Wharton provides academic coursework for MBA students interested in retail through the Marketing Department, the Operations, Information and Decisions Department, and the Management Department.
Our course work links retail theory to practice, connecting students with world-renowned faculty. These courses emphasize the most important principles of retailing, including merchandising, design, operations, pricing, customer behavior, digital marketing, and e-commerce.
MBA Retailing Courses
MKTG 711 CUSTOMER BEHAVIOR
Description: Marketing begins and ends with the customer, from determining customers’ needs and wants to providing customer satisfaction and maintaining customer relationships. This course examines the basic concepts and principles in customer behavior with the goal of understanding how these ideas can be used in marketing decision making. The class will consist of a mix of lectures, discussions, cases, assignments, project work and exams. Topics covered include customer psychological processes (e.g., motivation, perception, attitudes, decision-making) and their impact on marketing (e.g., segmentation, branding, customer satisfaction). The goal is to provide a set of approaches and concepts to consider when faced with a decision involving understanding customer responses to marketing actions.
MKTG 725 - PRINCIPLES OF RETAILING
(Formerly MKTG 793.) This course provides an interdisciplinary overview of the retailing industry. Primary focus will be on the customer facing activities of retailers, including assortment planning, private-label development and the management of in-store operations, and the back-door activities (forecasting and supply chain management) that support customer interaction. In addition, current issues facing retailers, such as customer relationship management, industry consolidation and supplier relations, will be explored. The course will also survey topics in finance, operations, information technology and real estate as they relate to retail.
MKTG 739 - VISUAL MARKETING
This course will help students understand the underlying processes that influence our visual perception and visual cognition, and how visual stimuli can influence consumer memory, persuasion, and choice. Students will also be exposed to eye-tracking instruments that help measure eye movement. We will examine practical applications in marketing, retailing, advertising, branding, design, and packaging.
MKTG 770: DIGITAL MARKETING, SOCIAL MEDIA AND ELECTRONIC COMMERCE
MKTG 775 - MANAGING CUSTOMER VALUE
MKTG 778 - STRATEGIC BRAND MANAGEMENT
MKTG 806 - SPECIAL TOPICS: RETAIL MERCHANDISING
MKTG 897 - ADVANCED STUDY: LUXURY BRANDING AND RETAILING IN ITALY AND BEYOND
OPIM 697: RETAIL SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
MGMT 653 FIELD APPLICATION PROJECT
FAP is an experiential-based course where learning is done outside of the classroom. It is unique in its lack of a classroom setting all meetings take place in a professor’s office in small teams of 4 to 6 students. Teams are faced withreal-time issues of outside organizations and work with faculty and host managers to construct innovative solutions. Solutions are integrative and cross-functional in nature. We encourage creative thinking giving students wide access towhat we call “area of expertise” faculty. Depending on the project scope we help students arrange meetings with professors who are experts in their field. Host organizations range from large multinational firms to start-ups. A significant percentage of the projects are with non-profits and organizations focused on social causes. Format: Teams (4-6 members) meet with faculty on a weekly basis (30-45 minutes). There are also 3-5 meetings with host managers. In addition to meeting with a Faculty Head, students are given access to “area of expertise” faculty. These faculty members are chosen based on their specific expertise. The final deliverable consists of an oral presentation and a written document. Requirements: Weekly team meetings with faculty project head and a final PowerPoint report and presentation.