, “Managing Customers Profitably”, 2008, Wiley 
• C.K. Prahalad, V. Ramaswamy, “The Future of Competition”, 2004, HBS Press
• W.Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne, “Blue Ocean Strategy”, HBRP 2015