Business Administration

The course provides a comprehensive overview of international marketing issues and instills an appreciation of the international business and marketing environment. It is taught using a combination of lectures, guest speakers, case study analysis and class discussions. To enhance the appreciation of the key challenges in international marketing, major entry modes available to international companies and the issues raised by the management of the marketing mix, formal lectures, mini case discussions, and videos are scheduled. These activities are undertaken in the class in an interactive manner by the lecturer and student groups.

This course examines the main concepts and theories of organizational economics within an integrated framework. Topics include: individual behavior in business and markets; the structure and management of individual and divisional incentives; the interaction between organizations and their environment, not only economic but also political and institutional.

To improve the performance of a firm, managers have to find tools to hire the right people, sort them into the right job, motivate them to do their work well, develop their skills through formal and informal learning, and cooperate efficiently with co-workers. Firms that stimulate one aspect might do so at the cost of others. Managers, therefore, face many complex trade-offs in their personnel policies. In this course, economic tools to understand these trade-offs are discussed and illustrated with examples of how to apply them in practice. Questions posed in the course include: Why should pay vary across workers within firms – and how "compressed" should pay be within firms? Should firms pay workers for their performance on the job or for their skills or hours of work? How are pay and promotions structured across jobs to induce optimal effort from employees? How are jobs designed and performance measures? Why use teams and how are teams used most effectively? How should all these human resource management practices, from incentive pay to teamwork, be combined within firms?

The course examines the key concepts and theories of service marketing. It uses case studies to explore current trends in marketing, including China's immature market as well as its emerging service industry.

This course seeks to understand the concepts and the techniques required to conduct marketing research and to know how to apply them in real world marketing research problems in order to make better business decisions. In this course students are introduced to different stages of the marketing research process. The course examines different types on research designs, how to collect and scrutinize data, and quantitative research methodologies and their applications to various data sets which can be used to solve real-world business problems. The contents of this course comprise theory, concepts, and frameworks relevant to marketing, and empirical methodology and their applications to real-world datasets. The topics include but are not limited to: exploratory/descriptive/causal research: research design and data collection; experimental design; sampling; A/B testing; consumer segmentation: cluster analysis; perceptual maps: factor analysis; market response modeling; field experiments; and conjoint analysis. The course recommends students be have a basic knowledge of linear regressions and t-tests as a prerequisite.