It’s been a while since we’ve had some new classes, right? Well, next week we start the promising ritual of registering for classes, and the Marketing Department at the Craig School of Business, is excited to introduce two new courses.
MKTG 165, Marketing to the Base of the Pyramid, and MKTG 167 Marketing Sustainability, are each two-unit, once-a-week courses, and are the respective efforts of Professors Barbra Morgan and Beng Ong. The subject matter of the courses are somewhat connected, and makes a nice course pairing. The idea being that students can take one or each of the courses together, and can earn up to four units fulfillment of marketing electives.
Morgan in addition to being an Instructor of Marketing here at CSU Fresno, also serves as a Global Training Director for a division of Schneider Electric (formerly Pelco), directing technical training for customers worldwide. Her experience includes 15 years leading corporate marketing efforts for consumer products, marketing management in Bussiness to Business, or B2B, environments, and directing advertising and marketing research efforts in private industry. Morgan serves as a board member for a newly formed company designing products for the base of the pyramid.
Ong is currently a Professor of Marketing here at CSU Fresno. He has over 12 years of marketing research consulting experience, and has conducted branding, advertising, sustainability, social media, and behavioral research for a number of corporations, government agencies, advertising/PR firms, and worldwide top syndicated research suppliers. Ong is also on the university’s committee on sustainability.
Morgan and Ong wanted to create new courses that might better address some of the issues that we as students could be facing in a number of professions that we may potentially be heading into. In MKTG 165, students can discover how successful companies are opening and growing markets that serve the world’s poorest consumers. This course taught by Morgan opens with the somber recognition that about half the world’s population lives on $2 to $3 a day. By leveraging technology, co-creating products, and using micro-finance, companies are developing products and services for bottom of the pyramid consumers and improving their quality of life.
Where in MKTG 167, students can learn how leading-edge professionals use marketing to influence opinions and behaviors about the global environment. This course taught by Ong highlights how environmental sustainability traverses complex interconnected systems and entities from governments and regulations, to interest groups, consumers, large corporations, to dynamic social, economic, technological, media, and political developments, and how marketing can be leveraged to influence, counter or position sustainability perceptions/behaviors.
And even though each course is listed under marketing, and provides marketing credits, you can see from the descriptions of each class how the subject matter can easily benefit students from other departments, and fit the mold for what some juniors/seniors are seeking, a fun, new, and exciting elective.
If either of these courses sound like something you may be interested in, be sure to check them out when you are shopping classes. They are each a once-a-week course, MKTG 165 is on Mondays, and MKTG 167 is on Wednesdays, but both are from 4 to 5:50pm and both classes will take place out of PB 138. The only pre-requisite course is Marketing 100S, and text book costs are estimated to be under $40 for each course. Be sure to register fast, because spots are sure to go quickly!