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Strategic Market Creation

The goal of the SMC concentration is to equip the SMC students with the required competences to make him/her become an influential and successful manager of product, brand and channel innovation projects - aiming at creating a new market or reshaping an existing market for an established company.

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A Strategic Market Creation Perspective on Innovation
New product (services inclusive), brand and channel innovation are key business processes that have to exist in order for companies to prosper or even survive in today’s dynamic and competitive environment. Another fact is that the magnitude and the success rate of the companies' innovations depend on values, knowledge, relationships etc. that match central features and requirements of the particular business context and period of time. In the SMC concentration we deal with these realities from a strategic market creation perspective. This means recognising that innovation, whether radical or incremental, not only presuppose, but also often gives rise to resources, processes and values of a corporate and long term character and significance. Furthermore, successful product, channel and brand innovation depend on having the needed structures and processes ‘in place’ (within as well as outside the marketing function) to make co-creation of experiences with customers become a reality.

The implication of taking a SMC perspective on innovation, and thus of becoming a SMC student, is that knowledge and competences outside the traditional scope of marketing management will be developed. As for example: creativity and innovation management, strategic and corporate brand management, and project and knowledge management. In addition to this the SMC student will experience that his/her knowledge within the field of consumer behaviour and marketing research, product management and marketing strategy will further develop and strengthen.

Market Creation Management
Market Creation Management introduces the role of corporate level marketing in creating new business opportunities. Hence, marketing as a field of knowledge, decision processes, activities and capabilities are conceived as having an important proactive role to play in developing new or changing existing systems (products, brands, relationships etc.) to ones/the kinds that are desired from a customer perspective. The implication of this statement is that the following terms and their related processes are imperative during the course: creativity, innovation, value creation, strategic leadership and marketing performance.

Culture, Networks and Communities
Culture, Networks and Communities deals with some of the most essential prerequisites for realising a co-creation innovation logic, namely knowledge about what ‘organisational culture’ is, why culture has an impact on the magnitude and success of companies’ innovations, and how to make culture become a resource in innovation processes. In addition to this, the course deals with the question of, why and how networks of co-operating partners and consumer communities arise in a market, and what it means when enacting a co-creation innovation logic.

Knowledge for Product Innovation
Knowledge for Product Innovation concerns a key role for marketing in innovation processes, namely the bringing-in of market knowledge in product, channel and brand development processes. Accordingly, one objective of the course is to further develop the students’ competencies and skills about qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection, analysis and representation. A second objective concerns the students’ abilities to decide on what kind of knowledge the end-user has and why that is valuable in different stages and decision situations in an innovation process.

Strategic Market Management
Strategic Market Management runs throughout the second semester as a sequence of seminars, caseworks and projects. During the first part of the course, we make a critical analysis of existing strategic concepts and frameworks in the contemporary marketing and brand management literature. Thereafter it is the business world and the management context of corporate level marketing managers that are focused on. The objective is to produce the basis for answering the following question: What is the meaning of strategic market management in different contexts and situations, when the vision is ‘market creation’ through product, brand and/or channel innovation?

Managing Consumer’s Experiences
Managing Consumer’s Experiences is based on the view that experiences create strong emotional ties to brands and strengthen brand differentiation and equity. One implication of adopting this view is that we incorporate consumptions and post-purchase situations in our field of attention, and learn about consumers and how to co-create meaningful experiences with them. Another implication is the recognition of consumers’ assessment of value relating to situations and events that engage not only their cognitions but also their sensory experiences.

Managing Knowledge, Projects and Teams
Managing Knowledge, Projects and Teams has its roots in a recurrent phenomenon in the business world, namely that innovation projects tend to be carried out in a repetitive and non-productive way as regards to knowledge creation and learning. One explanation to a reluctance to change ‘the way things get done’ lies according to the literature in a failure to recognise that leading and managing are two different things, and that project management needs to take on a strategic perspective. The overall objective of the course relates to these propositions. Additionally, it relates to the literature that proposes that managing innovation projects is in essence about knowledge management.

Read about the SMC book: Strategic Market Creation – a New Perspective on Marketing and Innovation management, (2008), editors: Karin Tollin and Antonella Carú, Wiley, Chichester.

Read about SMC students’ expectations and experiences!



Last updated by Communications & Marketing 22/12/2008