Introduction to Marketing (Coursera)

Introduction to Marketing (Coursera)

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.

Class Deals by MOOC List - Click here and see Coursera's Active Discounts, Deals, and Promo Codes.

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.

Course 1 of 6 in the Business Foundations Specialization.

Syllabus

WEEK 1
Branding: Marketing Strategy and Brand Positioning
Professor Kahn starts us off with the first of two Branding modules: Marketing Strategy and Brand Positioning. For an overview of all concepts covered in the course, please read the syllabus below. Additional info may be found in the Course Pages. Please participate in the discussion forums as your input will enhance the overall experience of this course!

WEEK 2
Customer centricity: The Limits of Product-Centric Thinking & The Opportunities and Challenges of Customer Centricity
Module 2 of our class features Professor Peter Fader, who will focus on concepts related to Customer Centricity. In an economy that is increasingly responsive to customer behaviors, it is imperative to focus on the right customers for strategic advantages. The coming weeks will provide the foundation needed to build a customer centric outlook. If you want to read more about Professor Fader’s views on customer centricity, feel free to follow him on Twitter (@faderp). He regularly shares relevant perspectives and readings there.

WEEK 3
Go to market strategies: Communications Strategy & Fundamentals of Pricing
In this module, you will examine the critical marketing topic, “Go to Market Strategies.” Professor Jagmohan Raju has designed these lectures to help you gain a deep understanding of the role of communications in marketing strategy, fundamentals of pricing, and how to manage channel conflicts. You will explore the 7 Ms of developing a communication plan, learn how to measure price elasticity, and understand disruption in information delivery. By the end of this module, you’ll be able to use effective analytical tools to form a communications campaign and create appropriate access points to your brand for your customer.

WEEK 4
Branding: Effective Brand Communications Strategies and Repositioning Strategies
Professor Kahn is back in this fourth module, the second of her Branding Modules, covering effective brand communications strategies and repositioning strategies. Understanding how customers perceive your brand messaging and marketing is one of the most important aspects to understanding consumer behavior: what consumers perceive is what affects their actions, and what they perceive is not necessarily true! Professor Kahn unpacks customer behavior and perception and explores successful strategies for influencing both in this final required module of the course.

WEEK 5
Applied Marketing (Optional)
These short lectures apply marketing principles taught in the course to current examples. Content in these lectures may deepen your understanding of course concepts, but won't be tested directly on the quizzes or exam.

Go to Class
MOOC List is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Related Courses

Influencer Marketing Strategy (Coursera) Coursera
Rutgers University

Influencer Marketing Strategy (Coursera)

Influencer marketing is the practice of engaging internal and industry experts with active networks to help achieve measurable business goals. This course is about strategy. Although there is no all-purpose, one-size-fits-all influencer marketing strategy template, you will learn how to tailor one for a wide variety of B2B, B2C, and nonprofit organizations using the two-step flow model of communication.

Aug 17th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Compra programática de medios: Publicidad online en tiempo real (Coursera) Coursera
Universidad Austral

Compra programática de medios: Publicidad online en tiempo real (Coursera)

La compra programática nació como una tendencia hace unos años y hoy es el corazón de las estrategias digitales, tanto de Display como de Video. Ha generado una disrupción en la planificación digital, dejando a los medios tradicionales en segundo plano y dándole protagonismo a las audiencias. Enfocado en el uso de la data, la compra programática es la clave hacia la maximización de resultados.

Aug 17th 2026
4 Weeks
International Business I (Coursera) Coursera
University of New Mexico

International Business I (Coursera)

We live in a world of intensifying global relationships, one in which international business has become the key determinant of economic development and prosperity. This course, Global Business Environment, Part I, introduces students to a fundamental understanding of the socioeconomic political, cultural, and linguistic environment in which international businesses operate.

Aug 17th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Design Thinking and Global Startup (Coursera) Coursera
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology - KAIST

Design Thinking and Global Startup (Coursera)

This course offers a systematic engineering design methodology: Stanford Design Thinking for preparing global startup. The course empathizes the whole Stanford design thinking process, "Empathy-Define-Ideation-Prototype-Test," for building a startup with a business model that has a “customer truly need” component.

Aug 17th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Managerial Accounting Fundamentals (Coursera) Coursera
University of Virginia

Managerial Accounting Fundamentals (Coursera)

This course will teach you the fundamentals of managerial accounting including how to navigate the financial and related information managers need to help them make decisions. You'll learn about cost behavior and cost allocation systems, how to conduct cost-volume-profit analysis, and how to determine if costs and benefits are relevant to your decisions.

Aug 17th 2026
4 Weeks
Customer Insights: Quantitative Techniques (Coursera) Coursera
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Customer Insights: Quantitative Techniques (Coursera)

This course will highlight the potential of quantitative marketing research for assessing new product opportunities. In addition to focusing on the skills and practices for a successful New Product Development (NPD), the course will illustrate the multi-faceted challenges of NPD using authentic business situations.

Aug 17th 2026
4 Weeks
Infonomics I: Business Information Economics and Data Monetization (Coursera) Coursera
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Infonomics I: Business Information Economics and Data Monetization (Coursera)

Thriving in the Information Age compels organizations to deploy information as an actual business asset, not as an IT asset or merely as a business byproduct. This demands creativity in conceiving and implementing new ways to generate economic benefits from the wide array of information assets available to an organization. Unfortunately, information too frequently is underappreciated and therefore underutilized.

Aug 17th 2026
4 Weeks
The Factors that Influence the Effectiveness of Boards and the Governance Process (Coursera) Coursera
University at Buffalo,The State University of New York

The Factors that Influence the Effectiveness of Boards and the Governance Process (Coursera)

The third course in this Specialization introduces you to the factors that influence how effective boards of directors will be in carrying out their roles and responsibilities and hence the impact they have in shaping the success of the organization they govern. While this course has been developed with North American culture in mind, we do appreciate that, in other parts of the world, the nature of the factors that influence the effectiveness of nonprofit boards of directors may vary. Nevertheless,it is our hope that much of the course content will still be of value to those in other parts of the world.

Aug 17th 2026
5-12 Weeks
The Marketing Plan (Coursera) Coursera
IE Business School

The Marketing Plan (Coursera)

Create your own Marketing Plan for your own product or service idea. In this course you will learn how to produce arguably the most important marketing tool for any business. Rather than simply learning the stages of The Marketing Plan, you will be asked each week to complete a peer graded assignment which will help you complete a simplified version of the plan.

Aug 17th 2026
4 Weeks
Customer-Centric IT Strategy (Coursera) Coursera
University of Virginia

Customer-Centric IT Strategy (Coursera)

Now more than ever, corporations are investing heavily in IT. The quality of these investments affect the daily work of millions, yet it’s not uncommon to see industry surveys where the failure rates for IT projects is over 50%. It’s possible to do better and it’s possible to do so consistently. In this two-week course, we’ll step through major challenges within corporate IT and how to address them with the disciplined use of design thinking, Lean Startup, and agile as a team framework.

Aug 17th 2026
2 Weeks
Professional Responsibility and Ethics for Accountants (Coursera) Coursera
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Professional Responsibility and Ethics for Accountants (Coursera)

Accountants perform a wide variety of activities which include, but are not limited to, accounting, auditing, tax, management consulting, and financial management. However, a professional accountant’s responsibility is not exclusively to satisfy the needs of an employer or professional services client. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the accounting profession is its acceptance of the responsibility to act in the public interest.

Aug 17th 2026
4 Weeks
Doing Business in Europe (Coursera) Coursera
ESCP Europe

Doing Business in Europe (Coursera)

Europe is a major world trade partner as well as a place where to acquire significant business experience. This is the reason why this MOOC has been designed with the view to explaining and guiding you in doing business in Europe. Do you really know Europe? How should you consider and approach the European continent? What business lessons can be drawn in a European perspective?

Aug 24th 2026
5-12 Weeks