Institute of Commercial Management | Qualification Subject

IT For Marketing Management

ICM Professional Diploma Unit

Marketing’s Challenge

  • More sophisticated and demanding customers
  • Changes in product management
  • The ‘virtualisation’ of distribution channels
  • The ‘virtualisation’ of payments
  • The increasing globalisation of markets
  • Marketing’s mid-life crisis

The Arrival of the Digital Age

  • The digital revolution
  • Government and the information society
  • Business and eCommerce
  • The implications for business

How Can Marketing Respond?

  • A new marketing model for the digital age
  • The marketing potential of the internet
  • Marketing tips and pitfalls
  • The arrival of digital television and interactive services

Conducting Marketing Research

  • The use of IT in primary data collection
  • The use of IT in secondary data collection
  • Using IT to analyse information
  • Continuous marketing research
  • Advertising research
  • Other research applications

Creating Customer Insight

  • Increasing sophistication of customer segmentation
  • Using new approaches to customer segmentation
  • Warehousing customer data
  • Mining customer data
  • Creating a knowledge organisation

Creating the Customer Database

  • Marketing information systems
  • The central role of the customer database
  • Developing the customer database
  • Treating the customer database as a strategic resource

Database Marketing and Direct Marketing

  • The evolution of database marketing
  • The value of database marketing
  • Direct marketing
  • Managing data privacy issues in the digital age

Relationship Marketing

  • The rise of relationship marketing
  • Customer relationship management
  • The role of IT in relationship marketing

Product – More Variety, Faster

  • Using IT to improve the range of viable offerings
  • Using IT to increase speed to market
  • Using IT to support the product development life cycle
  • Using advanced manufacturing techniques in product commercialisation

Price – What Are You Prepared To Pay?

  • eBusiness is rewriting the pricing rules
  • Establishing accurate costs
  • Making well-informed and rapid pricing decisions

Place – Your Place Or Mine?

  • The increasing importance of direct channels
  • Indirect channel changes
  • Managing multiple distribution channels

Promotion – The Market of One

  • Fragmentation of television advertising
  • Trends in other advertising media
  • The increasingly targeted nature of sales promotions
  • The growth of the internet as an advertising medium
  • The potential of digital television and radio
  • Growth of public relations on the internet

Improving Sales Force Effectiveness

  • The impact of the digital age on the sales function
  • The three generations of sales force automation
  • Successful technology enables selling

Delivering Customer Service and Support

  • Growth in telephone-based customer service
  • Call Centre technology
  • Principles of good Call Centre management

Developing Marketing Systems That Work

  • Common management issues with IT
  • Specific problems with IT in marketing
  • IT trends in the digital age
  • A potential way forward

Example Candidate Response Booklet

Example Candidate Response (ECR) Booklets are a source of crucial information for Centres and Candidates as they use real candidate responses. We ask Senior Examiners to comment on five or more responses in terms of why the mark was awarded with commentary about how to improve the answer (if necessary).

Recommended Reading

Main Text:

Marketing in the Digital Age – J O’Connor & E Galvin (Prentice Hall)

Indicative Text:

Alternative Text and Further Reading:

The Marketing Book – M J Baker (Butterworth/Heinemann)

Marketing Management & Information Technology – W Flehher (Prentice Hall)