Course Syllabus

MRKT 826 Course Syllabus

Spring A, 2019

Contact Information

Dr. Jamie Hyodo

Office hours: By appointment via phone
Email: jhyodo2@unl.edu
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiehyodo
Cell phone: 814-308-2271, leave a message

Textbook & Reading Materials

Required Textbook

• Valerie A. Zeithaml, Mary Jo Bitner, Dwayne D. Gremler (2009), Services Marketing:Integrating Customer Focus Across the Firm, Sixth Edition, New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies. ISBN-978-0-07-811205-8
  OR
  Valerie A. Zeithaml, Mary Jo Bitner, Dwayne D. Gremler (2018), Services Marketing: Integrating Customer Focus Across the Firm, Seventh Edition, New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies. ISBN-978-0-07-811210-2 Either edition will do.
• Dave Kerpen (2015) Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create Irresistible Brand and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (and other social networks), New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies. 2nd Edition ISBN 978-0-07-183632-6

Other Required Readings

• Roland T. Rust, Christine Moorman, Gaurav Bhalla, Rethinking Marketing, Harvard Business Review, January-February 2010, Pgs. 94-101.
• Heskett, Jones, Loveman, Sasser, Schlesinger, Putting the Service-Profit Chain to Work, Harvard Business Review, July-August 2008, Pg. 118.
• Donna L. Hoffman, Marek Fodor, Can You Measure the ROI of Social Media Marketing? MITSloan Management Review, 2010, Vol. 52, No. 1
• Bruce Weinberg, Ekin Pehlivan, Social spending: Managing the social media mix, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, Business Horizons, (2011) 54, Pgs. 275-282

All of the above articles may be found together in a Coursepak and may be purchased from HBR at the following address: 

https://hbsp.harvard.edu/import/595853

Recommended Books and Readings (Not Required)

• Leonard L. Berry (1999), Discovering the Soul of Service, New York, NY: The Free Press.
• Howard Schultz with Joanne Gordon (2011), Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul, John Wiley and Sons

Course Description

Services dominate both the world and U.S. economies. Currently in the U.S., services account for over 80% of the labor force and over 80% of GDP. This course will build on basic marketing concepts from earlier marketing courses to make them applicable to service industry settings. Service organizations (e.g., hospitals, hotels, banks, insurance companies, professional services, educational institutions) require a different approach from that of goods and high-tech businesses. That said, many goods and high-tech businesses also use a strong service component as a source of competitive advantage.

This course is designed to prepare students who are pursuing marketing careers in the services or goods industries and non-marketing students desiring to understand the key concepts of services marketing and how they can be used to create competitive advantage for businesses.

The textbook will be used to understand the basic concepts and experiential learning will be used through hands-on assignments, case studies and discussions. Concepts will be illustrated using case studies from various industries and students will get hands-on experience applying the concepts by working with local businesses on various assignments. These assignments will be shared and discussed with classmates.

Course Objectives

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Build an understanding and appreciation of the marketing challenges for service businesses and their similarity and differences from goods/manufacturing businesses.
• Understand the “Gaps Model of Service Quality”and how to apply it in your professional career.
• Develop essential knowledge on the components of the “services marketing mix” (four P’s and three additional P’s) and relate them to managing service quality.
• Understand the process and develop skills to evaluate the customer experience and service quality of an organization and develop solutions designed to build competitive advantage.
• Understand the role of technology in marketing of services.
• Develop critical thinking, analysis and communication skills from the management point of view through case studies, discussions, written assignments and working with local businesses.

Course Philosophy

One of the key things to remember about marketing is that it is not a science. Research and improvements in processes and systems now give management greater information than ever before on the customer, the competition and a company’s internal operations. However, a management team will rarely have all the information they would like to have in order to make the best decisions. It is often unclear which alternatives, among several, are the best ones.

Both the case studies and the hands-on assignments will give you a sense of this ambiguity as you make your assessments without the benefit of receiving the “right” answer. If you will view your fellow students and instructor as fellow management team members you will receive great value from this course. The goal of applying the information to the “real world” should be foremost on your mind.

Instructor Role and Expectations

This online course will consist of readings, written assignments, group discussions and case studies. Several of these assignments involve working with actual businesses. The advantage of an on-line course is that your fellow students and I will be available on a more flexible basis than with fixed class hours. My role is to facilitate learning, deliver content and challenge your thinking. I will do that through discussion boards, evaluation of assignments and periodic conference calls.

While the delivery is different, the assignments and interactions are not that different from face-to-face courses. The course is delivered in 8 modules. It will be critical for you to keep current with the readings and assignments and your active participation on the discussion board is expected and important to the final grade. My expectation is that you will be an active learner with your fellow students and by asking for clarification on the assignments.

Student Expectations

The outcome for this course is designed to be the same as for a face-to-face course. Therefore, you must be a good time manager to ensure that all the required work can be completed on time. You will receive the greatest learning from the outside assignments, case studies and discussions with your classmates. You should expect to also help others learn through your thoughtful responses and participation in discussions and by being a reliable teammate on group assignments. The course will require about 15 hours of work per week. Please post all questions on homework, lectures, etc.  on the “Ask the Professor” discussion board. This will help your fellow students. I will respond if necessary and will be checking the discussion board a couple of times each day. Emails to me should be for personal issues only, such as personal conflicts, etc.

Late Assignment Policy

Points will be deducted for late assignments except in the case of bona fide emergencies. All assignments are due on Sunday at midnight central time the week of the assigned module unless otherwise indicated. A late penalty of 10% per day will be applied to late assignments.

Canvas Information

Canvas is the where course content, grades, and communication will reside for this course.

• The URL to access Canvas is: http://canvas.unl.edu 
• For Canvas, passwords, or any other computer-related technical support contact the IT Help Center.
• Phone: 402-472-3970
• Website: http://mysupport.unl.edu/ 
• Submit a support ticket: mysupport@unl.edu 

Course Organization

Modules

This course will consist of 8 modules. Each module may include: reading assignments, recorded lectures, videos, required discussion board posts, written assignments and projects. I would advise you to look ahead as some modules will take more than one week to complete. For example, the assignment for module 4 will require you identify and contact a local business.

Discussion Board (Yellowdig)

For this course, we will be using Yellowdig for our ongoing discussion board. I'd really like to encourage active and ongoing discussion of topics relevant to the course, such as discussion of recent news, analysis and decomposition of personal service experiences, or perhaps discussion of overarching trends relevant to the services environment. I will 'badge' posts that I think are particularly interesting topics of conversation early in each week to assist in fostering discussion for the remainder of the week, and will also provide prompts and ideas of discussion topics in case you might not have your own topic for a given week. This is not to say, however, that any topic is restricted to a given week, so if you'd like to continue discussion across weeks, please feel free to do so!

I will not ‘require’ a specific number of posts/responses for any given week. Rather, what I would like to encourage is a more natural conversation environment with consistent engagement. Yellowdig provides points for each of the following activities:

• Creating a new Pin
• Commenting on an existing Pin
• Upvoting a comment or pin
• Receiving an Instructor Badge
• Receiving a comment on a pin

You’ll note that based on the above, starting a topic that generates a lot of conversation and engaging in that conversation either by responding or upvoting are strongly encouraged. Yellowdig displays your score at all times, and you will receive 100% upon reaching a score of 150 points. There is a weekly cap of 25 points, so please try to be engaging early and often.

Written Assignments

There will be four written assignments due in addition to the service encounter journal entries and course project. Requirements for the assignments will be detailed with each module. They generally consist of a written analysis or a project which may require diagrams, photos or video. You will receive instructions on how to submit these assignments.

Service Encounter Journal

This exercise will heighten your awareness of services businesses and how they perform from the customer’s perspective. Two of the modules will ask you to complete a service encounter journal entry. The due dates will be in the schedule. The encounters will be ones you typically encounter each week so they should be easy to find--doctors, dentists, banks, insurance companies, auto service, telephone companies, credit card companies, lawn service, football game, golf lesson, hair styling, etc. The journal entry form is the one used for a market research technique called Critical Incident studies in Chapter 5.

Please try to have a variety of services in your entry. A total of 2 journal entries is required, you should select from the following:

1. One personal service-haircut, oil change, health club, MBA program, etc.
2. One financial service-bank, investment, tax return prep, insurance, etc.

No restaurants or coffee shops may be used for journal entries.

You may use one on-line encounter. Provide complete answers to the questions on the form. Grading will be based on completeness of the form, quality of the analysis and spelling/grammar. It’s best to complete the form as soon as possible after the experience. An example is posted in the course to show the level of depth expected in the journal entries.

Course Project

This is a team project - teams will be assigned in module 2. This project involves partnering with a local insurance agency, First State Insurance, to provide a hands-on, real-world opportunity. First State has steadily grown over the past few years and is now looking to develop a formal marketing strategic plan. Using the new service development process outlined in chapter 8 of the textbook as a guide, design and develop a marketing plan for First State Insurance (http://nebfirststateinsurance.com/). Use tools and frameworks from the course (particularly the GAPS model outlined in chapter 2) to assist your efforts.

First State is a small-medium sized insurance company that sells personal, life, farm, crop, and health insurance. It grown in its 60-year existence to 30 full-time employees and is looking to hire 4-5 more in the next year or two. The organization has approximately $3.7 million gross revenue and has reached the point of needing a formal marketing plan as it looks to continue growth. The firm has six physical locations at present and has relied on newspaper ads as well as its website to generate customers. First State is requesting this plan specifically address the following:

• Strategies for penetrating the Lincoln, NE market
• Strategies for attracting more millennial/Gen-Z customers (current customer average age is ~50 years)
• Social media strategy, including means to drive online traffic to social media account(s)/website, slogan

The final document should be 8-12 pages, double spaced. There will also be a required video presentation from each team-each student will be graded individually on the presentation component, so the team presentation should be divided up so that each team member presents a part of the final project. Team members should appear as he/she would in giving a presentation in-person to a group of investors or senior management – First State will be reviewing and providing feedback on your plans and presentations, so this is a great opportunity to flex your abilities and get real-world feedback. The video of your face or full body is required. Instructions on producing and submitting the project will be provided.

The following elements should be included, if applicable:

• Executive summary.
• Business strategy of the organization with which the service aligns.
• Market/customer/competitor research.
• Target market.
• Integrated services marketing communication plan, including social media.
• Recommended pricing with rationale.
• Identification of sustainable competitive advantage.
• Evidence of value to the customer.
• Service blueprint.
• Servicescape or physical evidence.
• Examples of any creative/ad copy developed.
• Appendix and bibliography

Teams will be assigned along with module 2. I will collect questions you might have to gain further insights on First State as part of the Project Charter submission in module 4, and will get answers to these from First State.

Grading:

Team points – Project charter/Interview questions 50 pts., written paper 150 pts

Individual points - Presentation 70 pts., peer evaluation 30 pts*

Total: 300 points

*I reserve the right to penalize students who do not contribute per the peer evaluation on the overall project score, up to a potential maximum penalty of scoring 0 on the project, so make sure you’re an active contributor to your team.

Course Schedule Details

Articles, videos and discussion board posts will also be assigned.

*All assignments are due on Sunday night at midnight unless otherwise noted.

Print Version

MRKT 826 Syllabus Spring 2019-1.docx

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