Seminar | Standing Together While Being Apart? An Analysis of Covid-19 Marketing Strategies (SoSe 2022)

Course schedule

Notice

Please note that due to the restrictions imposed by COVID-19 the course format (Zoom, hybrid, in presence) will be announced end of march when we know more about the actual regulations.

The Kick-off event will take place on April 18 (subject to changes due to corona regulations).

Contact person: Stefanie Dewender, M. Sc.

This course takes place in the first and second term of the summer semester.
Please register at the examination office for the early examination period.

Credit points: 12 ECTS (PO BWL 2010)

During the course, please communicate and stay updated via the course page on Learnweb. Announcements, lecture slides and any additional material will be published there.

Description

Introduction

Since January 2020 and the first cases of Covid-19 infections, the virus has changed the world. Since then, the global pandemic has not only tremendously affected our daily life, but has also turned the business world upside down.

The different waves of the pandemic lead to different marketing challenges for companies. Governmental entities relied early on non-pharmaceutical interventions such as stay at home measures and lockdowns, which had a significant impact on company-customer relations, cutting off classic offline touchpoints. In consequence, digital communication channels remained the only medium for companies to interact with their customers and required managers to develop, accelerate or enhance digital business models. This proved to be especially challenging for service and non-profit entities such as restaurants and cultural-, sport-, and event-businesses.

Meanwhile, we similarly witnessed an increasing debate about Covid-19 measures and strategies. Some companies early on developed Covid-19 specific marketing campaigns, taking a clear stand by supporting governmental measures or encouraging the public to participate in and support vaccination campaigns.

Being now almost 24 months into the pandemic, we still have not developed a clear understanding of which general strategies company chose, and which specific approaches did work or not work.

Seminar content

This seminar intends to close this knowledge gap by exploratively investigating communication and marketing strategies companies developed in the wake of the pandemic, while accounting for industry-, brand-, country-, and customer-specific contingencies.

Literature

Lecturers

• Prof. Dr. Raoul Volker Kübler (responsible)
• Lina Marie Oechsner (accompanying)
• Stefanie Dewender (accompanying)