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Core Curriculum Readings in Marketing cover fundamental concepts, theories, and frameworks in marketing. For classroom use in higher education, this Reading is accompanied by a Teaching Note, test bank, and exhibit slides. This Reading provides the basic knowledge a marketing manager needs in order to choose the right combination of research methods, as well as the best way to present research findings to stakeholders. Furthermore, this Reading shows how effective decision making hinges on marketing intelligence, which is defined as a deep and informed understanding of the relationship among the customer, the marketing environment, and the company's offerings.

This Reading takes a deep look at the venture capital (VC) industry in the United States. VCs have a unique perspective on opportunity evaluation, deal structure, new venture support, and exit strategy. Their work at all stages of the entrepreneurial life cycle offers many lessons to company founders, even those whose ventures are not backed by VCs. This Reading follows the chronological cycle of VC activity from the entrepreneur's vantage point: deal evaluation, deal pricing, structure and terms, working with VCs once the deal has been signed, and exit. The topics of deal pricing, structure, and terms are treated in particular depth through a detailed examination of a term sheet -- the contract that sets out the terms of the VC financing.

Having an idea is just the first step in an entrepreneurial journey. Turning that idea into a compelling opportunity requires analytical capabilities, passion, and determination. Successful entrepreneurs know how to take their ideas and shape them into opportunities to create value for all stakeholders. Beginning with the stories of 3 entrepreneurial journeys, this Reading examines that process of identifying and shaping opportunities. Opportunity recognition and shaping comprise 3 distinct activities: (1) perceiving an unmet market need, or a capability that could meet a need that has yet to be identified; (2) discovering the fit between market needs and the capabilities and resources available to the entrepreneur; and (3) creating a product, service, or solution that can be delivered to a specific market to address a specific need while generating value for all stakeholders. The novelty of an entrepreneurial opportunity--whether in market need or in skills needed to execute--influences the level of uncertainty in the assumptions that the entrepreneur must make in shaping the opportunity, which, in turn, influences the level of risk. After sharing the journeys of 3 entrepreneurs, this Reading explores how entrepreneurs identify opportunities and ends by discussing how they shape them by crafting business models and identifying risks and uncertainty. Although entrepreneurial ventures are usually formed in an iterative rather than a sequential manner, and founders are engaged in multiple parts of the new-venture-formation process simultaneously, this Reading lays out sequential steps for simplicity.

Executing Strategy introduces the principles of effective strategy implementation. The Reading emphasizes the interdependence of strategy formulation and execution in achieving and sustaining superior competitive performance. It discusses why organizations must sometimes shift their strategies and identifies reasons that strategies often fail. It argues that organizational ambidexterity and dynamic capabilities are required to execute strategies successfully. The main reading then develops an approach that emphasizes the congruence framework and its building blocks. It concludes by highlighting the need for ambidextrous leaders. Executing Strategy also contains three supplemental readings. The first examines ambidexterity and congruence at IBM under Louis Gerstner. The second considers the Balanced Scorecard as an alternative framework for strategy execution. The third discusses the role culture in strategy execution at NUMMI, the joint venture between General Motors and Toyota.

Selling and Marketing in the Entrepreneurial Venture discusses key aspects and challenges of selling and marketing in an early-stage or new venture. The Reading explains how to identify and test a venture s potential with early adopters, how to identify core customers, and how to integrate selling and marketing activities in a new business. It also sheds light on how entrepreneurs can sharpen their understanding of customers, as well as gain valuable insights into the venture s product or service, by conducting visits with potential customers. In addition, this Reading provides an in-depth example of a relatively young company that discovers a need to redefine who its best customers should be. The Reading dispels myths about what defines an effective salesperson and explores basic aspects of integrating selling and marketing in a venture, including applicable uses of the sales funnel framework, multi-channel mapping, and how to make decisions about the company s go-to-market system. A supplementary reading offers deeper insight into the considerations that potential customers evaluate in deciding whether to switch from a product or service they are currently using to one offered by a new venture. A second supplemental section analyzes the selling and marketing challenges faced by the founders of an engineering startup and the strategies the founders formulate and execute to surmount those challenges and drive growth in the business.

"Financing Entrepreneurial Ventures" introduces key issues involved in the financing of entrepreneurial enterprises. The Reading begins by examining how business models shape external financing requirements. It then contrasts the choice to bootstrap with the option to raise external funds, as well as the traits of debt versus equity investment. Readers learn about the different types of equity investors-including angels, VCs, and strategic investors-and follow an entrepreneurial venture's path through the financing stages. The Reading also examines how entrepreneurs can adjust business models to match financial conditions, and how they can reduce financing needs through alternative models such as partnerships. Finally, the Reading covers emerging funding models-such as crowdsourcing and accelerators-and the global aspects of entrepreneurial finance. There are 6 Interactive Illustrations included in the Reading: "Calculating a Cumulative Cash Flow Curve," "Asset Intensity Ratio," "Building a Cap Table," "How Investor Expectations and Target Returns Drive Company Ownership," "Payouts from Simple Equity and Convertible Investments," and "Seed Note Ownership and Value."

Among the many challenges that entrepreneurs must face is assembling the resources necessary to build a successful business. Most entrepreneurs will go through an iterative process of building a team, raising capital, and developing an ecosystem. An entrepreneur's decisions are highly interdependent--for example, the ability to attract customers, partners, and team members may depend on the ability to attract financing, which depends on ecosystem connections and a high-quality team. This Reading addresses 2 of the 3 kinds of resources critical to early-stage ventures: people (attracting cofounders, key employees, and advisors) and a business network (building the ecosystem of customers, suppliers, partners, and evangelists needed to develop products and get them to market). The third resource category, the capital required to finance the launch of the venture, is discussed in detail in Entrepreneurship Reading: Financing New Ventures [HBP No. 8072]. Attracting Talent and Building Ecosystems first explores the talent a new venture needs, including cofounders, key employees, advisors, and board members. The Reading then discusses how entrepreneurs can assemble the ecosystem of customers, partners, and other stakeholders who help develop and launch entry products and services, attract early customers, and gain traction in the market. Finally, the entrepreneurial story of Dan Bricklin, the inventor of the electronic spreadsheet, serves as an example of the process. There is also a glossary of key terms, as well as suggestions for complimentary cases and further reading.

Success in launching a new business depends on an entrepreneur's ability to clearly communicate the market opportunity, outline the proposed solution, describe the implementation plan and expected benefits for all stakeholders, and account for the risks involved. A crisp, well-articulated business plan and pitch are therefore two of the most critical components in building a successful venture. Developing Business Plans and Pitching Opportunities explains how to both evaluate opportunities and translate a business model into a compelling business plan and pitch. The Reading introduces the concept of entrepreneurial planning and relevant debates about its role in early-stage ventures. It also covers the importance of crafting a succinct, powerful pitch for a new business plan, how to practice and present that pitch, and how to craft it so that it effectively conveys the opportunity to different stakeholders in different situations.

Entrepreneurship is a way of thinking, reasoning, and leading. Successful entrepreneurs identify a creative way to address a marketplace problem or need. They then formulate an entry strategy, create a set of experiments to test it, and execute the product development and market entry activities needed to launch the business. Once the business model has been refined and the venture gains traction, successful entrepreneurs know how to identify the resources needed to scale and exploit the full potential of the opportunity. This Reading begins by examining the role of entrepreneurship in the business landscape. Using examples of entrepreneurs such as Amazon's Jeff Bezos, the author discusses the behaviors, decisions, and roles of entrepreneurial leaders as they pursue opportunities and pivot to growth. As the Reading explores what entrepreneurs do, it considers both the activities and leadership skills required in the life cycle of an innovative business, as well as the skills needed to pursue different kinds of opportunities. What kind of person is best suited to entrepreneurship? Decades of research suggest that it is more important to study what entrepreneurs do rather than attempting to identify common characteristics or personality types. This Reading explores the different types of entrepreneurial leadership needed at different times to pursue different types of opportunities.

What should a supply chain do well? After an introduction to key terms and concepts, the core reading moves on to the strategic and operational decisions behind a supply chain that matches the need for responsiveness and efficiency. Within this framwork, it presents the strategic and operational decisions behind improving efficiency, and introduces concepts such as sales and operations planning, the bullwhip effect (and steps for avoiding this phenomenon), and updating demand forecasts. Practical strategies for improving responsiveness focus on delayed differentiation and in-depth discussion of read-react capability. The reading concludes by shifting to the design stage of a supply chain, . A supplemental reading also explores sources of supply chain risk, building resilience, and future requirements for compliance, transparency, and traceability.

Entrepreneur Eric Ries coined the term "lean start-up" to describe organizations that follow the principles of hypothesis-driven entrepreneurship. In these ventures, entrepreneurs use experimentation: first, translating their vision into a business model hypotheses, then testing the hypotheses using a series of minimum viable products (MVPs), each of which represent the smallest set of features or activities needed to validate a concept. Founders of a lean start-up also know that time counts among their scarcest resources. Put simply: speed matters. Like lean manufacturing, the lean start-up method accelerates the tempo of innovation by using rapid iteration, small batches, and short cycle times. Experimenting in the Entrepreneurial Venture begins by contrasting the hypothesis-driven entrepreneurship approach with other methods. The Reading also explains, step-by-step, how to formulate business model hypotheses, test them, and act on the test feedback. In the final section, the Reading considers what settings are best suited for hypothesis-driven entrepreneurship. The Reading also includes a section on special topics, a glossary of key terms, and suggestions for cases and articles for further reading.

This Reading explores the multi-faceted nature of channels of distribution. The Reading provides guidelines for how producers of goods and services should cultivate, execute, and manage their go-to-market strategies. They can achieve success by implementing the notion of channel stewardship, and by applying its three main disciplines: mapping the industry channels, building & updating the channel value chain, and aligning & influencing the channel value chain. Managers are guided on whether to pursue direct and/or indirect channels of distribution. The author presents a seven-step framework for building the channel value chain. In aligning & influencing the channel system, readers discover the importance of aligning the network of suppliers and intermediaries to address customer needs, and how participating members should be rewarded commensurate with their efforts. Hard and soft power as key influential levers are discussed, and readers are also introduced to a four-step alignment process for programming a high-performance channel system. This discipline also involves managing horizontal channel conflict. The Reading closes with an eCommerce supplement, which discusses how online channel capabilities have caused varying degrees of disruption among certain product categories.

This Core Curriculum Reading introduces (1) the importance of sales force design in implementing organizational strategy, and (2) the role of sales force management in linking structures and processes to behaviors. The material combines theoretical perspectives with real-world examples, drawn from the business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C) and nonprofit sectors, to illustrate the range of challenges and opportunities in this field.

This Core Curriculum Reading introduces the fundamentals of getting price right. First, it introduces value pricing, which requires a detailed understanding of the true economic value (TEV) that a firm's product creates for a specific customer. Value pricing also requires a decision to divide that value between the firm (providing the firm its incentive to sell) and the customer (providing the customer with an incentive to buy). After covering the key elements of the value-pricing approach, the Reading explains the concepts of price customization, consumer sensitivity to price, and the impact of price on the organization's profitability. Readers also learn how both quantitative research and managerial judgment are used to make optimal pricing decisions. For classroom use in higher education, this Reading is accompanied by a Teaching Note, test bank, and exhibit slides.

Core Curriculum Readings in Marketing cover fundamental concepts, theories, and frameworks in marketing. For classroom use in higher education, this Reading is accompanied by a Teaching Note, test bank, and exhibit slides. This Reading explores how firms can create value for their customers. The goal of any business is to delight customers by understanding its customers' needs and to provide products and services to meet those needs. As a result, it is critical to understand what customers value and how firms can offer products and services by creating different types of value for their customers. The purpose of this Reading is to help students understand customers' perspectives on what they value and why. The Reading describes four types of customer value: economic, functional, experiential/psychological, and social. A Supplemental Reading looks specifically at how to manage customer expectations of services, as distinct from products.

Core Curriculum Readings in Marketing cover fundamental concepts, theories, and frameworks in marketing. For classroom use in higher education, this Reading is accompanied by a Teaching Note, test bank, and exhibit slides. "Consumer Behavior and the Buying Process" describes and analyzes 4 frameworks for understanding how consumers make decisions: cognitive versus emotional, high-involvement versus low-involvement, optimizing versus "satisficing," and compensatory versus noncompensatory decision making. This Core Curriculum Reading then presents the activities that occur during the 3 phases in the consumer buying process: pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase. It also analyzes consumer decision-making units, including roles played within such units, such as buyer, influencer, gatekeeper, and approver. The Reading includes an in-depth example of how a pharmaceutical company analyzed decision-making processes and decision-making units to develop marketing campaigns for a new product. It concludes with an exploration of 3 developments that profoundly affect consumers' decision-making process and units: social media, co-creation and customer involvement, and "conscience" marketing. Ultimately, this Reading prepares students to become marketers who can design effective advertising and marketing campaigns for products and services.

This Reading on customer management sheds light on how companies should evaluate and manage their customers in order to grow profitably. Customer management allows marketing managers to inform investment decisions by drilling down into each customer's profitability or customer lifetime value (CLV). Historically, marketing managers have focused on providing value to customers, while largely ignoring the value they could get from customers. Realizing that customer lifetime value is a more important metric than simply increasing sales or market share, many companies are beginning to understand how the viability of their businesses is tightly linked to acquiring, retaining, and developing the right customers.

Core Curriculum Readings in Marketing cover fundamental concepts, theories, and frameworks in marketing. For classroom use in higher education, this Reading is accompanied by a Teaching Note, test bank, and exhibit slides. This reading provides an introduction to the framework for marketing strategy: how a business creates and retains a customer, as well as the growing importance of making customers active ambassadors for its brands. The reading begins with a description of the 5Cs analysis for developing a marketing strategy (customer, company, collaborators, competitors, and context). It then discusses two sets of decisions every organization needs to make: the Aspiration Decision (what the company hopes to achieve in the market) and the Action Plan Decision (or "marketing mix" of the 4Ps-product, promotion, placement, and price). Finally, it considers the different kinds of actions required for customer acquisition vs. customer retention.

Without customers, businesses could not succeed. The term "Customer Centric" has therefore become synonymous with proactive business strategy worldwide. Primarily due to advances in technology, we are experiencing a fundamental shift in marketing - from a previous focus on companies to a spotlight on consumers - giving customers a much stronger voice in both the Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) sectors. Customer centricity fits three ways into an organization: as part of a knowledge management system (understanding the customer), as part of the development of strategic competence as a learning organization (building a customer-centric culture), and as a foundation for corporate strategy development and execution (serving the customer). This reading is organized into three main sections covering these topics and uses many examples from diverse industries to illustrate successes in each area. In addition, a Supplemental Reading examines the dynamic between customer centricity and innovation and also provides a contrarian view to the topic.

Core Curriculum Readings in Marketing cover fundamental concepts, theories, and frameworks in marketing. For classroom use in higher education, this Reading is accompanied by a Teaching Note, test bank, and exhibit slides. This Reading introduces two of the integral parts of any marketing strategy: segmentation and targeting. It covers, first, the methods, techniques, and variables with which a business initially uncovers the full range of its potential customers and then distinguishes between them. It then takes up how a company judges the potential of each market segment, selects the segments worth pursuing, and designs marketing programs to serve them. The Reading includes two interactive illustrations. Both drive the students to think more carefully about segmentation and targeting. The first, "Segmenting the Dog Food Market," shows how successfully marketing a product consumed by dogs depends on first understanding and segmenting their owners. The second, "Segmenting the Market for Early Pregnancy Test Devices," shows how the most important category for segmentation is not demographic or geographic, but concerned rather with consumer psychology and motivation. The Reading also includes a six-part video mini-case study on how GE Healthcare developed and applied segmentation for its Imaging Systems business.