The purpose of Market shaping: Revolutionizing strategizing, is to provide students with conceptual tools for thinking strategically about market shaping in a global context. The course envisages how the creation of business models and the formulation of strategic plans can be enriched by the adding of an additional conceptual layer which hosts five different theoretical perspectives. Hereby the creation, reshaping and development of markets over time is brought to bear strategically. The basic premise of the course is that strategic marketing involves more than acting in a structure already in place; that strategizing could in fact also shape that structure and the business conduct therein. Global markets are regarded as being in a constant state of flux as suppliers' abilities develop, as the benefits sought by consumers transform and as surrounding regulatory frameworks are modified. Buyers, sellers, industry organizations, business consultants, national and supra-national authorities, and NGOs are all likely to play roles in such change processes. Markets become markets in shaping in light of digitalization, climate change and pandemic threats. From these starting points the course brings forward five different perspectives that offer insights into how markets form, change, evolve, and possibly dissolve. The theoretical perspectives are markets-as-fields, markets-as-processes, markets-as-networks, markets-as-socio-constructions, and markets-as-practices. These perspectives will eventually be put to strategic shaping use in empirical analyses. They are introduced by a stint which emphasizes what it means to take a multi-perspective view on markets and why such a stance turns strategic marketing into the portal perspective of this course.

Faculty: Anders Liljenberg

Course Date & Time

Tuesdays and Thursdays 13-16 hours (Stockholm time) September 3-October 17.