MARKETING MATERIAL
9413 - MARKETING (Second Edition)
INSTRUCTOR MANUAL
CHAPTER 0
HOW TO USE THIS MANUAL
Marketing (Second Edition) is a textbook which is designed to offer your students the highest quality marketing study; and hence, together with your teaching, the best possible marketing education. This instructor manual is similarly designed, to offer you the best possible support in making the optimum use of the student text. The emphasis is, at all these levels, on the quality of education being offered; be it by the student text itself or in your own related teaching. Indeed, the basic assumption throughout will be that the quality of the education is what counts above all else.
Marketing, the student text, is designed to meet the needs of a wide range of students; across most industries, from consumer goods through industrial services to non-profit organizations, and at a number of different levels, from undergraduates requiring a general introduction to MBAs looking to specialize in the subject. This allows a considerable degree of tailoring, offering each student group a package which most closely meets its requirements; the first step to providing the quality education which is our objective. On the other hand, this tailoring process will necessarily demand some extra effort on your part; effort which I believe will be amply justified by the improved understanding gained by your students - and hence your own increased satisfaction of a job well done.
The prime objective of this manual, however, is to reduce to the essential minimum the amount of this extra effort - by making available to you the lessons that I, and the Open University (usually abbreviated to OU) School of Management (more popularly known as the Open University Business School, the OUBS, an abbreviation I will use throughout this instructor manual), have learned from teaching this subject to the many thousands of marketing students who have taken our courses. Indeed, this second edition is itself now used as the set text on the OUBS MBA 'foundation course'.
Certainly, the student text itself is designed with that in mind. It deliberately contains nothing which will distract students from your own teaching. Thus, for instance, it contains many examples but no cases; for the assumption is that you will choose your own cases to teach - cases which meet the needs of the specific group of students and which build upon your own knowledge and experience.
The student text does not even contain any objectives for each of the chapters. This is not to say that you should not provide these, they are essential, but these should be provided by you not me. Only you can really know what you want the students to get out of each stage of the teaching - though my own suggestions are included in this instructor manual as a starting point for your own versions.
The objectives of this instructor manual, however, are to:
A) OFFER THE BEST POSSIBLE TEACHING - it would be presumptuous of me to suggest that I will be able to improve your teaching skills. The chances are that, if you have chosen the student text for the right reasons, you are already at the top of your profession in this respect. It is simply to say that I wish to try and help you make the best possible use of the teaching resources offered by the text.
B) MAKE YOU AN EXPERT - the same point has to be made in this context. I will not offer to make you a leading expert on marketing, you are likely to be that already, but I aim to offer the best possible expert guidance to the topics covered by the student text - in the specific context of how they are covered by that text.
C) OPTIMIZE YOUR USE - above all, the objective of this instructor manual is to allow you to generate the best possible set of material to meet the needs of your student group(s) - with the minimum of effort.
D) PROVIDE READY-PREPARED MATERIAL - in part, at least, the above objectives will be met by providing suggestions for lecture notes. To be more specific, the notes provide a starting point (and a structure), allowing you to contribute the essential understanding of the student group to the detailed delivery. As far as possible, it is organized in modules, so that you may most easily select and rearrange them to meet your particular needs.
E) REDUCE UNNECESSARY WORK - beyond this, the manual will also provide some 'administrative support', in the form of masters for overhead acetates (to illustrate your lectures) and test questions for instance, to lighten your load in preparing for the course; or, better still, to allow you extra time to concentrate on those, face-to-face, parts of the course which only you can deliver.
These objectives are translated into actions for each chapter as follows:
1) OBJECTIVES - it lists the objectives, for both student and instructor, which the chapter sets out to meet.
2) MAIN LESSONS - for each of the chapters, this manual spells out what main lessons it contains, as well as why and how it features these. From these lessons you can select the subset on which you wish to focus in your teaching.
3) SUGGESTED CONTENT - for each chapter there are suggested lecture notes. As indicated above, these are not in final detail, since you will need to add your own touch; partly in terms of meeting the needs of your specific students, but also in terms of being in the style with which you personally feel most comfortable. They are also modular, so that you can select those topics you want to teach, and if necessary add others, and then rearrange them to meet your own style (whilst still pointing to the relevant sections of the student text).
[to make this process easier to handle, these lecture notes are included on a diskette - as an ASCII file which almost all word processors can use - so that you can produce your final notes in whatever format you require]
4) DETAILED SUPPORT - for each chapter a range of materials is provided, including full-size masters of suggested acetate overheads for presentation, and questions for testing students' knowledge - as well as additional material for student handouts.
[again, where possible, the questions and handouts are also provided, in ASCII format, on diskette]
Before launching into the preparation of your first lecture, however, you will need to ask a couple of basic questions; which will influence how you use the material. The first, and most important, of these questions is 'Just who are your students?' As a marketing academic you will recognize the importance of this question. The customer, your student, has to be the prime focus of all teaching activities. Needs of students may, though, vary quite significantly between groups. You are the only person who can answer this question, and even you may only be able to answer it after you have taken your first class with them! There are, though, some main categories which you might like to consider in advance:
Most groups of students being taught marketing are 'generalists'; they are taking the subject as part of a more general qualification (a degree, diploma or MBA, say) or as part of a course designed to expand their management knowledge and skills in general. There are some courses, however, which are taught to students (typically taking a specialized marketing qualification; degree or professional) who are seeking a much deeper understanding of the subject. Clearly, these different groups have rather different needs.
First, though, let us recognize how - at least in our experience - they do not differ. Both groups;
Need to recognize the importance of the focus on the customer/consumer/client, and on their needs; and to appreciate how this applies across the breadth of the organization, not just in the marketing department.
Need to understand, in some detail (where marketing is, in many respects a collection of detailed techniques), what marketing is - and to build a suitable knowledge base in the subject.
Need to understand both theory and practice. The theory is necessary to provide the framework within which the students can locate their knowledge. The practical element is needed where it is the practice of marketing which is the most important aspect for most managers (generalists or specialists) - and this may differ significantly from the theory!
Need to consolidate both the theory and 'practice' by exposure to actual marketing problems.
The detailed differences between the two groups are;
GENERALISTS
They will have less direct experience of marketing. They will also have a different 'experiential' context for learning marketing lessons.
They will typically want to see how the marketing lessons (which may be just as rigorous, and for those topics explored just as detailed, as for those specializing in the subject) apply to the general activities of the organization rather than to narrower marketing department actions.
As a result, teaching may concentrate more on the concepts involved and, especially, on the strategic elements of marketing - which is not difficult where much of corporate strategy has its roots in marketing strategy. It may also tend to explore those specific applications, such as inner marketing and product strategy, which are more widely applicable. The choice of cases used to consolidate the teaching may well reflect this more general approach.
SPECIALISTS
These are likely to have had greater direct experience of marketing, at the detailed implementation level, or at least to be especially interested in this - where they are seeking a career in this function.
As such, they are probably looking for immediate practical skills (which at the end of the course they can sell to the highest bidder, perhaps!) rather than general theories.
The teaching, therefore, may need to concentrate upon the detailed implementation of (all) the various applications; and the range of cases used may need to reflect this detailed interest.
Marketing texts have traditionally assumed that the student is full-time. Our own experience, whilst incorporating the lessons learnt from these traditional approaches, has focused on part-time learning. This poses major challenges. On the other hand it has led to the development of a range of techniques which also have applicability for full-time students. Accordingly, this section will start with the category of part-time students.
PART-TIME STUDENTS
These are often the forgotten part of management education, and yet they already represent the majority of students and are growing rapidly in numbers. Teaching them is also the acid test of a teaching method. If you can successfully teach such part-time students then you should be able to teach any of their full-time counterparts. They are difficult to teach for a number of reasons:
1) CONTINUITY - they typically attend lectures, or study material, less frequently; so the continuity of their study is broken. As a result, the structure of their learning must be particularly clear - so that they can immediately see where they are when they return to their study.
2) DISTRACTIONS AND TIME PRESSURES - with work priorities coming first and study often having to take place in the midst of their family, their learning is in competition with many other activities; for a share of their time (and then for their undivided attention during that time). Teaching therefore has to fight harder for their attention; and this usually means two things - it has to be well structured and easily understandable and it has to be relevant. Obscure, confusing, impractical theory will be lost.
3)
INDEPENDENT LEARNING - such part-time study often requires the student to learn
much of the material 'independently'; that is individually, often distance
taught, rather than
in a classroom group. Again this means that the material provided for this must
be especially easy to grasp - and the development of such material lies at the
heart of the Open University's internationally recognized success (and is the
basis of the material used in the student text). But, beyond this, it also
requires that students are positively taught to become
'independent learners'. Foundation Courses (the key
techniques from which are also included in the text and this manual) are
designed to provide students with these skills.
4) COMPETITION FROM REALITY - a further problem, for the lecturer rather than the student, is the fact that the teaching will be immediately contrasted with the reality which applies in the student's workplace. Full-time students can be persuaded to live in the artificial world of marketing theory for the duration of the course. Part-timers are faced with reality every workday morning! So, the lecturer must convince them of the links to that reality.
On the other hand, this also offers a major advantage which full-time students lack - though they, and their lecturers, rarely realize this. The contrast with, and argument with, real working practices offers the best possible environment for consolidating the material being learned. There is no need to simulate real-life through case study; these students experience real working life almost every day! The need here is to build upon that real-life experience, not to fight it. This is particularly evidenced in the section on 'cases' later in this chapter.
FULL-TIME STUDENTS
At a first glance, then, life should be much easier teaching full-time students; and indeed that should be the case. None of the above problems faces the lecturer. He or she is, or should be, totally in control - over the whole period of the student's 'working hours'.
The problem is that this ease of teaching sometimes breeds a degree of complacency. Where the teacher of part-time students has to fight for attention, particularly where they are being taught at a distance, the traditional face-to-face lecturer can relax - safe in the knowledge that the students have to accept what they get. At its most extreme this means that a, fortunately rare, lazy lecturer can face a class having first looked at the ready-prepared notes just a few minutes before; where the equivalent 'lecture' contained in the material sent to students by the Open University (OU) may have taken up to three years to develop (at a cost of more than £4,000 per hour of teaching material). The OU extreme is far beyond even the ideal which others will aim for - but it illustrates how much effort may be invested before any law of diminishing returns sets in (and indicates that few lecturers can be over-prepared!).
The harder lessons of teaching part-time students can, therefore, be applied by all lecturers; to improve the teaching effectiveness of their material - even in the traditional class of full-time students. The student text, an$ this manual, adopt this approach. They assume that you will have to fight for your students' attention and then to justify what you are teaching - in contrast with reality.
Indeed, the one major shortcoming of teaching full-time is that it is divorced from reality. This may seem to be an advantage - it can comfortably insulate the lecturer from difficult questions. It also, though, means that in the short term it can be more difficult for students to consolidate the material and in the longer term it definitely does mean that they have more difficulty with putting it to practical use. The somewhat unfair criticisms of Harvard Business School students, as being excellent at handling cases but poor at handling business problems, reflect this perception by practising managers. The student text, and this instructor manual, confront this particular problem head-on - again as evidenced in the later section on 'cases'.
The split which often generates the most acrimonious criticisms is, however, that by 'industry'. Many, if not most, courses (and certainly student texts) are based - almost exclusively - on consumer goods (and on FMCG, Fast Moving Consumer goods, in particular). In terms of the lessons to be learned this need not necessarily disadvantage for the great majority (typically in excess of 70%) of students from other fields. FMCG use virtually the same range of techniques as do the other 'industries', though selling is usually under-represented as a major promotional factor (and this is reflected in the uneven coverage of the topic in many student texts - and perhaps in the poor theoretical underpinning of this topic). More important, perhaps, is the fact that all students have personal experience of consumer goods, albeit as consumers, where they might not have had the same degree of exposure to capital goods or business services.
Yet students from other 'industries' (especially those from services and non-profit organizations) frequently have considerable difficulty coming to terms with marketing taught in this (FMCG) context. This seems to arise from two main causes, which are more psychological than real - though no less important for that:
A) TERMINOLOGY - much of marketing theory is bedevilled by specific FMCG terms. 'Product' is almost universally used where 'product or service' would be just as meaningful. It is not sufficient to preface a course with the global disclaimer 'where I say product I mean product or service'. Students from service industries find this as offensive as women now find the exclusive use of 'he' to be sexist; and we have managed to come to terms with the resulting distortions required of our language resulting from the campaigns against the latter! More important, service industry students have to pause and ask themselves whether each technique can also be applied to services - where usually they can, and this regular hiccup in study can be simply removed by the adoption of 'product or service'. This is a convention which is now widely adopted (with considerable success) by the OUBS, and this book. A similar problem comes with the equally widespread use of the term 'company'; this immediately alienates most students from non-profit organizations (accounting for more than a quarter of OUBS students), who assume that (especially as they are often being taught in a 'business school') it is a technique which does not have relevance for them. Again this is, less clumsily in this case, remedied by using the term 'organization' rather than 'company'. This does not offend students from commercial organizations, indeed they do not seem to even notice it, but once more it removes one very real stumbling block for those from non-profit organizations. Use of 'customers or clients' rather than just 'customers' also helps with these students. Both of these conventions are used in this student text (and in this manual).
B) EXTENSION BY EXAMPLE - it is often simpler to introduce marketing topics in the context of consumer goods, even for service industry students, for the techniques are frequently more obvious when applied to tangible, physical products - where it requires a leap in imagination to apply them to intangible, service products. This is no excuse, though, for neglecting the follow-through. It is just as necessary to lead service industry (and non-profit) students through this leap in imagination; by showing them how the techniques apply and (preferably by relevant example) are applied in their own field. This approach is adopted by the student text, as far as is possible (without boring by unnecessary repetition - though you, as instructor, may have to risk such boredom if you have a group of service students who are worried by such problems!).
Of course there are differences in the application of marketing across a range of industries - and these are examined through the text. But the two basic approaches described above go a long way to answering the problem by themselves.
Based upon the above analysis of your students, and of their needs, you will (deliberately, or by default) come to a decision as to what topics you plan to cover, and in what depth. Your audience might range down from marketing specialists at an advanced level, who may demand to receive all the topics in detail (where the comprehensive coverage of the student text will be fully utilized), to first-year undergraduates, looking for just a - simple - general introduction (where the structure of the student text should enable you to select the 'introductory' modules they need), while any more specialized interests they may develop later will be catered for by the more detailed sections of the text).
The requirement here is that of selection, from the extensive 'menu' of individual modules - covering all of the most important topics in marketing. The carefully graded structure of the text and, not least, its unique modularity should help you with the selection; as should the guides in each chapter of this instructor manual. But only you can make the final decision. What you choose to teach is a crucial element of the teaching process, which must be tailored to the student audience (and to your own skills and knowledge); and cannot be subcontracted to a textbook author, no matter how capable or reputable he or she is!
In any case it is, in our experience, usually the most interesting, and intellectually rewarding, part of preparing for the course. 'Shopping' for the content can, indeed, be fun - why hand that fun over to anyone else!
The next decision is how to teach this material! Again, this will be partly decided by your audience; or perhaps even largely so - if you have a widely scattered audience it will be difficult to adopt anything other than a distance teaching approach! On the other hand, if you have a cohort of full-time MBA students then you have a wide range of options open to you; but that is no excuse for taking the easiest of these - chalk and talk. Undoubtedly, for many applications, this is the most powerful teaching method - but, in our experience, it is even more powerful if it is properly used as part of a mix of techniques.
In terms of the student text, and this manual, the starting point is at the opposite end of the spectrum from that of most similar texts. This is not to be perverse. It is quite simply that it is designed in the first instance to meet the most difficult of the design criteria; to be suitable as a self-study text, for use by distance-taught students or as a self-study part of an otherwise face-to-face course. To meet the challenges of these most difficult of teaching situations, the OU's internationally recognized expertise in developing self-study material has been incorporated throughout the text. The techniques have already proved themselves for thousands of students learning independently in very difficult circumstances.
At the other end of the spectrum, where the text is to be used as only one part of a rich package of teaching techniques, a range of approaches is possible;
It might be used in the traditional way, as an initial source of theory - which the lecturer then expands in classroom discussion. In particular the theory can be contrasted with real-life practice; something the text already starts to do, but which should be taken much further by the lecturer in the classroom.
As a leading text, it can be used as a reference source for topics which are not covered in the main part of the course; or even as a self-study text for these.
It can be used as self-study for the main topics; allowing the lecturer to concentrate on the case teaching which consolidates the theory by 'practice'. This is the way that some leading business schools have already very effectively used similar OU material to supplement their face-to-face teaching.
This last comment brings me to one major element of traditional teaching of marketing which has very deliberately been left out of the student text; cases. This is partly because cases, at least in the normal form, tend to be counter-productive when used in self-study mode. With no feedback, students cannot productively make use of these; where the essence of them is the lessons to be learned from the debate with others. Worse still, the students find this frustrating - even if they are told in the text not to worry about these cases. They feel, with some justification, that they are missing out on an important part of the learning process.
On the other hand, despite the criticisms of the Harvard Approach, the case has a very valuable role to play in classroom teaching of marketing. The OU, which is a distance teaching organization, still makes extensive use of cases to consolidate marketing lessons. It does this, though, only in face-to-face sessions; in the regular tutorials and on weekend schools. But, as with other leading business schools, the cases are not directly integrated with specific pages of text; or even with chapters of it. Cases, derived from real-life management s)tuations, are by their nature general; the challenges facing managers do not neatly conform to 'page 212' of the student text; they tend, very untidily, to relate to 'page 123', then to 'page 546' and then to 'page 34' and so on.
More important, such cases are very much an individual choice; based upon the experience of the individual lecturer and the make-up of the class. We do not believe it is sufficient to give a page of 'facts' baldly in the student text and expect that the lecturer in the classroom can recreate all the surrounding details which bring marketing situations to life. We normally would expect the student/lecturer brief to run to twenty or thirty pages - and even then for it to be backed up by the lecturer's own experience in a related industry situation!
For all the above reasons I have not provided any traditional cases in the student text.
Having said that, I do believe that the case study method is invaluable in consolidating the lessons to be learned from marketing theory. How then would I propose that it be used for the two main groups of students?
We have found that the 'case' can be very powerful in this context; just so long as the case is the organization the students are working for!
This is the philosophy largely followed by the OUBS, and by the student text. The assumption is that the students (guided by you) will consolidate their learning mainly by applying it to the example of their own organisation. The 'audits' (including eventually such major exercises as preparing a marketing plan), which are described below, are very practical exercises to be applied in this way.
The process is more difficult than applying the same questions to a traditional case; since such pre-prepared cases have the material ready, and laid out, for the student to work on immediately - where the equivalent work on their own organization is more likely to be complex. But that complexity, and the lack of definition involved, is not only more realistic, it forces the students to work harder to extract the key concepts from the lessons they have just learned. More important, perhaps, it is recognized by the students that this is real life; and just occasionally the practical lessons they then deduce can have a very real value for the organization - our own students have sometimes made major improvements to their organization's marketing effort in this way!
It is, of course, possible to use traditional cases with part-time students even those being distance taught. Where we do this, however, we tend to:
1) Use large cases, which are not linked to small modules within the course but tend to be used to integrate across the course. Typical cases may run to 50-100 pages; and are rich in detail (where the student does not have the instructor on hand to provide it).
2) Use face-to-face teaching (in tutorials or on weekend schools) which is backed up by group discussions on computer conferences or in local self-help groups.
Even in this situation we would recommend that you integrate the lessons across all parts of the course, and do this in considerable depth, by simulating exposure to the student's 'own organization'. The benefits of doing this are spelled out above, so I will not repeat them. The alternative approaches to this simulation may be;
A) STUDENTS' PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE - this asks the student to recall an organization he or she has previously worked for (or may still be working for part-time to pay his or her way through the course), and develop them as his or her 'own organisation'. This is clearly easiest for those students who have previously had an extended period in work (especially if this was in some form of management). On the other hand, it can still apply to those who have had a part-time, or vacation, job with an organization; a significant proportion of the US population has by now worked for McDonald's - so perhaps that might be a suitable starting point!
B) STUDENTS' AMBITIONS - this approaches the problem from the future rather than the past. What industry, or even specific organization, does the student want to join at the end of the course? The student, in this situation, will also prepare for that time - and be that much better motivated!
C) LOCAL ORGANIZATION - the student may be able to work with a local organization, which should welcome the free 'consultancy', to develop his or her 'own organization'. You may, indeed, be able to arrange for your whole group to work with one (or more) such local organization.
D) LARGE CASE - if all else fails then you might consider using a large case; either one which has been documented by someone else, or one (such as IBM or General Motors or McDonald's) where there has been a large amount of material published.
Finally, of course, you can still relate your smaller cases - which you will still be using for much of your teaching load - to the specific audit questions.
How may students then obtain the data which they need? In practice this may not be much more difficult than for the part-time students, who will still have to do quite a bit of desk research themselves. After all, this - marketing - course asks them to look primarily at the external activities of their organization. Some likely sources will be:
A) ANNUAL REPORTS - many companies, and other organizations, will issue annual reports; which they (usually via their public relations department) will be very happy to supply.
B) NEWS REPORTS - large organizations are frequently reported on by the media. Students may simply clip these as they appear; or may find them on one of the various databases - if they are allowed access to these.
C) DESK RESEARCH - all of the techniques of desk research, described in Chapter 3 (on 'Marketing Research') are available to the student; and using these on an extended basis offers a very good practical lesson!
D) BOOKS - in the case of the larger cases, in particular, there are often books which contain 'biographical' details of these organizations.
As has been explained above, there are two main forms of exercises in the student text. One of these, 'activities', is the usual form. The other, 'audits', are cumulative and require the student to approach them in a rather different way; which is fully described in the student text.
This manual contains a range of questions, both multiple choice and true/false, which you may want to use. They are taken from the student text, but you should still always check them - in terms of your own specific use of the text - and should preferably try them yourself before giving them as a test to your students.
The answer for each question is shown on the accompanying answer-sheets. The easy way to mark is to make a transparency of these, so that you can overlay them on the students answers. To allow for you to use part of the test only, the questions are randomised in terms of their place in the text.
Computer readable files of these tests are available (in Word 2.0 format; on both 3.5" and 5.25" diskettes) from the publisher (Blackwell Business, Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK - telephone 01865 791100 attn Business Direct) so that you may select questions easily to meet your own needs.
Masters are provided for a comprehensive set of overhead acetates. There are more than you might need, so that you can select the ones you want. In addition, the content is sometimes more elaborate than you might need (indeed some of them are already provided in two formats, one in a simpler form). Again you can use correcting fluid (on a photocopy so that you can reuse the master!) to cut out those bits you don't want.
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