MBA Program

At UNC-Chapel Hill’s top-ranked Kenan-Flagler Business School, MBA students become part of a progressive community that fosters the development of graduates strong in leadership, teamwork and interpersonal skills, and prized by recruiters for their adaptability to diverse corporate environments.

The Customer and Product Management (CPM) concentration in the MBA program builds skills in traditional product management, including branding, new product development and product line management, alongside emerging customer-centric marketing topics of one-to-one marketing, customer lifecycle management, and customer lifetime value analysis.

Marketing Concentration Overview

• · Marketing Strategy examines decisions facing managers concerning market selection, entry timing, positional advantage to be pursued, positioning, targeting, and execution approach in domestic as well as global markets. Specific courses include:
•           - Marketing Strategy
•           - Global Strategy
•           - Brand Management
• · Marketing Analysis builds skills in critically analyzing brand, market and firm level data to guide marketing decisions; familiarizes students with data sources, tools and techniques in common use; and the building and use of marketing models.  Specific courses offered include:
•           - Marketing Analytics
•           - Pricing
•           - Customer and Relationship Management
• · Marketing Application builds skills in specific functions and contexts relevant to marketing careers.  Courses include:
•           - Sales
•           - Services Marketing
•           - Retailing and Channel Management
•           - Innovation and New Product Development

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  Along with preparing your for a marketing career, the concentration also offers two opportunities to use the skills in real-world settings. 

  ·         Student Teams Achieving Results program (STAR) sends teams of top MBAs and undergraduate students to build comprehensive and actionable strategies for corporations and not-for-profits seeking to strengthen their global competitiveness. STAR teams receive academic credit for their 4-month engagement with their client and are guided by both a faculty advisor and an executive from the client organization. STAR teams assist businesses in North Carolina and across the globe. Since its beginning in 2005, STAR-DBP has assisted North Carolina companies to develop strategies that have expanded their business and increase jobs. Second, after your first year in the program you will likely obtain a marketing internship.

  ·         Marketing Internships send students to companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Kraft Foods, Lenovo, and IBM for the summer between the first and second year.  During this time, students work on a variety of projects and in different roles using the skills they have learned during the first year in the MBA Program.

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  Concentration Requirements

  Marketing Concentration students must complete six courses from the following electives:

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  ·   MBA 748     Marketing Analysis and Decision Making

  ·   MBA 741G   Global Marketing Strategy

  ·   MBA 753     Brand Management

  ·   MBA 743     Customer Relationship Strategy and Practices

  ·   MBA 754A   Innovation & Product Development

  ·   MBA 760     Pricing

  ·   MBA 847     Sales Management

  ·   MBA 751     Services Marketing

  ·   MBA 753B   Retail and Channel Management

  ·   MBA 747     Marketing Strategy

   

  Students may also substitute courses from other UNC schools (such as journalism, which offers an advertising course) if approved both by the Marketing Concentration Leader and by the other school.  In addition, independent studies may qualify as course credit toward the Marketing Concentration if approved.

   

  The marketing MBA curriculum begins in Mod 2 of the first year with the core course called, “Marketing Core Concepts and Tools,” taught by Professor Sridhar Balasubramanian.  Electives begin in Mod 3 of the first year and can be taken before students participate in summer internships or during their second year.  It is recommended that students participating in marketing summer internships take key marketing electives including Brand Management, Sales, and Marketing Analytics prior to their internships.  If internships involve assignments with global content, Global Marketing is also strongly recommended.

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2009-2010 Course Schedule

Concentration Leader and Faculty

The coordinator for the Marketing Concentration is Professor Valarie Zeithaml, who can be reached at valariez@unc.edu or at (919)-962-8214. Faculty members teaching in the concentration include: Sridhar Balasubramanian, Barry Bayus, Katrijn Gielens, Girish Mallapragada, Tarun Kushwaha, Dave Roberts, Federico Rossi, Jan-Benedict Steenkamp, and Valarie Zeithaml. 

Career Advisor: Career Management Center

MBA Courses

MBA 741      Marketing: Core Concepts & Tools

This course is designed as an advanced level introduction to marketing principles, concepts, tools, and techniques.  The goal is to expose students to these elements as they

are used in a wide variety of settings; including consumer goods firms, manufacturing and service industries, small and large businesses, and domestic and global contexts.

The course will provide an overview of (i) marketing startegy issues, (ii) the units of a market situation analysis - company, customers, and competition (3 Cs), (iii) the

importance of segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP), as well as (iv) the fundamental elements of the marketing mix - products, price, placement (distribution) and

promotion (4Ps).  Students are challenged throughout to apply the principles learned in class to current and real world marketing issues.

MBA 741G   Global Marketing Strategy

MBA 743     Customer Relationship Strategy & Practices

This course focuses on customer relationship strategy where the philosophy is to view customers as assets of the firm and the goal is to use customer information to build

customer loyalty and realtionships.  This involves, in part, applying differential attention to more valuable customers with the goal of improving customer satisfaction

while optimizing the current and future value of the customer base.  Built around the notion of the customer lifecycle, the course emphasizes strategic initiatives in customer

relationship management including identifying good prospects and customer acquisiton; customer development through up-selling, cross-selling and personalization;

customer attrition and retention; and winback.  Topics covered include customer loyalty and loyalty programs, customer economics including customer profitability and

lifetime value, as well as ethical issues raised by the use of individual customer data.  The course also provides an introduction to commonly used marketing analytic tools

and techniques including decile analysis, RFM (recency/frequency/monetary) analysis, and predictive models using logistic regression, and some data mining tools (e.g.

classification trees such as CHAID).

MBA 747      Marketing Strategy

The objective of this course is to help students become strategic decision-makers and develop marketing planning strategies.  This course builds on the foundation

developed in Marketing Core; however, instead of focusing on the basic elements which underlie the practice of marketing - segmentation, targeting, positioning, 4 Ps, etc -

this course emphasized how to put these elements into practice in a strategic way.  The course will be based on lectures, cases, and a market simulation, which will allow

students to compete in teams and practice their marketing strategies in a dynamic simulated environment.

MBA 753      Brand Management

MBA 753B    Retail and Channel Management

MBA 754A    Innovation and Product Management

                   By emphasizing the "fuzzy front-end" of the development process, this course addresses the following questions.  How are companies tackling the innovation imperative? 

                How can innovative products and services be created using design thinking?  How can inspiration be obtained from internal and external sources?  How can the "voice of the

                customer" be heard and then translated into consumer requirements, product specifications, and prototypes?  The course emphasizes that an understanding and appreciation

                of the interaction between marketing, design, and engineering is necessary to develop successful new product offerings.  This course introduces several tools and

                techniques, including brainstorming techniques, the use of personas, the KJ Method (affinity diagrams) for structuring a large amount of qualitative information, quality

                function deployment, and conjoint analysis for quantitatively assessing the tradeoffs between attributes.

MBA 847     Sales

This course is designed ot provide an overview of different types of selling (products and services; direct and channel), and to offer practical tools used by many B2B

companies as they go to market in a differentiating, consultative way.  The main focus is on sales strategy to analyze how companies use personal selling as a key

component of their growth strategy.  Within the program is a 2-day event that teaches the personal skills necessary to be an effective sales person, business consultant or

employee manager.  This course may interest students pursuing marketing, channel or brand management, financial, entrepreneurial and other related fields post graduation.