Introduction

This online textbook provides independent learning content to support MKTG 5115, the core marketing course in the MBA program at the UConn School of Business. This semester-long course introduces students to the core elements of marketing strategy and marketing management, offering a strategic and analytical approach to key marketing decisions all organizations must make to succeed in competitive markets. We focus on key questions and concepts relevant for assessing and contributing to effective marketing regardless of your position in an organization.

Integrating and curating multiple perspectives on marketing

This book includes both original content and links to curated content from online sources, including other open educational resources. The original content is the result of my time over the last several decades working as a business-to-business salesperson and marketer, earning my MBA and doctorate in Marketing at Harvard Business School, consulting for for-profit and nonprofit organizations, and teaching MKTG 5115 to UConn graduate students since January 2007 (the same month the first iPhone was launched!) During those decades, the practice of marketing–and the world– changed dramatically.

As a teaching professor at UConn, I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to focus my intellectual energy on developing teaching materials. So to keep up with the rapid pace of change in marketing practice, over the years I changed textbooks, combined chapters from different textbooks, spent hours and hours online reviewing materials and concepts being developed by marketing and strategy agencies and practitioners.  I also delved deeply into adjacent academic and practical content on innovation and entrepreneurship, particularly in technology, where core principles of marketing were being rediscovered and renewed using different frameworks and language. I produced and revised and rewrote lectures, notes, learning management system content, multiple choice questions, and increasingly videos, especially as my life trajectory (and the Covid pandemic) shifted my teaching online.

The result was a bricolage (I love that word) of content from multiple traditions of research and practice, reflecting the range of ways in which core marketing concepts were being used and evolved in practice.  However, was becoming increasingly unwieldy as a tool to help beginners to marketing learn the basics online.  So with the help of a fantastic team at the UConn Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, I began the journey of redesigning my course and course content. That journey continues with the alpha launch this new online textbook, intended as an open educational resource.

Core content sources and copyright information

The original content in this book includes many direct links to curated content available online.  Most of that content is in the public domain, some is behind paywalls or available as lead magnets. I draw on and integrate three strong content sources that reflect three different perspectives on marketing:

• LumenLearning: Principles of Marketing. Distributed as an open educational resource (OER), this book includes marketing principles typically covered in an undergraduate marketing management course.  It has the focus on mass marketing by large companies to consumers that is traditional in a first marketing course, and improves on other textbooks in its integration of digital tools and practices in marketing. The original content in this textbook directly integrates and adapts relevant content from this book in accordance with its Creative Commons Attribution license.
• HBS: Core Curriculum Series- Marketing (HBS), available for purchase from HBS Publishing. Written by marketing experts at the Harvard Business School, some of whom I am privileged to call advisors, colleagues and friends, this is a series of MBA-level notes on core marketing strategy concepts and frameworks.  They are used in the first-year MBA marketing course at HBS, and by MBA professors worldwide, and do a good job of covering the foundation of academic knowledge about marketing strategy.  The original content in this textbook summarizes and adapts some foundational concepts and frameworks covered in these notes, and provides direct links to the relevant HBS notes.
• Strategyzer: Value Proposition Design (VPD), available for purchase from Strategyzer, with companion content in the public domain. Drawing on the research and practical experience of the founders of this firm that specializes in business model and innovation strategy, this book is part of a series of books that captures the broad rethinking and reinterpretation of business strategy in entrepreneurial contexts, and its integration with design thinking that followed the first rise (and the first crash) of internet-based technology startup businesses. VPD is the book in the Strategyzer series that focuses on marketing strategy concepts.  The original content in this textbook summarizes and adapts some concepts and frameworks covered in this book and online and provides direct links to relevant Strategyzer content.

In developing this content I have attempted to follow best practice guidelines in fair use for Open Educational Resources (OER), and also to direct students towards resources and organizations that I see as best practice themselves.  If you believe that content in this textbook violates your copyright, please contact me.