This is Kellogg's capstone marketing class. It synthesizes theories taught throughout the marketing curriculum into a 10-week period. The class revolves around a simulation named MarkStrat. In this simulation, the class is divided into groups of 5-6 people. Each group will form a company that gets placed in 1 of 3 industries chosen by the professor. Each company has existing brands for a hypothetical product within the industry. Companies can choose how to allocate their entire budget by making decisions such as investing in R&D, investing in advertising, allocating more/less salesforce, killing/developing brands, and investing in an emerging but unproven product. Lectures consist of weekly updates on the simulation results (greeted by cheers/boos from the students who usually get immersed and pumped up about the exercise), discussion of marketing strategy concepts, and case analysis. At the end of the class, students have to present their progress and findings from the simulation as well as submit a group marketing plan for a company of their choice.
This was definitely one of my favorite classes at Kellogg. I had a great group, consisting of 5 friends who were hard workers and a lot of fun to work with. Calkins exu read more
