Return to: McIntire School of Commerce: Degree Programs
The discipline of marketing is diverse in nature. In articulating and developing its content, it draws from the quantitative and social sciences. As such, the areas of accounting, economics, finance, law, mathematics, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and other related disciplines are used as resources for the conceptual, theoretical, and empirical underpinnings of the marketing discipline.
What product or service, and how much of it, should a company provide for its consumers? How should the product be distributed? How should the company inform consumers of the product’s existence and merits? What price should be placed on the product or service? How should the firm measure the success of its offerings in the marketplace? What marketing and customer analytics should be gathered and analyzed? Where and how much should marketers invest in digital and social media? These and other decision areas compromise the marketing function.
Every organization, profit or non-profit, must answer these questions in one form or another. It is the purpose of the marketing program to provide the student with the necessary theories and tools for answering these questions. The program’s objective is to make the student aware of the role of marketing in society and in the firm, where it interrelates with almost all organizational functions and influences virtually all plans and decisions.
Case analysis, discussion groups, experiential exercises, research reports, seminars, field projects, lectures, outside speakers, and the Advertising and Marketing Association (AMA), together with national marketing/advertising competitions (AAF, the American Advertising Federation competition), are all used to help students understand marketing. The marketing program is intended to meet the basic educational needs of students planning graduate study or entering profit or non-profit organizations in such areas as client relations, sales, advertising and promotion, brand management, distribution, international marketing, marketing research, and customer/marketing analytics, marketing consulting, logistics, purchasing, product management, retailing, and positions in the service industries.
