SMIO/ Advanced Consumer Marketing, round II.

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Three weeks have passed since I started the Advanced Customer Marketing course and quite a few things happened. Actually, we got a pretty  heavy workload and that’s why I didn’t have time to upload anything yet. Time to catch up! As I already explained the course structure and the first week, I guess I’m gonna go on with the past 3 weeks…

Week II.
- After our group presentation on Business Service Logic, I started to read 5 scientific articles about Marketing history and its connection with today’s Marketing orientation. It was a bit boring although I understand that we need to have a certain background to get what’s going on now. The second assignment was still on the Service Logic perspective: we had to analyze an offer. With my group we chose a Chinese restaurant called Hai Di Lao, strongly oriented towards the services provided around the actual food they serve.
- The idea came from our Chinese groupmate and I really liked working on that project. The presentation went good as we had fun along a good grade! Aside this assignment, we had two lectures by Per Frankelius. He came up with a very interesting concept of slide-show combined with up-beat music. That was surprising, yet efficient!

Week III.
- Once again, even though we have only 3 days in a week at the university, it’s really intense. That’s why, once again, I started to read the 6 articles the week before. In the reading list, there was one of the numerous publications of Per Frankelius: the article was about Pharmacia and its special innovative product, the Genotropin (growth hormone for children). Overall, the articles were not as good as before and they were pretty much longer. However, the two lectures by Per were dynamic as usual. Once again, he used the musical slide-show-trick to keep us awake! The third lecture was held by Per Ã…man and based on the concept of branding.
- Aside this theoretical studies, we got a new assignment from Per Frankelius, and a pretty big one (20 points): we have 3 weeks (so..2 weeks left now) to get in tough with a company (e.g. Ikea, Stadium, Cloetta, Securitas, Motorola and other big Swedish companies that we can find around Linköping), to ask them for their big problem (obviously related to Marketing), to propose a solution (with financial assessment, potential benefits, etc.) that the companies have to grade, to make a poster-presentation in front of the class and all the companies, and finally to write a 10 pages paper about it. I think this is a really good assignment as it is real. It’s kind of a consultant job for us as students. However, it’s a lot of work to do in short amount of time, without even thinking about the rest of the workload!
- Then, Per Åman gave us 4 additional assignments (6 points each) to submit within the 3 next weeks (yep, 2 weeks left for now). One is about analyzing a brand and make a 8mn presentation about it; a second one is about analyzing a lifestyle magazine (e.g. Elle, GQ, etc.) in a PowerPoint presentation as well as a 5 pages written report; the third one is about analyzing a website and their offer related to E-business; and the fourth one is a 3 pages written report along with a seminar based on the book No Logo by Naomi Klein (300 pages).
- THIS IS NOT A JOKE. We have a lot to do in only 3 weeks. That’s without thinking about reading the weekly articles, the lectures and the final individual exam (31 points) at the end of the course!

Week IV.
- As Per Frankelius asked us for feedback, we complained about the impressive workload and that’s why he reduced the list of articles included in the final exam. Now, we only have 4 articles (that we read during the first week)! Personally, I’m quite disappointed because I read everything since the beginning and I just realized that it was for nothing! Anyway, this last week, we had 6 articles to read…
- The first lectures were held by Per Frankelius and based on his own research on the Dahalla opera in Sweden (www.dalhalla.se). The article was interesting as it was talking about innovation and entrepreneurship which are topics that I like. However, the lectures were a bit boring as there was nothing new or different from what was in the articles.
- The second day of lectures was held by Daniel Kindström and based on E-business. I liked the 4 articles he used as it showed different perspectives and methods on the topic. Overall, I enjoyed the 4h we had as it came across the vast domain that E-business is, yet with critical insights on the service logic.

All in all, there is a lot of work to achieve! I wish we would have got all those assignment at least a week earlier as the first two weeks were pretty light compared to what’s going on right now. On the other hand, I’m here to study and learn some knowledge out of this Master program and that’s a something I knew since the beginning! Alright, let’s stop whining and get back to studies…