MKT4515 Brand Management
4 Credits
Brand Management is an advanced marketing course that will prepare students to lead a brand-centered marketing team in the consumer products/services arena. The emphasis in the course is on marketing plans and day-to-day decision-making. Marketing decisions are usually made in a context of imperfect information, decision models that combine analysis with judgment, and a marketplace that is fast-changing. The course will prepare students to operate successfully in this real-world environment. The concept of _brand equity_ will be a unifying theme throughout.

Prerequisites: SME2011 or MKT2000

  • Program: Undergraduate
  • Division: Marketing
  • Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Management (UGrad)
  • Course Number: MKT4515
  • Number of Credits: 4

COM3511 Business Presentations
(Formerly MOB3511)
2 General Credits
If you took and passed MOB3511, you cannot register for COM3511, as these two courses are equivalent

This is a performance course designed to build upon basic presentation skills and concepts. Focus will be directed toward presentation strategies for informative and persuasive speeches for business settings. Students will present virtual and in-class, high-impact presentations. The course will enforce communication concepts to allow students to become effective critical thinkers as creators and consumers of messages.

Prerequisites: RHT II

  • Program: Undergraduate
  • Division: Marketing
  • Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Management (UGrad)
  • Course Number: COM3511
  • Number of Credits: 2

COM3500 Business Storytelling
4 Advanced Management Credits

This 4-credit course provides students with the opportunity to research and explore areas of business interest by engaging with and re-telling the stories of entrepreneurs. In this course, students will have the opportunity to learn about an area of entrepreneurial interest directly from entrepreneurs through guest lectures, one-on-one interviews, and secondary research. The goal of this course is to immerse students in the stories of entrepreneurs and to provide them with the business communication competence to retell these stories to a wider business audience.

Students will attend guest lectures by entrepreneurial leaders who will discuss their experiences and provide students with material to help them find and craft effective entrepreneurial stories. Students will develop skills in project planning, interview technique, recording and transcribing, and they will explore the ethical and legal considerations of presenting the stories and ideas of others. Students will complete 4-6 blog posts of varying length and topic to a predetermined business audience. Students will complete shorter activities (background subject research, designing interview protocols, peer review, editing exercises, business audience analysis) to support their business blog portfolio. Students will also consider how digital writing environments help writers address multiple audiences.

The course will culminate in the public presentation of their pieces as part of a digital takeover of one of Babson's storytelling channels.

Prerequisites: SME Courses

  • Program: Undergraduate
  • Division: Marketing
  • Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Management (UGrad)
  • Course Number: COM3500
  • Number of Credits: 4

COM3511 Business Presentations
(Formerly MOB3511 Business Presentations)
2 General Credits
Students who took this as MOB3511 cannot register for this courseThis is a performance course designed to build upon basic presentation skills and concepts. Focus will be directed toward presentation strategies for informative and persuasive speeches for business settings. Students will present virtual and in-class, high-impact presentations. The course will enforce communication concepts to allow students to become effective critical thinkers as creators and consumers of messages.

Prerequisites: RHT1001 or WRT2000

  • Program: Undergraduate
  • Division: Marketing
  • Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Management (UGrad)
  • Course Number: COM3521
  • Number of Credits: 2

COM3522 Business Writing

4 Advanced Management Credits

Business Writing is an interdisciplinary writing course designed to improve the business communication competency of undergraduate students. In this course students will gain the tools necessary to produce effective business writing in a variety of multi-modal contexts. Students will read, discuss, and respond to materials that provide historical context for business communication norms and genres and present research-driven strategies for communicating effectively to a variety of audiences. Students will complete practice cases where they will be expected to apply a problem-solving approach to producing audience-driven, goal-oriented business communication genres. These cases will build toward a larger service learning project with an external partner in order to deepen their understanding of business norms and practices.

Prerequisites: MKT2000

  • Program: Undergraduate
  • Division: Marketing
  • Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Management (UGrad)
  • Course Number: COM3522
  • Number of Credits: 4

MKT3501 Communicating for Consumer Behavior Change
4 Free Elective Credits
In this course, students learn and draw upon interdisciplinary theories in psychology, marketing and persuasion/influence to explore the nature of behavioral change at the individual, consumer and societal levels. Centered around a major social marketing project, students will test theories of persuasive communication and choice architecture to explore how to use the knowledge of human experience to shape behavior for social good.

Prerequisites: MKT 2000

  • Program: Undergraduate
  • Division: Marketing
  • Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Management (UGrad)
  • Course Number: MKT3501
  • Number of Credits: 4

COM3504 Communicating in Global Virtual Teams
(Formerly MOB3504)
4 Advanced Management Credits
If you took and passed MOB3504, you cannot register for COM3504, as these two courses are equivalent

In this course, students will learn how to successfully engage, collaborate and communicate in global virtual teams. Students will begin by reading and discussing assigned course reading on global communication, virtual collaboration, organizational communication, and writing in groups in preparation for a major cross-institutional global project.

In collaboration with Marshall School of Business at USC, students will participate in the 6-week global Virtual Business Professional (VBP), project, which puts students in diverse international teams using Slack's communication platform to complete a written social media assessment project for Google, Amazon, or Starbucks. At the conclusion of the project, faculty teaching in the program will choose the best report for each company. Google, Amazon, and Starbucks are partnering with the project and a representative from each company will pick one of the three winners.

Students will be expected to hold virtual meetings, use project management tools, create online presentations, and write a final report using state-of-the-art technology used in today's corporate environment. The VBP project runs from approximately week 4 to week 9 of the academic semester. During this time, class work will include discussing experiences working in the project, identifying and considering shared challenges, and engaging with scholarly and popular reading that can help students in the project.

Prerequisites: None

  • Program: Undergraduate
  • Division: Marketing
  • Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Management (UGrad)
  • Course Number: COM3504
  • Number of Credits: 4

MKT3510 Consumer Insights and Research
(Formerly Marketing Research)
4 General Credits
This course provides students with hands-on experience with marketing research and analysis. Marketing research is simply an organized way of developing and providing information for decision-making purposes. The quality of information depends on the care exercised at each step of the marketing research process. These steps include problem definition, research design, data collection methods, questionnaire design, measurement, sampling, data analysis, data interpretation. The class will discuss key elements and issues in marketing research including sources of data, data collection techniques and analytical approaches for providing information to be used in managers' decision. The first part of the class will focus on research process and design. In this section students will learn how to formulate a research problem, determine a research design, evaluate methods for data collection and develop instruments for data collection. The second part of the class will focus on how to analyze the data and recommend the appropriate action to management.

Prerequisites: SME2011 or MKT2000

  • Program: Undergraduate
  • Division: Marketing
  • Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Management (UGrad)
  • Course Number: MKT3510
  • Number of Credits: 4

MKT3550 Consumer Psychology and Shopper Marketing
(Formerly Consumer Behavior)
4 General Credits
This interdisciplinary course discusses how the consumer is the focus of the marketing system. Drawing on research from sociology, psychology, strategy and economics, this course focuses on the factors that shape consumer needs and influence buying behavior. The content of the course explores individual behavioral variables (needs, motives, perceptions, attitudes, personality, and learning) and group influences (social groups and culture) as they affect the consumer decision-making process. The objective of the course is to help students understand how to analyze marketing programs, especially the communications mix and market segmentation, to improve consumer satisfaction.


Prerequisites: SME2011 or MKT2000

  • Program: Undergraduate
  • Division: Marketing
  • Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Management (UGrad)
  • Course Number: MKT3550
  • Number of Credits: 4

MKT3574 Customer Acquisition and Persuasion
(Formerly Managing the Sales Process)
4 Advanced Management Credits
Customer acquisition and retention is the driver of revenue and hence the lifeblood of every company. Therefore, organizations continuously seek people with strong persuasion skills. College graduates often become sales professionals, business development executives, customer relationship managers, or end up in positions that complement these roles. In addition, many entrepreneurs realize, often too late, the critical role of professional selling for the growth and survival of their nascent ventures. This course will equip students with the knowledge and skills to excel in professional selling, business development, and entrepreneurship.

Prerequisites: none

  • Program: Undergraduate
  • Division: Marketing
  • Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Management (UGrad)
  • Course Number: MKT3574
  • Number of Credits: 4