Overview

This course is a doctoral seminar that focuses on marketing strategy formulation. Marketing strategy is a broad term with many meanings, and while scope and domain issues for the field continue to be debated, at a fundamental level has to do with how marketing concepts, tools, and processes can be used to help an organization develop a sustainable competitive advantage through the creation of superior customer value. While marketing strategy is a comparatively young field of study, substantive and sustained contributions by many of the discipline’s leading scholars over the last 30 years have helped create a rich and diverse literature base.

Course Objectives and Teaching Philosophy

Our purpose is to gain a solid understanding of the concepts, theories, models, and paradigms that constitute marketing strategy formulation. Because discussion and debate are fundamental to a seminar of this type, it is important that everyone prepare for each meeting by keeping up with readings, and by being prepared to discuss, debate, and challenge. Everyone is expected to enter fully the discussion each time we meet. Excellent preparation is the foundation of quality involvement and I hope preparation for this seminar will be a high priority for you.

This marketing seminar will be run as a seminar. Basically, each of us will critically review a set of readings, think about them carefully, and with the help of a student discussion leader, reflect upon and discuss these readings within a supportive communal setting. I believe that the doctoral students themselves should run doctoral seminars. Thus, each student will take turns running the show as a discussion leader. I have set the stage by designing the seminar and crafting our reading lists. You are the main actors for which this stage was built. To be more concrete, I see my role as a discussion moderator, commentator, and facilitator. Although I may offer some personal views from time to time, I do not plan to lecture or tell you what marketing strategy is about. Part of the joy of being in a doctoral seminar is to discover what a given topic means to you through an interactive process of connecting your prior knowledge and beliefs to a set of scholarly ideas (expressed in readings) within a collective context. Having me (or anyone else) dominate our time by telling you how I connect to these readings is hardly interactive and definitely not a very collective experience. Thus, I will do my best to refrain from such behavior.

Format 

• Six session will be 120 minutes each.
• The seminar will be held on Tuesdays from 11:00AM – 1:00PM ET, beginning on April 2, 2024.
• A separate link to pay the $750.00 registration fee will be emailed after the admission requirements have been emailed and student has been approved to participate.

Please register for this course below.
Click here to View Complete Admission Procedures and Requirements.

Instructor:

Professor Bharadwaj is currently a Professor of Marketing at the University of Georgia.  He is the Coca Cola Company Chair and Marketing Doctoral Program Coordinator.  His research interests are in Marketing Strategy, Performance and Metrics, Customer Management, Innovation, Marketing-Finance Interface, and Branding and Brand Management & Strategy. He has a bachelor’s degree in Economics, Applied Statistics and Mathematics; a master’s degree in Business from Indian universities; and a PhD in Marketing from Texas A&M University.  Prior to teaching at the University of Georgia, Professor Bharadwaj was a professor at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University for 18 years.