Problem-Based Learning Approach Assignment
Getting Started
The Problem-Based Learning Approach
This course is set up around a problem; a problem that you will most likely encounter in any organization. In some courses and in your own Applied Doctoral Project (ADP), you will need to identify a problem to solve. In this course, however, the problem is identified for you. The steps for solving the problem are clearly outlined, but the solution is yet to be determined. This approach to learning is not just based on a problem it is also centered on the learners. You, as a learner, get out of this experience what you put into it. You focus on the areas that are most relevant and applicable. You become an active participant rather than a passive receiver. In problem-based learning, the process of learning through problem-solving is as important as the content you learn.
The Team Approach
As stated in the PBL Team Expectations page, in the Doctor of Business Administration program, teams are a vital part of the learning environment. Every organization requires leaders who know how to work in and lead teams. The kinds of skills learned through teamwork cannot be learned from reading books to writing papers. A team approach values the group over the individual, which can be a challenge for the highly independent person. As you engage with your team in this course, embrace the opportunities that come with the team approach and communicate your concerns with your instructor, who is best position to guide you through this learning journey.
The Problem
In this course, the problem/opportunity you will investigate from a marketing perspective is how an industry/organization best creates value for its stakeholders.
The Context of the Problem
How does marketing create value for stakeholders? Understanding this is important to the marketing discipline. The American Marketing Association (AMA) marketing definition describes value creation on three levels, “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large (American Marketing Association, 2013). Two authors, Webster and Lusch (2013), also note how today’s marketers must understand marketing’s “…fundamental purpose in society, which is improving the standard of living for all citizens by co-creating value at all levels within a socio-economic system” (p. 389).
Companies, as well as organizations in the nonprofit and public sectors, are consistently challenged to provide value to their stakeholders through their products and services. With online customer reviews and social media, new products which miss the mark to add value for consumers, do not survive in the long-term. Companies and organizations, whether they lack the resources and/or want an outsider perspective on their marketing mix, often hire a marketing consulting company to conduct a marketing audit and prepare a recommendation for the way forward. Toward the end of this course, your team will prepare a marketing consulting report for an organization in your assigned industry.
For this class, you are to imagine yourself as part of a marketing consulting team. More precisely, you are a member of marketing consulting team tasked to analyze an industry to understand its value creation in the three-tier model depicted by the AMA (customers/clients, partners, and society) and build on this learning when you transition to an organization perspective later in the course.
In PBL Step 1 of this course, your focus is on an industry analysis. In PBL Steps 2, 3, 4, and 5, your focus will transition to an organization analysis in order to prepare a marketing consulting report for an organization in your assigned industry. Finally, in PBL Step 6, you self-assess and reflect on what you learned in this course.
In PBL Steps 2, 3, 4, and 5, your PBL team will examine how marketing helps an organization within your assigned industry with value creation. What is the role of different marketing perspectives in value creation, such as the organization and/or different stakeholders? The deliverable in PBL Step 5 is a marketing consulting report on an organization in your selected industry. The marketing consulting report template is in the reference documents for this workshop.
In order to help determine the scope of their ongoing research and analysis, the PBL team will identify the organization within the industry your team will examine later in the course in PBL Steps 2, 3, 4, and 5.