Article : Is Market Orientation a Source of Sustainable Competitive Advantage or Simply the Cost of Competing? (: V. Kumar, Eli Jones, Rajkumar Venkatesan, & Robert P. Leone)

Nomeworic., Quizzes, Case Studies and Project Installments: We will be using current business press and case examples throughout the course. Students will be asked to provide some examples of certain concepts, talking points and/or written answers to questions to prepare for class discussions and in-class activities The primary purpose of these assignments is to provide students with the opportunity to apply and evaluate strategic marketing models and to facilitate class discussion. Not all of these assignments will be collected and/or graded.

Talking Points: For most of the articles we read you will need to develop "talking points" that must be typed and brought with you to class. Your talking points should be divided into four sections:

(1) Summary: This section should include the most important facts and ideas expressed in the article - this should be done in bullet form and should be complete enough for you to use to study for the exam without having to reread the article. (Demonstrates recall and understanding skills) The rest of the document should be in paragraph form and double spaced

(2) Importance: For this section you should summarize the most important components from your summary. You should discuss why the article is important to our understanding of the role of marketing. What does it/did it add to marketing's body of knowledge? Why is it considered a classic? You should briefly discuss the methodology of the article - is it a conceptual piece (more theory-building or exploratory with some examples and less strenuous statistics. Usually has propositions rather than hypotheses), or is it an empirical piece (more theory-testing with hypotheses and statistics designed to test the hypotheses). (Demonstrates understanding and analysis skills)

(3) Relationship to class: How does the article relate to what we have discussed in class? Relate the information included in this article to the other academic articles (compare and contrast) and concepts covered in ads, business press articles, and class discussion. Determining which concepts or articles are most relevant is part of the critical thinking process. Is the article an application of concepts we've covered? If so what is illustrated? Is it consistent with other articles we've read or does it present a different perspective? (Demonstrates application and integration skills)

(4) Evaluation: Some typical questions you may address in this section: What are the strengths and weaknesses of the article? Do you agree with the theories/frameworks/statistical methods presented? Why or why not? If the article presents a different perspective, which one do you find more convincing or can the two perspectives be reconciled? Does the article raise any questions for you? (Demonstrates analysis and evaluation skills) You should have subheadings (in APA style) that identify each of these sections described above.