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Core Curriculum Readings in Marketing cover fundamental concepts, theories, and frameworks in marketing. This Reading addresses the principles of brand positioning and demonstrates how companies can strategically craft powerful, resonant, and unique brand positions to help products stand out amidst the cacophony of the marketplace. Strategic brand positioning provides consumers with the answer to the all-important question, "Why should I buy?" The Reading discusses how to craft a brand's value proposition for competitive advantage, through analysis and synthesis of consumer, company, and competitive factors. It highlights the types of brand positions that companies can stake out in the minds of consumers, providing insight into the many creative ways brands can be differentiated from one another. It provides guidance for defending a market position through illumination of the competitive dynamics of brand positioning. Finally, it presents the challenges associated with repositioning brands and the tension that exists between maintaining consistency in a brand's meaning and adjusting to changing consumer preferences.

"Setting Aspirations-Mission, Vision, and Values" introduces students to the concepts of organizational aspirations and the links between mission, vision, and values with strategy. The main Reading presents a framework for analyzing aspirations. It also discusses the differences between mission and vision, and it uses industry examples to explore how mission and vision form a firm's strategy and contribute to its strategy process. In addition, it addresses general misconceptions about organizational aspirations and the perils of misusing aspirations. A supplemental Reading.

Because of advances in technology, increasing international trade, growing global income levels, and a convergence of consumer tastes, companies worldwide must examine their business strategies and tactics with a global perspective. This Reading introduces a broad array of fundamental concepts and strategies that will enable an understanding of these dynamic changes in the global marketing environment. A Supplemental Reading offers insight into global marketing in the service industry.

"Business-to-Business Marketing" provides a comprehensive review of the fundamental concepts and theories related to aspects of business-to-business (B2B) marketing. B2B marketing refers to exchanges of goods and services between institutions rather than to individuals or end consumers. Compared to business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers, B2B marketers face distinct challenges rooted in the nature and needs of customers' buying criteria, purchasing processes, and strategic considerations. This Reading discusses five core elements of B2B marketing: 1. Links between business-to-business marketing and business strategy. 2. The impact of market and account selection. 3. The complexity of buyer behavior. 4. The need to understand and communicate buyer benefits. 5. The importance of organizational alignment.

"Introduction to Strategy" provides a comprehensive overview of the strategy discipline and introduces the building blocks of strategy by providing overviews of fundamental conceptual frameworks. Readers will learn how firms decide where to compete by exploring the business landscape and the structural forces that shape competition. This Reading will also present alternative perspectives on strategy.

"Competitive Advantage" introduces core concepts in competitive advantage including value creation and distribution, added value, and willingness to pay and supplier opportunity cost. The Reading explores how a firm's unique activities directly relate to establishing competitive advantage. Readers also learn how to analyze a firm's value proposition. The latest revision (June 2022) features updated examples and figures throughout the reading. The overall framework is unchanged. The example that opens the reading has been updated significantly, with newly acquired data (2005-2021), and now focuses on Lilly and Air Canada, replacing the original analysis of Merck and US Steel. Learn more: https://bit.ly/strategycc-guide

"Industry Analysis" is intended to familiarize readers and executives with the core concepts in industry analysis. Readers learn why the Porter forces framework is a valuable tool for understanding industry structure and how to perform one. This Reading will also address criticisms and limitations of the framework.

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. "Brands and Brand Equity" provides a comprehensive review of the fundamental concepts and theories in branding and introduces key concepts, issues, and terminology related to creating, nurturing, managing, leveraging, and defending strong brands. Students will learn the many components that make up a brand, the value that brands provide for consumers and firms, how firms create brand equity, and the key decisions and challenges that brand managers face across the life cycle of a brand. This Reading also combines theory and practice by summarizing and integrating theories and models in branding research and illustrating them with examples from diverse industries, including success and failure of well-known brands.

This reading provides an introduction to forecasting methods. It includes a brief summary of methods based on judgment and a longer section on quantitative analysis. It also provides sample data so readers can develop an understanding of concepts such as correlation, covariance, time-series data, moving averages, exponential smoothing, time-series decomposition, trend estimation, simple linear regression, autocorrelation, and multiple linear regression.

It is often assumed that a quality inspection for a product or service comes at the end of a process. For example, an article of clothing may include a sticker that reads "Inspected by #12." Total Quality Management places greater emphasis on monitoring individual steps within an entire production process to ensure that the process is running the way it was intended. Paying close attention to the underlying processes connected to a product or service can greatly benefit companies and the customers they serve. This Reading introduces key concepts and considerations in applying process control beginning with product inspection. It provides an overview of the most commonly used statistical and analytical tools called Statistical Process Control (SPC). SPC is applicable to all processes in manufacturing and services whenever there is a measurable output that must deliver a high-quality product or customer experience.

Organizations without the means to improve rarely can keep up with competition. Improvement requires a deep understanding of underlying operating processes and an ability to assess their performance. The essence of process analysis is the ability to answer the questions, "How is this process doing?" and "How can it do better?" In this Reading, readers observe an operating process and consider the data that needs to be collected so that they are able to answer these key questions. How can a process be described as "doing" well? The answer depends on what the customer promise is and how the firm seeks to create and capture value for its stakeholders. Is the company focus on speed, quality of service, and customer satisfaction? Its measures of success would be very different from another business running a high-volume, capital-intensive factory with a customer promise of low cost, focusing on capital utilization, high volumes, and specific measures of efficiency and productivity. The Reading begins with an overview of the steps in analyzing a process, beginning with process flow diagrams, represent the sequence of tasks and flow of product and information. Concepts introduced in the reading include batch processes, bottleneck analysis and cycle times, and calculating capacity and labor utilization. A variety of numerical analyses are introduced to measure process performance with a focus on 3 critical dimensions: capacity, efficiency, and effectiveness.

This Reading expands on the basic concepts of Process Analysis. It begins with explanations of generic types of processes: the job shop, the worker-paced line, cellular manufacturing, the machine-pace assembly link, and the continuous flow process. Each process type has different characteristics and key management challenges associated with it. The Reading continues with an introduction to the impact of variability (in this case, in processing times) on process performance. The final section covers process improvement with a focus on quality and learning.

Inventory strategy can be a key driver of a firm's success or failure. Conversely, an inappropriate inventory strategy can erode customer service and can quickly deplete cash, especially for startups or other cash-starved firms. Because of the important strategic and tactical roles played by inventory within a business, it is important to understand the fundamentals of inventory management. This Reading begins by defining key terms and concepts. It then explores how to determine an inventory model that is appropriate to each business situation. Determining a model depends on finding answers to a pair of related questions: Can inventory be replenished within a defined selling period? If it can, a new question arises: What is the replenishment trigger? A "single-period model" applies to products with a limited useful life that cannot be carried over for sale in a subsequent period and a "multi-period model" applies to products that can be carried over for sale in a subsequent period.

Operations Strategy bridges the gap between the strategic plan directed by executives and the emergent strategy that occurs through the many decisions of managers and employees. The goal of operations strategy is to optimize operations' resources to best fulfill the strategic objectives of the firm. There are two central elements to an effective operations strategy. The first element provides the long-term objectives for operations in support of company strategy and answers the question, "What do we have to do?" The second offers a plan to meet those objectives and answers the follow-up question, "How are we going to do it?" A resource-based operations strategy framework offers a way to evaluate operations strategy by looking at the resources that influence a firm's ability to create and deliver its primary offerings. There are 5 categories of resources: Physical Resources; Human Resources; Intellectual Property, Software, and Methods; Ecosystem Resources; and Financial Resources. In the framework each category is described in terms of the resources and their uses, the way they are integrated with one another into systems, and the plans for future development. Strategic alignment is the level to which the complete operating system is able to implement the company's strategy.

Waiting lines, sometimes called queuing situations, are encountered widely in business operations. Improvements to the waiting-line process can result in better use of labor, equipment, and facilities, and a greater capability to provide customers with a level of service that matches the business objective. This Reading presents methods for determining the resources needed to provide particular service attributes in waiting-line situations. It emphasizes developing intuition regarding the impact of utilization, system size, and variability on performance characteristics. It includes an explanation of an approximation formula for determining the average waiting time and line length for queuing situations and covers managing customer perceptions of waiting.

An organization's strategic sourcing decisions determine where and how it procures products and services. Choosing which resources and capabilities to develop internally and which to procure externally requires an understanding of the firm's business and operations strategies, its current and potential operational profile, and any external threats or opportunities. This Reading covers sourcing decisions, such as make-or-buy decisions, as well as decisions on where and how production takes place (the tradeoff's geographic proximity degree of integration and information-sharing, contractual conditions, and the optimal number of suppliers) in both manufacturing and services, domestically and globally.

The long-term success of an organization depends on the methods used to deliberately shape a firm's approach to maintaining quality standards. While a systematic approach to managing and improving quality using statistical tools can be very effective, attaining high levels of quality often depends on organizational culture and the quality of executive leadership. This Reading begins with an explanation of the dimensions of quality, focusing on the distinctions between performance quality and conformance quality. The next section explores the issues connected with the cost of quality by exploring the question: How should organizations think about the cost and value of different levels of conformance quality? It concludes with the topic of problem-solving in an operations setting. Fast and effective problem-solving is essential for preventing problems from getting worse over time.