Day 7 in MIT Sloan Fellows Class 2023, Introduction to Marketing and Strategy
This is a top-rated program in SFMBA.
Professor Duncan Simester, from a legal background, originally introduced the value of case studies. For people unfamiliar with case studies, case studies are articles with 15-20 pages in each episode describing a story of management and decision making. All the case studies are for educational usage, so there are several points highlighting specific frameworks. According to Prof Duncan, we need to pick up only 2-3 pages of information relevant to our learning. The rest of the information is noise. The data outside the case is definitely helpful, but we need to learn the basics first.
Today, in the first chapter of our journey, he asked the class the meanings of three frequent keywords. Strategy, Value Chain and Market.
What exactly do they mean?
Starting from Strategy.
Answers in the class are as follows.
- The way to win
- Asset allocation
- Creative way to beat competitors
- Positioning against competitors
- a long-term and short-term action plan
"Strategy is which market we are to be in or not to be in."
How about "value chain"?
This is "all the activities adding value to the end-user".
Easy one?
Then, we need to consider how to generate profit from value-adding activity
Finally, what is "market"? What kind of components does the market consist of?
Market is "a combination of value chain and customer segment".
In marketing activity(and strategy), we figure out where we should dive into or escape from.
At the last of the first lecture, he introduced three processes around customer value.
- Create Value : Change relationship with Customers
- Capture Value: Change relationship with Competitors
- Deliver Value: Change relationship with other players in value chain
