Market Research: Using Data to Uncover Customer Needs

How large is the market for a product, what is important for the target segment? How does change in the product design affect profitability? This course aims to help students ask such business questions and find data-driven answers to them. The main objectives are to equip students with: 1) an understanding of the value of data - what intelligence it can and cannot provide, 2) exposure to state-of-the-art quantitative tools including experimentation, conjoint analysis, and unsupervised machine learning techniques such as cluster analysis to analyze the data, and 3) sufficient hands-on experience with these tools for answering students' own business questions from the perspective of an entrepreneur, manager or a consultant. The course is designed to address substantive product management and marketing problems such as: market segmentation, targeting, forecasting demand, pricing, and developing new products. We will use a mix of lectures, exercises, cases and a project to learn the material.