Dealing with Ambiguity

We assume you are a current or future manager working on a non-routine and unstructured marketing project – e.g. an initiative, or business plan, or case study – that requires you to develop alterative courses of action and draw rational insightful conclusions.

This website provides access to 71 short (three to five page) Handbook chapters defining and explain how to use the seventy-one principle marketing concepts. We use several of the chapters to explain and demonstrate how to frame your critical thinking and thus, yourdecision-making.

The idea that “knowledge is stuff for thinking” also plays a role in explaining Backward Thinking, Hourglass Thinkingand our Reclassification of all 71 fundamental marketing concepts in a way that will facilitate iterative – I call it “Chunk” – problem solving.

Note:  If you are NOT a student in one of my classes, see “Critical Thinking Based on Marketing Logic Review” and additional resource pages.

This website explains and demonstrates how to use the logic embedded in business concepts (principles) in general and marketing concepts in particular to bring more focus and resources to:

Define the purpose of your project – the underlying problem/opportunity you will address
Analyze alternative courses of action;
Synthesize and evaluate cost/benefit the projected outcomes of the various alternative, and;
Draw your conclusions and make your recommendations in an effective and persuasive oral presentation or written report.

The fundamental marketing concepts are organized by stages in the Marketing Planning Process as published in the Marketing Decision-Making Handbook (David W. Nylen,Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1990). The concepts are classified by three decision-making “tiers”.

Tier One Primary Concepts
Tier Two concepts sub-classified under Tier One concepts
Tier Three concepts sub-classified under Tier Two concepts