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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Introduction to Marketing by University of Pennsylvania

4.8
stars
12,598 ratings

About the Course

Taught by three of Wharton's top faculty in the marketing department, consistently ranked as the #1 marketing department in the world, this course covers three core topics in customer loyalty: branding, customer centricity, and practical, go-to-market strategies. You’ll learn key principles in - Branding: brand equity is one of the key elements of keeping customers in a dynamic world in which new startups are emerging constantly. - Customer centricity: not synonymous with customer service, customer centricity starts with customer focus and need-gathering. - Go-to-market strategies: understand the drivers that influence customers and see how these are implemented prior to making an investment. Complete this course as part of Wharton's Business Foundations Specialization, and you'll have the opportunity to take the Capstone Project and prepare a strategic analysis and proposed solution to a real business challenge from Wharton-governed companies like Shazam and SnapDeal or to a challenge faced by your own company or organization. Wharton-trained staff will evaluate the top submissions, and leadership teams at Shazam and SnapDeal will review the highest scoring projects prepared for their companies....

Top reviews

AS

Apr 29, 2021

Learnt a lot of concepts in marketing that were hiding in plain sight. I want to thank all the professors who were part of making this course and Wharton online for making this accessible to everyone.

AT

Jun 8, 2017

This course enhanced my perspective, I took it parallel to my ongoing courese, the cases discussed in this module helped me to analyse the application of various marketing concepts. Thanks a lot...!

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1 - 25 of 2,405 Reviews for Introduction to Marketing

By Jennifer B

•

Feb 5, 2017

I really enjoyed Professor Kahn's part of the course, and Professor Bell was good but his subject matter was less interesting to me. Professor Fader was unclear even after repeated viewings.

The biggest problem with the course was the terrible editing. Sentences were cut off in the middle. Instructors would say they would talk about subject X next and the video would end. Mini-quizzes were given before the material was covered, and some questions on the final were never explained. It was clear that the course designer never watched the completed course to check if everything made sense.

Because the organization was so bad, I decided not to complete the specialization. I expected better from an Ivy League school.

By Akshay T

•

Jun 9, 2017

This course enhanced my perspective, I took it parallel to my ongoing courese, the cases discussed in this module helped me to analyse the application of various marketing concepts. Thanks a lot...!

By Milovan K

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Dec 11, 2015

Great! I am taking the course with almost no experience in this area. Really enjoyed this class and learned a lot. A lot of practical examples which helped me to understand all the parts. Thank you!

By Aditya T

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Dec 3, 2015

Learned a lot of things in this course. Have already started changing the way I think about pricing in my current position. I hope we get the opportunity to apply these concepts in Capstone project.

By Abhishek K

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Jul 18, 2016

Profoundly insightful about the Marketing process. I developed a deep respect for the esteemed panel of Professors and their simple approach to explaining and applying complex Marketing concepts.

By aseem b

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Aug 8, 2016

This course on Marketing is a marketing disaster for WhartonOnline. This course made me understand atleast one thing in great clarity, that I should not waste money on Wharton courses. The amount of effort put into the course material, into the organization and flow of material (or lack thereof), and into the quality of videos and content delivery, would sum up right about to Zero. Needless to say, this review is going to be highly critical, since I expected some value and quality from a school like Wharton. Should you pay $95 for this course. I think they should pay you for wasting your time. The course tries to teach the importance of branding, and customer centricity, and personifies how not to do it.

Here are some specific complaints I have with the course, in no particular order. You might not agree with all of them, and some might seem insignificant, but in any case, here they are :

1. Platform : The entire course is just a series of videos, and plenty of them are over 15 minutes long. It's hard to imagine that students would be able to keep their attention, and grasp new and/or tough concepts with such an approach. A combination of text, figures, videos, and interactive exercises would have made it much easier to grasp the material

2. Videos : High school kids can make multimedia of better quality. Videos consist of someone talking for several minutes, with occasional inclusion of presentation slides. Slides are no help either. It seems material is copied out of a text book, then pasted into a slide, and then integrated into a video. And then professor spends a few minutes reading out the text of the slides. The diagrams are lifeless, asymmetrical and does not help advance the understanding.

3. Structure : The order in which videos are presented doesn't make sense. There is no structure to the material which would help you understand the concepts in a logical and progressive manner. Sometimes, the heading of the video does not even seem to match with the content. It feels all videos were filmed in an ad hoc fashion and then just put together in a random order.

4. Discussion Forum is not a great help either. You would want to see more activity and brainstorming there, considering so many students take this course. But, there is no incentive for the students to share ideas and contribute, since passing the course does not depend on discussion forums. When "Mentors" reply to some answers, those answers seemed to be pasted out of a text book.

5. Quiz : In its current structure, there is no point of having a quiz at the end of the week. The goal should be assimilating or internalizing the material and concepts, not just pass the quiz. The course allows you to retake a quiz upto 3 times a week, so you don't really need to go through the videos at all. They don't check if you went through all the videos before taking the quiz. And they don't give you answers and explanation after the quiz is done, since then the students would always score 100% on the second try. If I can not even understand where my understanding lacks and fix it, why am I taking this quiz.

8. Final Exam : You can find answers to most questions by just searching the key phrase in the course material. And they help you in doing that by telling you which Professor's videos you need to search. They don't test you on concepts, they test you whether you can remember what the Professor X meant when he/she made a statement Y.

9. Content Delivery: I found second week to be the best in terms of content delivery, but the rest of the weeks were more or less lacking. The examples or analogies given did not always match the concept introduced. If you read the transcript of the videos, the sentences spoken would not even make much sense. Many times, you can find the professor glancing down, as if looking at the laptop screen besides her, to read out the slides. The professor comes out as nervous and fidgety, which is very distracting, to say the least.

If you are still reading this review, I hope you would spend your $95 on a subscription to a business magazine, or may be just on some good food. This course is definitely not worth it, and it 'll cost you more in your precious time.

By EMEKA J I

•

Oct 6, 2019

I really enjoyed this course and will be revisiting from time to time for refresher. Thanks a lot to the lecturers and Brabara Khan; thanks for driving the course home. Emeka from Lagos, Nigeria.

By Anurag M

•

Jun 28, 2020

The course was just about average.

Few observations:

a) It was loosely structured

b) needed to have more practice quizzes

c) would have been good if slides would have been made available so that one could refer to them for the final exam

d) week 3 was too long and too spread out into various topics

e) content delivery seemed a bit archaic/classical, needed to be more engaging. For example, there could have been quizzes and case studies to drive home certain concepts esp around price sensitivity, elasticity, customer centricity.

By Lori K

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Mar 2, 2019

I learned a lot in this course, much of which I can apply to my current position. I liked all the professors. A couple of comments regarding improvements:

It would be great to have the professors' slides in a separate file (like they have for the accounting course).

I wish the material could be updated - particularly in the discussions of online retailing - everything was from 2013, and a great deal has changed since then. I know that in 2013, my company had no online presence - now we use social media to engage our agents, recruit new agents, advertise, etc. I think with the changes in technology moving so quickly now, this is one segment of the course that felt very dated.

By Ava M

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Apr 5, 2019

Great course! I took this course and finished it in 4 days (and spent around 3-4 hours every night after work on it) to put weight for my personal statements/interviews for my masters applications for university. Cons: It is from 2013, and there were a few glitches in the middle of class where I was unable to answer some of the mid-class questions. Some of the questions were asked before I learned some of the material, so that was a bit strange. Pros: Overall, these professors know what they're talking about and they are professors from one of the best marketing programs/universities in the world. I would recommend this class to anyone who wants an introduction to marketing.

By rao s

•

Jun 2, 2019

damn good

By Meeta A

•

Apr 1, 2019

One of the Best Courses Ever! Wharton the name speaks for itself!! My sincere and heartfelt thank you to all the professors. Needless to say, all are at the top of their respective games. The sincerity reflects even, through the screen! :) Thank you so much!! It was a pleasure to learn!! :)

And thank you Course era, for not putting the 'peer reviewed assignment process' in this course. It is just a sheer waste of time. People have a lot of time to get vindictive and personal and 'failing' others. It such wastage of time, energy, and money. Kindly take this feedback as a constructive criticism and drop that section if you can. Add two set of quizzes if you want to, but just remove peer reviewed stuff. Please. Nevertheless, Thank you for this wonderful course.

By MEHUL J

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Mar 27, 2020

It was a good refresher, but I expected more.

More number of assignments and challenging exercises.

Professor Raju was amazing and the case studies he analyzed were quite relevant and insightful.

Professor Kahn was good as well, but it was more of theory and less of real-life examples. Also, less eye contact with the course-taker and more on the prompts was a major distraction for me.

Professor Fader, again theory, theory and theory, and less of examples. Could have been much more interesting.

By Juan C M L

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Mar 26, 2021

I think the course tries to cover too many concepts and for that reason it is generally very superficial. It would have been preferable to narrow the scope and delve a little deeper into the most important concepts. In any case, it is a fair introduction to the subject of marketing.

By Diane S

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Jun 27, 2019

You need to watch it a couple of times and take really good notes. There are fine lines between a number of the examples and it isn't clear at first. But, as you read it again and understand it, the answer becomes more clear to you.

By Parama B

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Jun 27, 2019

I had a wonderful experiencing learning and gaining the basic knowledge of Marketing. I would like to thank each Professor who explained the topics so well and made it even more interesting with the case studies of various companies.

By Danish K

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Jul 5, 2019

Excellent! Barbara is an excellent teacher, love her style

By Alan F

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Feb 22, 2016

I thoroughly enjoyed this course, which gives a great introduction to important and common language/concepts in marketing. The only things I would change are the following: the content is from 2013, which in a year or two might get to be a little dated in the marketing world. The second thing, is that many of the example companies are huge American/multinational corporations. This isn't inherently bad, however I think that learners could benefit from seeing what more startups or disruptive companies are doing though.

By Arvind S

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Apr 30, 2021

Learnt a lot of concepts in marketing that were hiding in plain sight. I want to thank all the professors who were part of making this course and Wharton online for making this accessible to everyone.

By April K

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Dec 6, 2015

I am really enjoying this course and the lessons are easy to follow. The instructor gives great examples to sum up each lesson and her explanations really hone in on what marketing actually entails.

By Ahmed M A E

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Dec 7, 2018

Very nice content and dense science!

By Byrne C

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Jun 27, 2019

very informative and useful

By Dikshit K

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Sep 8, 2016

Excellent pedagogy, and interactive with examples from real world which enables the students to join the dots of knowledge to map the knowledge in the grey cells.

Suggesting the participants to involve maximum in the group discussion and connect the theory to the type of marketing they see surrounding them in their respective geographic location, which will provide an international feel to the course. Remember, its the students quality delivery on which the standard of an university depends on.

My study map was :

1.Understand the basic. Review the topic, and apply it to the existing products.

2. What if you have to launch a product a) in your country b) in a developing country c) in a developed country. Study of market types.

3. Connect marketing to economics , operations & supply chain and finance later on.

Hapy marketing. :)

By nosipho M

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Jun 5, 2017

introduction to marketing it was very much understanding and there lectures were very easy to understand them they had jokes along there way and it was fun but most of all i learn a lot now i know what marketing is all about and how to make your business and what strategies to use and when u want to use a celebrate which ones to look for and how to market your with online presence and which items a better sold online and which ones to sell offline and how to understand your costumer and what their need and how to bring new stuff to your costumer and how to bring new costumer but still keep your old ones and i really want to all there lectures who help me with my course and who gave me my dreams thank you

By Raaj K

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Apr 5, 2018

Very informative and intense!

All the professors really put in a lot of effort to make the videos easy to understand with lots of real world and industry examples. The only one drawback of sorts I felt and as I have seen in the forums too is that some of the data and research/ examples and references are a little dated and so may not be entirely relevant or dependable...since the world and the markets have changed so much in the last 4/5 years... but even then I think the fundamentals remain good and its still worth the effort and time put in. All the best and look forward to getting an updated course soon on Introduction to Marketing.