Introduction
I took Competitive Marketing Strategy in Fall 2008, kicking off the second of three years in the MBA program. This is a course required of all MBA students, even those with a background in marketing.
Instructor Profile
Professor Lo had a successful management career for electronics companies in Asia before becoming an Academic. I took this course during Professor Lo’s first quarter at Santa Clara. During the subsequent two years, he has regularly taught this course.
Classroom experience
Class lectures were based on case analysis, with a new case almost every class. Each case explored a particular aspect of competitive strategy.
Professor Lo expected students to prepare each case with a recommended course of action, backed up with a numerical analysis. Although student’s analyses were not collected, it was difficult for any student to fully participate in class discussion without having done this homework. Each class was almost entirely filled with the case discussion, with Professor Lo revealing his own detailed analysis near the end.
Fortunately, two lectures were set aside to review the previously discussed cases and summarize the main points of each analysis. Although I put a lot of work into most of the case analyses, my notes from these summary lectures are among my most valuable of the class.
Coursework, exams, and grades
During the quarter I took this class, 20% of the grade was for class participation, 45% for a group project, and 35% for a final exam. The group project was to prepare a marketing plan for a real product.
What I learned
Although I was already a year into the MBA program, this course introduced me to corporate strategy and case analysis. It was a lot to take in during a single quarter! Mainly, I learned that there are many facets to competitive strategy, and the most important activities are to properly frame the company’s competitive position and to use the appropriate framework to analyze the situation. The cases also taught me that competitive strategy cannot do magic; sometimes a company ends up in a weak position with very little leverage to use with its collaborators.
This course was very complementary to the prerequisite course MKTG 551, which I reviewed in this post. There was very little overlapping material. MKTG 551 was mostly about terminology, concepts, and marketing activities, and MKTG 553 was about strategic and competitive analysis.
Some specific topics covered by the cases include environmental analysis, segment analysis, lifetime customer value, measuring brand equity and choosing between brand equity and scale, distribution channels, and value pricing.
Criticisms
The only criticism I have is that students did not receive much feedback on their performance until the end of the quarter. This could be improved by adding an individual graded case analysis paper, possibly in lieu of the final exam.
Recommendation
Every student should strongly consider taking MKTG 553 fro Professor Lo. The course was well structured in include many topics, and the lecture time was filled with challenging case discussions.
Trailer
This article was first written in 2010 by Dylan Salisbury for dylansalisbury.com. All rights reserved. I added this paragraph because spam blog sites pick up copies of my blog posts.
For a list of course reviews and a disclaimer, visit my Course Reviews page.
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