The main goal of the course is to teach students to use certain methods of quantitative analytics as a systematic and analytical approach to business decision making. An analytical approach will enable students to: identify alternative business options and actions; calibrate the opportunity costs associated with each option; and choose one or more options that have the highest likelihood of helping decision makers achieve their business goals.The course will be a combination of lectures, exercises, and case discussions. Lectures will cover the concepts and models you need to understand and apply the scientific approach to business decision making. The application of these concepts to practice will be illustrated in the cases, readings, and the examples/exercises. Several business decision making concepts will be covered and operationalized in the course, such as segmentation, targeting, positioning, and marketing resource allocation. Through the software tools, you will have hands-on opportunities to apply the concepts and models to resolve real-life business problems.
The course assumes a working knowledge of basic statistics. We will use Microsoft Excel as our primary statistical software. Please make sure your laptop is installed with Excel prior to our first class.