FEM11028: Seminar Strategic Marketing

Fall 2020 (Block 2)

Faculty:

Lecturers:
Nuno Camacho Paniz Gorji
E02-05 E02-02
camacho@ese.eur.nl gorji@ese.eur.nl

1. Seminar Details/Times

Seminar number: FEM11028

Class times and room: See schedule on Sin-Online.
Seminar website: Canvas
Secretary: Tülay Varisli (be-marketing-secr@ese.eur.nl)
Office: EB-01
Phone: +31.10.408.1301
Office hours: Please schedule appointment by e-mail.

2. Seminar Goals
Marketing is an integral part of today's business activities. However, it is not always
clear how marketing leaders should make strategic marketing decisions. In this course,
you will learn how to make strategic marketing decisions in a realistic environment.

A key concern of this course is to ensure a clear bridge between marketing strategy
tools and concepts (what we could call the “theory” of strategic marketing) and how to
apply such tools and concepts to make better evidence-based strategic marketing
decisions (what we could call the “practice” of strategic marketing). Thus, the three
major learning goals of this seminar are (see Figure 1, below):

1. Learn Marketing Strategy: To teach you, in a real-life like environment, the

role of strategic marketing in modern firms. Particular attention will be paid to
the importance of long-term strategic decisions, which often require a good
understanding of the relationship between (possibly evolving) customer needs,
companies' core competencies and competition. Another important aspect in
marketing strategy that we will cover is how to align and optimize various
functional areas of a firm to support your marketing strategy.
2. Soft Skills & Teamwork: To expose you to the importance of soft-skills and
teamwork, namely learning how to work in diverse teams, with colleagues who
have different personalities and backgrounds. Develop your leadership skills
and train your presentation and communication skills. We will also reflect on
the importance of these ‘soft skills’ in effective strategizing and marketing
decision-making.
3. Evidence-Based Decision-Making: To train you on evidence-based decision-
making, i.e., how to use marketing intelligence and logical analyses to improve

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your strategic marketing decision-making. Particular attention will be paid to

evidence-based decision-making in two areas: (1) new product development
(i.e., how to understand customer needs and translate them into successful new
products), and (2) marketing mix optimization for existing products. We will
also expose you to the importance of balancing evidence and managerial
intuition.

Figure 1 – Learning Goals of the Seminar Strategic Marketing

To achieve these three goals, this seminar combines a hands-on marketing strategy
simulation (StratSim) with discussion-based sessions (lectures, coaching, and cases),
which allows us to offer you important insights that can become the cornerstone of
your career in marketing, consulting, corporate strategy or entrepreneurship.

In particular, in many firms, there is a tension between tactical decisions aimed at

improving financial returns in the short-term versus strategic decisions aimed at
increasing the firm value in the long term. Thus, we will play StratSim for a total of 8
rounds (simulated years) which will allow us to feel the tension between short- and
long-term strategies when devising strategies to gain market leadership in an industry.

3. Seminar Content and Organization

The discussions we will have in class and during simulation sessions emphasize the
generation and implementation of a competitive strategic marketing plan and the
importance of gathering customer insights through market research to make evidence-
based strategic decisions.

The StratSim Simulation

StratSim is a fast-paced and realistic marketing strategy simulation game which takes
place in the automobile industry. You will be randomly assigned to a “virtual firm”
and be a member of its “leadership team”. Therefore, you will be required to work with
new colleagues, with diverse backgrounds, in a team that is probably larger than what
you are used to in other courses. This is closer to the type of team sizes you encounter
in real working life. Together with your team you will then make strategic decisions
for your firm in areas such as product innovation, advertising spending, pricing,
production, sales, distribution channels, and finance. You will be actively competing
against other firms, managed by other colleagues in our class.

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Through the StratSim simulation and our team sessions, we will accomplish five major
activities:

• First, we will learn how to work with different colleagues in diverse and large
teams (pretty close to a real world leadership team size). Thus, to effectively
operate in such context you will need to carefully divide roles, functions and set
team-level decision-making processes. The need to work with different people is
similar to the career challenges you will encounter in real firms. You will need to
learn how to defend your role while guaranteeing success for the whole team, reach
consensus, avoid conflict, and build on the synergies of different colleagues to
reach common goals.
• Second, we will learn how to clearly identify and monitor competition. You will
have the opportunity to look at the market from the perspective of your firm and
from the perspective of competing firms. This will allow you to practice and learn
how to use competitive analysis and apply existing tools and knowledge to
anticipate competitors’ moves.
• Third, we will apply marketing knowledge to understand (current and potential)
customers. You will need to define market opportunities, select target segments,
and define the positioning of your existing and, importantly, develop new cars.
• Fourth, we will understand how to balance short-term and long-term goals by
allocating scarce resources to marketing and innovation activities. You will
need to understand your company’s unique position in the market (its strengths and
weaknesses) and use existing information to better integrate strategic marketing
decisions with the overall company strategy.
• Fifth, we will learn how to make sense of abundant but sometimes
contradictory market and customer intelligence in order to improve our
marketing decisions (e.g., How to translate intelligence into insights and evidence-
based decisions? How to triangulate insights?). You will understand how to take
full advantage of tools like conjoint analysis, focus groups and test markets to make
better strategic marketing decision (e.g., strategic pricing, new product
development and market entry). The development of a clear set of key performance
indicators (KPIs) will help you summarize existing insights and guide your firm
through the turbulent and competitive automobile market.

You will be working in teams that resemble a typical “marketing leadership team”. This
requires you to effectively work with your teammates, which as discussed above will
require role division and teamwork, all skills that are critical for your future career.

4. Seminar Requirements and Evaluation

4.1. Course Reader and StratSim License

All students are required to purchase a license for this course from Interpretive
Simulations. The license fee will give you access to the full course-pack. We sponsor
all the remaining materials (e.g., case studies). Articles will be shared via Canvas,
where you can freely download them (note: for Harvard Business Review articles you
need to be on campus, or at least have the VPN connected to be able to download
them; but should you encounter difficulties, please let us know; you can also always
search for these digitally via www.eur.nl/ub).

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Please be aware that you cannot complete the course if you do not purchase the
StratSim license. However, should you have financial constraints or concerns, please
reach out to Nuno Camacho (camacho@ese.eur.nl) privately, and we will surely find
a solution for you.

4.2. Seminar Materials

▪ StratSim: The simulation is available at http://schools.interpretive.com/ and is

accessible everywhere with an Internet connection. Please try your username and
password (which you will receive after our first session together) before the first
practice round.

▪ Required Literature:
o Reader with details about the StratSim simulation, including the manual.
o Academic papers and articles as indicated in this syllabus (see section on Weekly
Topics and Assigned Readings, below) to be distributed via Canvas as the class
progresses.
o Note: You can build on all these papers and articles – as well as others you may
find through individual research - to strengthen your assignments and your
decisions in StratSim.

4.3. Grading*

Component Points
▪ StratSim Report 1: Situation Analysis (individual) 10
▪ StratSim Report 2: Strategic Marketing Plan (Stratsim group) 15
▪ StratSim Report 3: Post-Mortem Report (Stratsim group) 15
▪ StratSim Performance (Stratsim group) 15
▪ Case Memo 1: Veniam (case group) 15
▪ Case Memo 2: Strategic Marketing in a Post-Covid19 World (case group) 15
▪ Class Participation (individual) 15
* See the next two sections for details on these different components and also details
on how StratSim performance is evaluated.

4.4. StratSim Grading

StratSim will be assessed through (1) three StratSim business reports (which together
represent 40% of your grade) and (2) your firm’s financial performance relative to other
firms in your industry (which represents 15% of your grade).

The three StratSim business reports are: (i) Situation Analysis (individual), (ii) Strategic
Marketing Plan (group), and (iii) Post-Mortem (group).

(1) StratSim Reports:

StratSim Report 1: Situation Analysis (Individual)

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The idea of this report is to describe the initial situation of your firm, both form an
internal standpoint (e.g., your strengths and weaknesses) and from an external
standpoint (e.g., opportunities and threats you see in the market). See the style and
submission requirements at the end of the assignment description.

You can use the following sections to organize your assignment (note: some info can
be summarized effectively in tables or by referring us to the manual, if you prefer)1:

A. Internal Analysis:
i. Firm Analysis: What type of firm are you (e.g., margin player, volume
player, premium…). It may help to compare your firm to all other firms on
key performance indicators such as sales volume, margins (costs, profits, …),
markets you “own”, etc. Such comparison with competitors also helps you
with the External Analysis below.
• Hint 1: This exercise should allow you to also identify if you have one
or several “flagship” product(s), i.e., products that contribute the most
to your overall profits and revenues…
• Hint 2: You may want to pre-read Treacy & Wiersema (1992).
ii. Strengths and Weaknesses: What are your firm’s key assets and resources?
Where could you be doing better? For instance, if you compare your firm
with key competitors, how are you performing on distribution? And on firm
preference ratings? Product innovation (i.e., R&D) and production (capacity,
inventory…)? From this analysis please try to enumerate 3 key strengths and
3 key weaknesses of your firm.

B. External Analysis:
i. Customer Analysis: Describe who your key customers are, and which
attributes are most important to your current customers. Describe what
influences current customers’ buying decisions. Describe any trends you can
see for current customers including sales growth and market size.
ii. Competitive Analysis: When preparing to make strategic marketing
decisions, it is critical to monitor and anticipate the likely moves and
reactions of your key competitors. In your competitive analysis try to cover
at least the following:
• Competitor identification: Who is your most significant competitor?
Why?
• Business definition: What business does this competitor appear to be in?
What markets do they serve? What needs do they satisfy?
• Source of competitive advantage: What do you believe this competitor
views as their source of competitive advantage? What would be their
primary strengths?
• Competitive map: Consider creating a competitive map on two key
customer dimensions for a market where both you and your key
competitor operate. What new insights id you gain from this, if any?
• Possible competitive strategy: How would you characterize the primary
weaknesses of this competitor? How could you exploit their weaknesses
while defending against their strengths?

1
Based on experience, it works best if you use a structure that approximates the one we offer in this
guide.

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iii. Opportunities and Threats: If you look at the current macro trends (e.g., in
the economy), how well customers are served with current products, and also
which customers are emerging: What are the key threats and opportunities
you foresee for your firm?

C. Your Role in the Team:

As discussed, you belong to the “marketing leadership team” of your firm. A key skill
sought by firms is the capacity of a marketer to work collaboratively with several
colleagues possessing a wide variety of backgrounds. Thus, as an important step in
boosting your teamwork skills, in this section please self-reflect on how you see your
ideal role within your team. Specifically, considering your background and prior
experiences, please try to briefly write down a “pledge” to your team that clarifies the
type of role you see for yourself.

It may help to consider, beyond your background and aspirations, the following three
aspects of your personality when self-reflecting on your ideal role and contribution do
your team:
• Your bright side: How do you behave when you are at your best?
• Your dark side: How do you behave when you feel stressed or under pressure?
• Your inside: What are your needs, motives and inner preferences? (e.g., do you
like to create? To plan? To execute? To risk? To be safe? To connect?)2

Notes:
▪ For sections A and B, you can use the SWOT template we will distribute in Canvas
to present your firm’s and your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses.
▪ Please do not limit yourself to summarizing the information given in the manual.
Be creative in your discussion and presentation of strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats and mention what these imply for the initial positioning
and subsequent strategy for your company.
▪ For section C about half to (max) one page is sufficient.

Style and Submission Requirements:

▪ 5-pages maximum (1.5 paragraph spacing), excluding additional 7 pages (maximum)

of appendices, tables, and exhibits.
▪ Use 12-point font. You may sometimes use bullet points instead of a full narrative style.
▪ Ensure your name is on the cover page (not counted to the page limit).

2
There are many tools for personality assessment, from the often used but also often critiqued Myers-
Briggs indicator, to more managerial tools such as the ‘Hares-Owls-Turtles-Squirrels’ taxonomy. Do
not anchor too much on these tools, but it may be good to at least familiarize yourself with their
existence as it will help you contribute later to the team formation and role division in your team.

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StratSim Report 2: Strategic Marketing Plan (Group)

In order to guide your team during the game, please submit your strategic marketing
plan. In this report, you can depart from some of the individual analyses you made in
the first assignment (e.g., bring back your SWOT templates and put them together to
look for patterns and commonalities, as well as discrepancies, and discuss those). We
advise you to complete the six sections below, which are standard in a strategic
marketing or business plan, i.e., you need to cover the following:

1. Business Definition
2. Firm Positioning and Source of Competitive Advantage
3. Firm Goals & Objectives
4. Firm Strategy
5. Customer and Market Insights (Metrics and KPIs)
6. Team Formation

A. Business Definition (Customer Segmentation and Targeting)

A strategic plan typically starts with a definition of your business. This will set the stage
and rationale for your strategic roadmap. This section clarifies your segmentation and
targeting choices:
▪ Who do you want to serve and why?
▪ What is the rationale for these choices? What data and evidence supports your
choices? Be sure to include at least info on:
o Current customers:
▪ Which attributes are important?
▪ Trends in terms of market size, margins, etc
o Potential new customers that make sense for your firm:
▪ Risk (e.g., customers that exist but you do not serve are less risky
than customers that still need to “pop”)
▪ Which attributes are important for your potential new customers?
▪ Trends in terms of market size, margins, etc

B. Firm Positioning and Source of Competitive Advantage

▪ With which competitors will you compete and how do you intend to win against
them?
▪ How do you want to be perceived and how will you position your firm (e.g., are
you going to position yourself on product leadership, operational excellence or
customer intimacy)?
▪ What type of price points will you use? Will you be more a margin or a volume
player? Why?

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C. Firm Goals & Objectives3:

Please consider the external opportunities and threats that your firm faces, and the
internal strengths and weaknesses you have collectively identified to list your firm’s
goals and objectives. Goals are the desired results you want to achieve in the long term
(e.g., “lead the family class”), whereas objectives are the specific and measurable
milestones your firm needs to achieve in order to meet its overall goal.

Please list 3 or 4 long-term goals for your firm and then translate those into 5-10
specific objectives. These objectives should fit the following logic, “Given x
happening externally, and given y firm strength, we should do z” or “Given x external
event and given y firm weakness, we should do z.”

In order for your objectives to be helpful for your strategy and decisions, please make
them specific rather than general or hypothetical. For example, you should avoid
objective like “Our firm will need to improve its performance on things that matter to
customers.” This is not very helpful. You could note what specific and measurable
milestones do you plan to achieve (objectives, for instance for a certain product or
products) in order to ensure you “own” a specific market segment (overall goal).

In other words, your objectives should include: (i) a performance measure (sales, share,
profit); (ii) a direction (e.g., increase/decrease); (iii) a time frame (short/long run); and
(iv) rationale. Whenever possible, the objectives should be specific and measurable
(e.g., increase share from 25% to 30% within a certain time period).

At times this looks a lot like guesswork. That’s what happens also in real-world
strategizing. You can’t know the future, but you need to prepare for it and use evidence
to reduce uncertainty… One note of “real world” caution: If goals and objectives are
too ambitious, you will fail to meet them and will not make bonus, or worse. In contrast,
if goals and objectives look too unambitious, it is unlikely any resources will be
forthcoming. This, too, can hurt your performance.

Hint: Focus on objectives you think are important to achieve your long-term stock price
and cumulative net income goals, as those are the KPIs evaluated in class. Each
objective should be justified using evidence from the simulation.

D. Firm Strategy:
Strategy outlines how your objectives will be achieved. You should, at a minimum,
have a strategy in each of the following areas: (1) Product innovation (i.e., R&D); (2)
marketing (e.g., advertising and promotion); (3) manufacturing; (4) distribution
channels and (5) price levels (note: for pricing, recall to connect back to your position
discussion in section B). Each strategy should be justified using evidence from StratSim
and your financial analyses.

3
Note: Teams generally provide an overarching set of objectives they want to achieve in the game as a
whole and then break out specific objectives and strategies across years or chunks of time (early rounds
1-3, middle 4-5, late 6-8). Either by year or chunks of time is fine but you should try to think as far ahead
as you can. We know that things will change and your customers and competitors will evolve and so
your strategies will have to change as well. However, this evolution should occur from a base of strategies
that you have originally hypothesized will lead to your selected objectives. Some teams find it useful to
build some of this contingency thinking into their strategies. For example, if this happens with customer
x or competitor y, we will do strategy 1... but if this something else happens, we plan to do strategy 2.

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E. Customer and Market Insights (Metrics and KPIs):

Setting the right metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) is critical to ensure the
accountability and credibility of a marketing leadership team. The set of metrics and
KPIs you will monitor typically reflect your “performance contract” with the firm’s
shareholders. In this section you should indicate the metrics you will use to monitors
your progress and detect deviations against plan (Hint: Kaplan and Norton 1996 may
be a good pre-reading for this point).

Please try to have at least one or two of each of the following types of metrics in your
set of KPIs:
• Customer metrics (e.g., some proxy for satisfaction or equity, awareness…)?
• Competition metrics (e.g., market share, share of voice, share of customer
wallet…)?
• Financial metrics (e.g., margins and product contribution, profit growth, ROI,
return on sales…)

Note: You are free to use any appropriate printouts or analyses provided by StratSim.

F. Team Formation and Role Division:

The only way for your “leadership team” to work productively, efficiently and
effectively is by having a clear role division. In this section please reflect on your team
formation and role division. Specifically, please indicate:
▪ How have you structured your team?
▪ Do you have a CEO? What about a CMO and CFO? Why or why not?
▪ What other functions did you create?
▪ What are the pros and cons of different team organizations (e.g., organizing
your team around customer segments versus around product lines)? What are
the pros and cons of a hierarchical versus a flat organization? (Hint: Do some
research on the meaning and current trends in terms of these organizational
features)

Style and Submission Requirements:

▪ 7-pages maximum (1.5 paragraph spacing), excluding additional 7 pages of
appendices, tables, and exhibits.
▪ Use 12-point font. You may use bullet points instead of a full narrative style.
▪ Ensure team members’ names are on the cover page (not counted to the page
limit).

StratSim Report 3: Post-Mortem (Group)

You need to address the following questions in this report:

1. To what extent were your firm’s objectives achieved?

2. What strategies were effective or ineffective? Why?
3. How and why did your planned objectives and strategies change over the
simulation?
4. What team activities and organizational approaches helped or hurt your
StratSim performance?
5. Describe your team’s three most important lessons from the simulation.

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Style and Submission Requirements for the Report:

▪ 7-pages maximum (1.5 paragraph spacing), excluding additional 7 pages of
appendices, tables, and exhibits.
▪ Use 12-point font. You may use bullet points instead of a full narrative style.
▪ Ensure team members’ names are on the cover page (not counted to the page
limit).
▪ Please prepare also a PowerPoint report to present in the last class.
▪ For the PowerPoint report, please ensure you can present it comfortably, in class,
in 5 minutes.

(2) StratSim Performance:

Your performance in the simulation will be evaluated based on the financial outcomes
of your firm (i.e., stock price and cumulative net income). The grade is determined by
how well each firm performs relative to other firms in the same industry. We will offer
detailed information in class.

4.5. Written Case Memos

We ask you to work on two case memos. To maximize opportunities to practice

teamwork with a diverse set of colleagues, you will write these case memos not with
your StratSim team but with special “task force” team formed to answers these
questions: your case group. We will randomly assign you to this case group during the
first week of the class.

Case Memo 1: Veniam (Case Group)

Please carefully read the Veniam case (distributed via Canvas). Afterwards, with your
case group, prepare a PowerPoint slide deck pitch for Veniam. You will need to submit
this pitch before the Veniam session (so by November 11th at 18:00). Please feel free
to use the notes pages to add additional information or sources that may not fit the slide
itself (which you will present in class) but may be important to give context to the
message you want to convey in each slide. Please keep notes well organized and
readable, rather than a “dump” of information…

The slide deck should cover the questions we will discuss in class. You will have 5-7
minutes in class to present your pitch, followed by 3-4’ of Q&A with one of the
instructors and your colleagues.

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We suggest the following template for your pitch, but please feel free to deviate from
the order (also the number of slides is just an illustration, you can use more, but recall
that for 5’ pitch you can’t have too many or too full slides…):

Slide 1: Target Slide 2: Veniam’s Slide 3: Slide 4: Business

Customer & Value Proposition Competitive Model
Needs Differentiation
How does Veniam’s How will Veniam
Who should be the solution work and What other solutions make money?
customers of Veniam? solve the customer are out there?
Why? needs? Revenue streams?
What are their How and why is
frustrations or needs? How should Veniam Veniam better than Partners?
position itself? Any competing solutions?
idea for a slogan? Sales strategy?

Case Memo 2: Strategic Marketing in a Post-Covid19 World (Case Group)

To write this case memo, please read the assignment case “Strategic Marketing in a
Post-Covid19 World: Fending Off Threats & Leveraging New Opportunities,” which
we will share via Canvas. All questions to be answered are indicated in the case itself.

Style and Submission Requirements (for the Case Memo 2):

▪ 5-pages maximum (1.5 paragraph spacing), excluding additional 5 pages of
appendices, tables, and exhibits.
▪ Bibliography and sources do not count to page limit.
▪ Use 12-point font. You may use bullet points instead of a full narrative style.
▪ Ensure your name(s) is(are) on the cover page (not counted to the page limit).

4.6. Deadlines for the Reports’ Submission

▪ Assignments should be submitted via Canvas on the following times. If you

encounter any problems with submitting your assignment via Canvas, please
contact Paniz Gorji via e-mail (gorji@ese.eur.nl):
▪ StratSim Report 1: Situation Analysis (Individual):
before 20.00 on Sunday, 01/11/2020
▪ Case memo 1: Veniam (Case Group)
before 18.00 on Monday, 09/11/2020
▪ StratSim Report 2: Strategic Marketing Plan (StratSim Group):
before 18.00 on Monday, 16/11/2020
▪ Case memo 2: Strategic Marketing in a Post-Covid19 World (Case Group)
before 18.00 on Friday, 20/11/2020
▪ StratSim Report 3: Post-Mortem (StratSim Group):
before 18.00 on Friday, 11/12/2020 (each team needs to also prepare a 5-
minute presentation with the key takeaways of the post-mortem, to be presented
in class on Wednesday 16/12/2020).

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4.7. Participation
Please recall that it is a priority in our master - and in our seminar in particular - to teach
you soft skills like teamwork, leadership and communication. You will shortly be
starting your career and these soft skills will be an essential asset for your career
development. This is why we emphasize participation and clarify here the rules for
participation grading.

The issues we deal with typically lead to lively discussions in class. We value these
discussions much, and thus participation is very important. Students can miss a
maximum of one session (without justification) to pass the course. Obviously, proper
justification can lead to additional absences. In such rare cases, it is important to align
with your team and make sure (1) your teammates are informed, and (2) that, and if
possible, you “compensate” your team for your absence, by contributing to assignments
and Stratsim decisions.

(1) Peer Evaluation

Your participation in class will be graded by your colleagues based on both the quality
and the quantity of your contributions with your StratSim team. The reason is that
participation in the StratSim sessions and in the good functioning of your firm is
extremely important. Thus, you will all evaluate the contribution of your StratSim team
members using a confidential tool before the end of the course. This information will
not be shared with team members at any time but will be used to determine the
participation grade of each team member.

(2) Interactions during StratSim Sessions and Classes

On top of the peer evaluation, we may also keep track, during our interactions with your
team, of our impressions about the contribution of each of you to your team’s strategy
and decision-making. Yet, our independent evaluations are used mainly to reward
particularly proactive students. To guarantee objectivity and multiple inputs, the bulk
of your participation grade will still be based on the joint evaluation of your team mates
in the peer evaluation tool.

4.8. Communication & Participation in Online Sessions

Please assign a PR manager (i.e., contact person) for your team, who can be the contact
point with us. If you have any questions, please sent an e-mail to Paniz Gorji
(gorji@ese.eur.nl) with Nuno Camacho (camacho@ese.eur.nl) in cc. Our aim is to
respond as soon as possible. If your question or concern is really urgent you can always
get in touch with us by contacting Tülay Varisli (varisli@ese.eur.nl).

Tips and Requirements for Online Sessions:

▪ Please try to ensure a professional atmosphere in class. This includes utilizing
computers and technology suitably (e.g., silencing wireless devices, having a
good LAN connection, ideally, rather than WiFi, using headset to avoid
feedback and echo, etc)
▪ Please refrain or minimize distracting activities. For instance, close chat
windows, social media, or Internet tabs unrelated to the class.

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▪ Please log in with your full names (first and last name separately and in this
order), such that we can easily address you by first name but also easily
recognize your last name (used in university systems).
▪ Students should have their cameras on for the full session.
▪ As a default, students must be muted throughout the session unless speaking.

5. Weekly Topics and Assigned Reading

Week 1
Topic: Introduction to Strategic Marketing

26/10 – 30/10
Readings:
• Read the StratSim manual attentively.
• Moorman, C. and R. Rust (1999), “The Role of Marketing,” Journal of
Marketing.

Week 2
Topic: Evidence-Based Decision-Making:
The Value of Metrics, Tools and Dashboards

Readings:
• Make sure you re-read all details in the StratSim manual
02/11 – 06/11 • (optional) Kaplan R.S. and D.P. Norton (1996), “Using the Balanced
Scorecard as a Strategic Management System,” Harvard Business
Review
• Day, G. S. (1994), “The Capabilities of Market-Driven
Organizations,” Journal of Marketing, 58(4), 37-52.
• Van den Driest, F., S. Sthanuanathan, and K. Weed (2016), “Building
an Insights Engine: How Unilever Got to Know Its Customers,”
Harvard Business Review.

Week 3
Topics: Value Creation: Ambition, Segmentation and Targeting

Readings:
09/11 – 13/11 • Kim W. C. and R. Mauborgne (2004), “Blue Ocean Strategy,” Harvard
Business Review.
• Yankelovich, D. and D. Meer, (2006), “Rediscovering market
segmentation,” Harvard Business Review.
• Case Study: Veniam (read carefully before the case session)

Week 4
Topics: Value Creation: Positioning
16/11 – 20/11
Readings:
• Treacy, M. and F. Wiersema (1992), “Customer intimacy and other
value disciplines,” Harvard Business Review.

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• Christensen, C. M., S. Anthony, D. Berstell, and D. Nitterhouse (2007),

“Finding the right job for your product,” MIT Sloan Management
Review.

Week 5
Topics: Value Extraction: Pricing & Business Model

Readings:
23/11 – 27/11 • Blank, S. (2013), “Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything,”
Harvard Business Review.
• Gulati and Garino (2000), “Get the Right Mix of Bricks and Clicks,”
Harvard Business Review
• (optional) Hinterhuber A. and S. Liozu (2012), “Is It Time to Rethink
Your Pricing Strategy?,” MIT Sloan Management Review.

Week 6
Topics: Reacting to the Competitive Environment:
Confirming or Reinventing your Strategy

30/11 – 04/12 Readings:

• D'Aveni R.A. (2007), “Mapping your Competitive Positioning,”
Harvard Business Review.
• Roberts, J.H. (2005), “Defensive Marketing: How a Strong Incumbent
can Protect its Position,” Harvard Business Review.

Week 7
Topics: Strategy as an Evolutionary Process:
Learning from both Success and Failure

Readings:
07/12 – 11/12
• Thomke, S., and S.J. Sinofsky (1999), “Learning from Projects:
Note on Conducting a Postmortem Analysis,” Harvard Business
School Industry and Background Note.
• Mintzberg, Henry and James A. Waters (1985), “Of Strategies,
Deliberate and Emergent,” Strategic Management Journal, 6,
257-272.

Week 8
Topics: Post-Mortem Session

14/12 - 18/12 To Do’s: Revisit your post-mortem assignment. Prepare

presentation. Decide who will present (make sure you stick to 5
minutes). Practice presentation.

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StratSim Decision Making

I. Simulation Overview

▪ The Nature of the Simulation. StratSim is a dynamic business simulation used by

many top business schools around the world. This simulation will allow you to
practice managing all aspects of firm strategy as you anticipate and respond to
customers’ changing needs and competitors’ actions over the game. Teams of
students assume the role of decision makers in companies. StratSim will also force
you to manage the interface between marketing and other business functions in your
firms. Performance will be assessed through a series of business planning activities
and firm financial performance relative to other firms.

▪ StratSim and Reality. StratSim is a simulation, which means that it is an abstraction

of reality. Do not rely too much on your own experiences while playing the game
(e.g., do not assume a certain class of vehicle will perform well just because the
same class of vehicles is performing well in reality…). Instead, enter the StratSim
world and learn how to compete within it.

▪ StratSim Login and Password. Students need to make sure they have received their
login and password information from Interpretive before the first practice round. It
is highly advisable to also access StratSim on your home PC or laptop as decisions
and analyses will extend beyond the time we spend in the sessions. Students also
need to carefully read the manual, which is available from the Interpretive website
(www.interpretive.com).

▪ Simulation Routine. In StratSim, student teams compete against one another. The
simulation requires teams to submit decisions by certain days and times in order to
allow the simulation to be run. If you miss a deadline, your team’s decisions from
the prior period will be used. StratSim will not check entries for completeness. See
the class calendar for all times and deadlines.

▪ Student Passwords. We will email students their passwords after team formation is
complete. If your password fails, first try retyping it from the email (instead of
copying it). Also make sure you have not confused the letter “l” with the number
“1” or the letter “O” with the number “0.” After verifying that teammates are also
having trouble, email your problem to us.

▪ Consultants. The lecturers will serve as consultants throughout the simulation. We

will not share information across teams. We will be objective and help you in any
way that we can.

▪ StratSim Team Contribution. Given its importance to the seminar, students will
evaluate the contribution of team members using a confidential tool in StratSim.
This information will be used to determine individual team member final grades on
StratSim activities. This information will not be shared with team members at any
time.

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▪ StratSim Information and Misinformation Sharing. Given you are competing with
firms in and across your industry, you should not share your firm’s strategies and
approaches with other firms. We will use the last session, on Wednesday, December
16th, 2020 to debrief the simulation and teams can question one another about how
they played the game. Misinformation or collusion is considered an honor code
violation.

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