Marketing Principles MKTG3000

Purpose: to help other instructors teaching the same course

Common Course ID:  MKTG3000
CSU Instructor Open Textbook Adoption Portrait

Abstract: This open textbook is being utilized in a marketing course for undergraduate or graduate students by Zhenning Xu at the College of Business and Public Administration. The open textbook provides a brief a concise exploration of key marketing concepts and analytical frameworks, along with several customized exercises and assignments designed by the instructor to help students understand the material through learning by doing. The main motivation to adopt an open textbook was that the open textbook is equally well-written, updated each semester by authors from Rice University and UT Dallas, and free for students to use. Most students access the open textbook in digital format or as a PDF they download to their computer or phone.

Marketing Principles MKTG3000
Brief Description of course highlights:  A study of the nature and role of marketing in advanced economies in a managerial context presented in a lecture, case, and applied format. Analysis of consumer wants, motivation and purchasing power, and introduction to and development of effective mixes among product, pricing, distribution, and promotional variables. Internet and e-commerce issues are also discussed. Link: https://catalog.csub.edu/course-descriptions/mktg 

Student population: The course is open to all business majors and minors, and no prerequisites are required. Most students are marketing majors, and none have had prior exposure to marketing courses.

Learning or student outcomes:  Students will be able to explain core marketing concepts including value creation, segmentation, targeting, positioning, the marketing mix, and consumer behavior; analyze markets and customers using basic research tools, data, and ethical decision-making frameworks; develop customer-focused marketing strategies grounded in segmentation, targeting, and positioning principles; apply the 4Ps to real-world business scenarios and evaluate their effectiveness; interpret marketing data and insights to support decision-making; communicate marketing recommendations clearly and professionally; demonstrate an understanding of digital marketing foundations such as social media and online consumer behavior; and work collaboratively to solve marketing problems and design basic marketing plans or campaigns.

Textbook or OER/Low-cost Title: Principles of Marketing, OpenStax 

Brief Description:  The textbook covers all required concepts, frameworks, and cases needed for an intro level marketing course. The course adopts a pedagogical approach that emphasizes learning by doing. For instance, students are constantly encouraged to investigate real marketing issues using external sources. The problem sets for the course are updated regularly. The publisher has a platform that is easy to navigate and offers both PDF versions and online versions for readers.

Please provide a link to the resource  
https://openstax.org/details/books/principles-marketing

Authors:  
Dr. Maria Gomez Albrecht, University of Texas at Dallas
Dr. Mark Green, Simpson College
Linda Hoffman, Ivy Tech Community College

Student access:  Students access the book at OpenStax

Supplemental resources:  
Supplemental resources include online cases, videos, and chapter test questions. The open textbook will be used in conjunction with some hands-on exercises and assignments designed by the instructor. 

Provide the cost savings from that of a traditional textbook.  
The traditional textbook published by McGraw Hill for this course is $150. The savings for 50 students in spring 2026 will be $150*50=$7500.

License:
The license for the material is Creative Commons license. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

OER/Low Cost Adoption Process
Provide an explanation or what motivated you to use this textbook or OER/Low-Cost option.  There are two incentives for me to adopt this book:

1. Adopting this book will save students money;
2. The materials covered in all other similar books with the same title are almost the same; 
3. As an instructor, to help students learn better, I will also provide customized learning materials for students to use. 

How did you find and select the open textbook for this course?  I found this book by contacting other colleagues from other schools.

Sharing Best Practices: The sustainability of open education relies on sharing with others. Please give suggestions for faculty who are just getting started with OER or Low-Cost options.  List anything you wish that you had known earlier.

My suggestion: Adopting an OER goes beyond cost savings. Typically, I found traditional textbooks to be updated less frequently in comparison to online books published by OpenStax, one of the largest site for creating non-profit free learning material.

Describe any key challenges you experienced, how they were resolved  and lessons learned.  The challenge I often encounter is that it can be difficult to move away from a textbook that has been used for years, especially given the limited time available to explore new materials. However, once I adopt free, open-source books for a subject, it opens up an entirely new world.

Instructor Name - “Jimmy” Zhenning Xu
I am a marketing professor at CSU Bakersfield

Please provide a link to your university page  https://www.csub.edu/bpa/mgmt-mktg/management-and-marketing-department-directory.shtml

Please describe the courses/course numbers that you teach.  The courses I regularly teach include Principles of Marketing, Marketing Analytics, Marketing Channels, Marketing Management, and Digital Marketing Analytics. 

Describe your teaching philosophy and any research interests related to your discipline or teaching.  I believe that open-source materials are the way to go, as updating learning activities requires frequent exploration of different topics and content that are relevant to the subject matter of any course.
 I recognize education as a two-way street. I am convinced that students and professors co-create the educational experience, with more positive outcomes accruing to both parties as a result of this process. The goal of implementing this strategy is to develop transferable knowledge and skills that they can apply in situations they have never encountered before.

Research philosophy: I believe teaching and research go hand in hand. Doing research helps to keep me current in my fields, engendering excitements in new ideas and discoveries. Most importantly, doing research allows me to stay informed about new marketing tools and trends, making me a better teacher.