All students earning their undergraduate degree in a Business discipline from the OSU College of Business complete a common business core. This core, consisting of about 100 credits across all four years, provides students with a strong business foundation.

The following learning goals and objectives are in addition to those in the business core learning goals and objectives.

The marketing program will allow graduates to:

  • Understand the place and contribution of marketing to the business enterprise.
  • Define primary and secondary sources of information; give examples of methods used to collect primary data; give examples of sources for secondary data; compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantages of both types of data.   
  • Describe major bases for segmenting consumer and business markets; define and be able to apply the three steps of target marketing: market segmentation, target marketing and market positioning; understand how different situations in the competitive environment will affect choices in target marketing.
  • Describe the major types of consumer buying behavior, the stages in the buyer decision process and completely outline the components of the marketing mix; identify how the firms marketing strategy and marketing mix must evolve and adapt to match consumer behavior and perceptions of the product (e.g., classification of products and services, brand image, price and value), the stage in the product life cycle and the competitive environment; summarize the importance of measuring and managing return on marketing.        
  • List and describe the steps in the new-product development (NPD) process; describe how the NPD process meshes with the adoption and diffusion process for those products.  
  • Identify the costs and benefits of marketing channels; discuss the firms and the functions involved in typical channels in North America.     
  • Identify the roles of advertising, sales promotion, public relations, personal selling and direct marketing in the promotion mix; compare and contrast integrated marketing communications with a non-integrated approach to the promotional mix.
  • Illustrate how the international trade system, economic, political-legal and cultural environments in a foreign country affect a company’s international marketing decisions.          
  • Identify the major social criticisms of marketing.