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This unit sets the stage for creating marketing messages and strategies that reflect an understanding of customers’ purchasing cycles.  Students will learn strategies for proactively and purposefully managing the steps customers’ unconsciously go through when making purchasing decisions.  The significance of multiple product attributes – especially those that are “deal breakers” for customers – is also examined.  The intent of this unit is to equip students with stronger skills for creating the right message, at the right time, for the right customer. 

When students successfully complete this unit, they will have the ability to:

• Manage the five steps of the purchasing process to strengthen their connection and credibility with targeted customers
• Create marketing messages addressing those product attributes that are most critical to the sale of a product
• Select and implement proactive strategies shown to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty
• Differentiate marketing strategies across the four major business segments

Unit 2 shows students how to increase the quality and use of marketing data gathered during research through the exploration of specific research and data-gathering tools. Reflecting the axiom, “better data….better results,” this unit emphasizes the significance of implementing research and gathering the right data prior to creating a marketing plan.

When students successfully complete this unit, they will have the ability to:

• Use specific research and data-gathering tools
• Implement an organized strategy for determining and communicating with a target market population
• Systemically create, implement and use the results of marketing research plans
• Explore critical functions of marketing professionals in the development of new products

This unit provides current, theoretical and practical information in regard to the following distinct but critical areas:  the relationship between local economic conditions and international marketing, developing customers’ trust, the impact of reference groups, and the overwhelming significance of unique messaging. 

When students successfully complete this unit, they will have the ability to:

• Create international marketing plans that demonstrate sensitivity to the country’s local economic conditions, culture, norms, likes and dislikes
• Build customers’ trust through branding, first impressions, managing social media, and communication of a product’s “personality.”
• Use knowledge of reference groups to customize marketing strategies and increase sales
• Teach others the significance of using innovative and unconventional marketing strategies in order for messaging to stand out in the mass of information sent to customers