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Jennifer L. Aaker

 

Courses

  • GSBGEN 358: The Power of Social Technology (PoST)

The goal of the class is simple: to marshal social technology in support of a clear social objective.This course is project-based - i.e. owned and driven by the students (rather than a more traditional class based on lectures and cases). The focus of this project-based seminar is to explore how social technology (e.g. the use of blogs, websites, podcasts, widgets, community groups, social network feeds) can change attitudes and behaviors in ways that cultivate social change and improve the lives of others. Students will study the strategies and tactics used by companies and causes that have successfully catalyzed active social persuasion (e.g., Facebook, Kiva, Google, Mozilla). Leaders from these organizations will also present during class sessions to offer first-hand perspectives about their experience and challenges they encountered along their varied paths to success.  For the final project, you will work in small self-selected pods (i.e., teams) to develop an idea focused around improving the lives of others, broadly defined (e.g., finding a cure for a disease, raising money for a cause, improving the value of a brand for customers or employees).

  • GSBGEN 542: How to Tell a Story

"Tell me the facts and I’ll learn.  Tell me the truth and I’ll believe.  But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.”  How do you tell a story?  This question becomes important for leaders of companies, who often only need to act as an editor - shaping the stories told by employees and customers – to align with shared vision.  And it becomes important as you craft a marketing campaign.  A good story is not enough.  It must be well told.  In this seminar, we will break down the basic elements of story-telling, elucidate the power of the verbal as well as the visual, and discuss how story-telling helps build brands and organizations.  For the final project, you will create tell a story about (a) your organization, (b) your brand, or (c) you.  By creating powerful stories and then communicating them in your own uniquely human way, you'll see how causes, careers and businesses can gain momentum. 

  • MKTG 352: Building Innovative Brands (BIB)

Which brands do you love? Apple?  IDEO?  The Daily Show?  Method?  Google? What draws you into these brands?  How do companies create compelling brand experiences? How could you cultivate a well-loved brand? These are the questions we will explore in Building Innovative Brands. The focus of the project-based class is to explore how to build innovative brands, where brand is defined as “a sensibility” - departing from traditional perspectives of brand. The reality is that most brands could be making a much stronger impact than theyare today – in terms of deeper purpose, social value, and greater inspiration for employees as well as customers. This seminar will dive into this potential by analyzing brands that excel at (a) strategic philanthropy (i.e., doing good and making money) (b) telling their (unique) story and (c) incorporating a strong design element into the brand – which can infect the company internally and customers externally. The class will encompass a broad ecosystem of contributors. Leaders from the world of brand—both small entrepreneurial companies and large, global market-leaders—will be incorporated into the class both as presenters as well as advisors to offer first-hand perspectives about the challenges and lessons along their varied paths to success. This approach is intended to make the walls between the classroom and the world outside a little more porous.

  • MBA: MKTG 240: Marketing Management

The objectives of this course are to introduce students to the substantive and procedural aspects of marketing management and to sharpen skills for critical analytical thinking and effective communication. Specifically, the goals are to introduce students to marketing strategy and to the elements of marketing analysis: customer analysis, competitor analysis, and company analysis; to familiarize students with the elements of the marketing mix (product strategy, pricing, advertising and promotion, and distribution), and to enhance problem solving and decision-making abilities in these operational areas of marketing; and to provide students with a forum (both written and verbal) for presenting and defending their own recommendations, and for critically examining and discussing the recommendations of others.

  • MBA: MKTG 549: Understanding Consumers, Understanding Cultures

The focus of the seminar is on understanding current theoretical, conceptual and methodological approaches to various aspects of cultural psychology and anthropology, particularly in the context of consumer behavior. A secondary goal is to advance this knowledge by gaining some insight into how to conduct the research, gleem insights from the environment and through interacting with consumers, and drawing marketing implications for that knowledge. Thus, the seminar is similar to a PhD seminar in that it entails reviewing and discussing a set of articles that focus on cross-cultural marketing issues, understanding the methodologies used in the articles and discussing the marketing implications of the findings in the articles. However, it is complemented with a set of exercise-oriented field-based assignments on each day - to be conducted in a 2-4 person group. In addition, your group will work collaboratively on a global brand presentation on Day 5.

  • MBA: M357: Brand Planning

This advanced MBA reading seminar addresses some of the basic branding decisions faced by companies. The main objective of the course is introduce concepts, models, methods, and role models that will help address the challenges faced by brand managers and others in marketing-related positions. Ideally, decisions will be guided by a theory of how consumers respond to and interact with brands, hence, theoretical issues pertinent to consumer behavior provide a secondary focus for the course. Specifically, the objectives of this course will provide insight on: 1. Understanding the brand: determining brand positioning and value proposition; 2. Crafting the brand: planning and implementing brand marketing programs; 3. Building the brand: building consumer-brand relationships and measuring brand performance; and 4. Managing the brand: growing and sustaining brand equity over time and across geographic boundaries.

  • PhD: M648: Culture and Persuasion

The class objectives are to (1) familiarize you with research in cultural psychology, particularly in the context of consumer behavior, and (2) build a set of academic-oriented skills (e.g., critical thinking, presentations, review process, creating hypotheses and testing them creatively). Specifically, the focus is on understanding current theoretical and methodological approaches to various aspects of culture and persuasion, as well as advancing this knowledge by developing testable hypotheses and theoretical perspectives that build on the current knowledge base. The content of the course (e.g., readings) represent basic and recent work in cultural psychology and related disciplines (psychology, anthropology and sociology).

  • PhD: M642: Consumer Behavior

The class objectives are to (1) familiarize you with research in social psychology and marketing that may help you to understand how different marketing strategies affect consumer behavior, and (2) give you a strong foundation for critical thinking in the area of consumer behavior. Therefore, the focus is on understanding current theoretical and methodological approaches to various aspects of consumer behavior, as well as advancing this knowledge by developing testable hypotheses and theoretical perspectives that build on the current knowledge base. For each topic considered, a range of articles from “old classics” to recent research will be assigned. In each session there will be four or five articles that will be discussed in depth, as well as several additional background articles and chapters that you might want to know but may read at a later date.