Only offered to Renaissance Engineering students Consider the following examples: 1. In the early 2000s, Volkswagen AG, one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world, decided to enter the luxury car market by introducing a top-of-the-line limousine-grade car named the Phaeton. Not only did the company embarked on an ambitious R&D project to construct a superbly-engineered car along demanding specifi cations, it also built a dedicated factory in a German town called Dresden, a town known for classical traditions and the arts, to manufacture the car. At the magnificent glass-walled factory, a team of craftsmen would hand-assemble each Phaeton car and fi t its interior with the finest, carefully-chosen wood and leather materials. The Volkswagen Phaeton was to be a masterpiece, and an object of desire for the discerning luxury car buyer, as the company envisioned. However, when the car was launched, sales were so poor that the company had to withdraw it from the US, a key international market. Until 2018 when the model was finally discontinued, the number of units sold around the world remained so low that the Phaeton project never made profit. 2. In 1960, Japan's leading watch manufacturer Seiko Watch Corporation decided to prove its capability to make the highest quality watches that would parallel or even surpass the globally-acclaimed Swiss quality. The company introduced the Grand Seiko, the first precision-grade watch manufactured in Japan. Every Grand Seiko watch was tested to meet the most stringent standards for accuracy, and its casing was polished by hand to mirror finish, while its hands and hour markers gave a 'brilliant sparkle'. The Grand Seiko was also marketed as a luxury item, sold in dedicated corners of Seiko boutiques and priced significantly higher than other lines of Seiko watches. However, today, more than 60 years after the Grand Seiko was launched, not many consumers (especially outside of Japan) know that Seiko makes luxury watches, let alone the Grand Seiko brand. Moreover, in most markets around the world, Grand Seiko cannot be found in most independent luxury watch retail stores. And not many pre-owned watch dealers and auction houses would regard Grand Seiko as a collectible item that deserves a high valuation. 3. In 2014, BlackBerry Limited, the troubled Canadian smartphone maker, introduced the BlackBerry Passport, an innovatively-designed phone that was proclaimed as the product that would help the company turn around its performance and become once again a popular consumer smartphone brand which it once was. Unlike most other smartphones in the market, the BlackBerry Passport, shaped like a Canadian passport (hence its name), had a large square screen and a physical keyboard. In its advertising, taglined 'Serious Mobility for Serious Business', BlackBerry showed how the phone would allow important people to make big decisions by seeing the big picture (with a big phone screen). The Passport was also portrayed as a tough and durable phone. The design featured a reinforced stainless steel frame inspired by a steel I-beams used in modernist building architecture. To date, however, BlackBerry never sold sufficient quantities of the Passport (or any other phone in its product line-up) to restore its previous glorious market standing. In fact, it is unclear what product strategy BlackBerry would adopt going forward to compete and survive in the fi ercely contested smartphone market. The three examples above illustrate a fundamental truth in business: having a good product does not guarantee market success. How then can a company secure a high market share and achieve brand leadership? A great part of the answer lies in MARKETING. In the case of Volkswagen, the Phaeton car, despite its superior specification and fine craftsmanship, lacked a luxury brand appeal (since the brand Volkswagen itself means 'people's car' in German). The Grand Seiko, so closely associated with the mass-market Seiko brand, not only lacked a luxury brand appeal, but was also not well advertised and not well distributed especially outside of Japan, leading to low brand recognition and limited retail presence. Likewise, the Blackberry Passport, despite its interesting product design, was not perceived as a 'cool' phone, compared to the products that market leaders Apple and Samsung offered. Surely, business leadership requires a more enlightened understanding of marketing strategy. The purpose of this course is to foster a strategic marketing mindset among you, the Renaissance Engineering students, future leaders of industry and the technological visionaries, so as to help you thrive in your careers. This course provides an experiential learning environment in which you will gain not only an appreciation but also a personal feel for the tasks of strategic marketing planning and decision making. Within this environment, you will learn to become an effective business decision maker with a market-oriented perspective, one who is capable of minimizing (though not completely removing) the uncertainties surrounding marketing decisions through disciplined analysis and prudent judgment. In this course, you do not just read about marketing strategy formulation; you practice it! And you do not just talk strategy recommendation; you execute it (and be accountable for the result of it)!