Faculty of Business: Marketing
Credit points: 6 cp

Subject level: Undergraduate

Result Type: Grade and marks

Requisite(s): 24108 Marketing Foundations
These requisites may not apply to students in certain courses.
There are also course requisites for this subject. See access conditions.

Handbook description

This subject focuses on the buying and selling of goods and services between firms, which constitutes 60–80 per cent of all marketing activity. It develops the special skills and concepts needed to function effectively in this setting, including personal selling, negotiation, preparation of bids, the sales-purchasing interface, relationship marketing and relationship management. It introduces the wider context in which business marketing sits – the distribution channel and network of connected firms in the wider domestic and international markets.

Subject objectives/outcomes

On successful completion of this subject students should have:

1. Gained an understanding of the basic concepts, theories and practices that guide the conduct of business between organisations and be able to clearly differentiate these from those used in consumer marketing.
2. Developed some of the communication skills used in building and developing business-to-business relationships including sales and negotiation skills, report writing and research skills.
3. Developed further information gathering and dissemination skills relevant to describing and analysing business marketing practice.

Contribution to graduate profile

This unit focuses on relationships between buying and selling organisations, principally considering private industry but also incorporating some study of government and not-for-profit organisations. This is the single largest area of marketing endeavour with estimates placing between 65% and 85% of market transactions as occurring in the business-to-business sphere. It is also the largest and most rapidly growing sphere of electronic marketing applications. The emphasis of this unit is upon the interdependencies of organisations that trade through time with one another and considers the alternative forms of governance that will be open to organisations including contracts, integration, joint ventures, strategic alliances, relationship portfolios and networks. Students will acquire an understanding the functions and processes in this business context and the special theories of marketing management that apply here – as distinct from the more generic theories that are more applicable to the marketing of fast-moving consumer goods.

Teaching and learning strategies

The unit is delivered in two main modes: lecture and workshop. Lectures will highlight and interrelate significant points contained in the textbook and readings and will introduce cutting edge material not yet published. Often, material will be drawn together in ways that often differs from the assigned readings. This is deliberate as the purpose of lectures is to present and contrast alternative perspectives towards business marketing. Workshops will foster interactive communication in a number of forms. Problematic issues – often those raised in the previous weeks' lectures and in the text and readings - will be considered. Questions and cases from the textbook and topics raised by additional readings will often form the basis of class discussions. In-class problem solving, entailing learning by action, will focus on developing skills in environmental analysis, negotiation, bidding, logistics planning and strategy setting. Students are expected to have read the written material before class each week, to facilitate discussion. From time to time, guest lectures may be invited to present particular topics, and video and other media may be used where appropriate.

Content

• What Business-to-Business Marketing is and how it differs from Consumer Marketing
• The Environment of Business Markets including the e-business revolution
• Relationships and the Environment – the nature and role of Networks and Alliances
• Principles of Relationship Management
• Relationship co-ordination: Purchasing, Sales and selling, Buyer/seller communication, Channels of distribution and logistics
• Relationship benefits: Synergies, Delivering Value, Strategy Setting.

Assessment

Workshop and Learning Skill development (Individual)	35%
Negotiation Project addresses objectives 2 and 3 by requiring students to prepare a short, commercial style report outlining the results of a simulated negotiation 'game' that they will participate in over a number of weeks. These collectively address objectives 1–3.
Group Project (Group)	25%
This addresses objectives 2 and 3.
Final Exam (Individual)	40%
This addresses objectives 1–3.

Security of assessment items is maintained by accepting submission only electronically into Online assignment box and/or direct, face-to-face submission to the lecturer or tutor. Similarly assessment items are returned only electronically or directly to students via academic staff. Final exam is conducted under University exam conditions.

Recommended text(s)

Ford, David et al, (2002) Business Marketing Course: Managing in Complex Networks, John Wiley and Sons Ltd.

Indicative references

(Please note this is the core of a subset of the references made available to the students.)

I. Wilkinson and L. Young, (2002), 'On cooperating : Firms, relations and Networks', Journal of Business Research, pp35-44.

Dwyer, Robert F. and John F Tanner, 2nd Ed, (2002), 'Customer Retention and Maximisation' Chapter 16 in Business Marketing: Connecting Strategy, Relationships, and Learning, Irwin/McGraw Hill.