MKT 543 - Market Demand and Sales Forecasting

Prof. Siddarth is chaos contained. If you are well versed in excel/regression/math formulas within excel then I reccommend. I also reccomend if you are serious about marketing and understanding adoption, forecasting demand, conjoint analysis, promotions, CLV, etc. The professor teaches JMP for a lecture or two - but allows you to use it on assignments so if you understand it, it will come in handy running regressions, semi-log and log-log (if what I just wrote causes you heartburn dont take this class). Overall very useful class, somehwat long and in-depth group homework assignments, no midterm, and a final worth 40% of your grade. Take the class with a group of friends and make your own group so you can commisserate together while trying to digest what Prof Siddarth said in between "Hey Boss" Also do not skip - he will call you out every time you come back (unless you really dont care, but good luck teaching yourself from his slides)

Siddarth's class is frustrating, lectures can be incoherent at times and the homework is very challenging even if you attend every class session. However, if you're interested in marketing, confident with doing regressions or know how to use JUMP, and like fast paced teaching styles you will benefit from taking this class.

Essential content for any marketing professional, but the professor is not good at teaching. Cons: While I agree with other reviewers that he has a great sense of humor, he does a poor job of guiding the class. I often find he goes on tangents, and goes too fast on some difficult concepts and too slow on easy things. Mainly, I Prof. Sid. is not good at providing structure to the class, so I often get lost on how details matter for the bigger picture of the topics we are discussing. I found the assignments to be long and medium-difficulty, and the way he phrases questions makes it hard to understand what he is really asking for. I also don't like that 40% of the grade is the final exam (especially in a class where a lot of the work is excel-based). Pros: the conent of this class is VERY relevant to anyone going into marketing, and I would even say for anyone going into a field that touches marketing (consulting, strategy, etc.) I took the class because I knew the content was very important, but due to the poor teaching I found myself lost during class and teaching myself a lot of the concepts independently. To excel in this class, you should feel comfortable in excel and not be intimidated by regression, otherwise you will be overwhelmed.

Professor Siddarth has a lot of energy and engages the class well. A lot of marketing analysis tools are thrown at you, so the hope is that some of these will stick and translate in the real world.

Professor Siddarth cares about his students and keeps class entertaining. The models he has taught are definitely helpful to know, but probably would help more people interested in pursuing a career in marketing. That being said, I am learning models and tactics I have not learned before and expanding my Excel skillset in the process.

Group assignments do a good job of testing you on the material for the course. Exam was fair.

The class provides very interesting quantitative tools for market research, sales forecasting and marketing in general. It is the most interesting class I have taken. The professor is very approachable and involved with the class. He is always open to answering questions or clarifying the models in detail - this helps because the course concepts are really heavy. Coursework is also quite heavy but it is a value adding must-have course at Marshall.

The professor is pretty funny, calls everyone in the class Boss. A lot of examples seem to focus on CPG, but concepts are extendable to most marketing applications.

Good professor with good content. The professor also has a sense of humor, which made the 3 hr class not feel that long. Assignments are very much related to what he teaches in class and if you are paying attention in class, not a lot to prep for the exams as well. Fair exam as well. If you want a good sales forecasting class, this is the one for you

Good professor with good content. The professor also has a sense of humor, which made the 3 hr class not feel that long. Assignments are very much related to what he teaches in class and if you are paying attention in class, not a lot to prep for the exams as well. Fair exam as well. If you want a good sales forecasting class, this is the one for you

Funny and lively professor is also compassionate to students who are less advanced in using data.

It will be really be up to you if you want this class to help you in the future. Its easy to just memorize things for the class and not understand how to apply them, altough the professor really tries to.

I had such high hopes for this class after hearing a ton of second years rave about it. It might just be that is was on Zoom, but in the virtual setting, I would not recommend this class at all. It is all over the place and I have a hard time even listening to the professor. It might also be that my expectations were high...if yours are low, perhaps this is a good fit for you. If you are decent at Excel, this class will move slow for you at times. The class is centered around group projects where the data fits perfectly. They can all be accomplished by just following what he did in class and using his formulas in your Excel file. In reality, the world doesn't work that way so I struggle to think that this class is going to be super applicable to my marketing career.

The class teaches a lot of valuable skills that are very important for future Product Managers.

The professor is a lovely person, but he is a terrible professor over Zoom. His teaching is all over the place, "Scatterred" is the word all students use. I have learned almost nothing from him and that has been detrimental as I am pursuing marketing in the tech sector.

Challenging, but I wanted to learn more about the quantitative side of marketing, and this class definitely fits the bill. I've heard great things about Siddarth, but online, he's been very difficult to follow. You can tell he's trying hard and cares, but he's scatterbrained and doesn't do well explaining the reasoning behind certain models or topics.

If you are looking to be in brand management or marketing, this is a must take. Not an easy class though!

I think this class would be better in person - it is a little scattered on zoom

The class provides a lot of clear analytical approaches to making marketing decisions. I feel as if I'm learning a lot of specifics regarding marketing and better understanding different facets of the field. Siddarth is very difficult to follow in class. He is all over the place during lecturing, jumping from one topic to another. The content isn't hard to follow, but the professor is. I definitely get more use out of reviewing the materials outside of class. I do believe Siddarth would be a better instructor in person. He's sort of unbearable online.

Although I appreciate Siddarth's passion for the subject and the fact that he tries to be as available as possible to his students, it's difficult to follow his lectures on Zoom. He is very scattered and I find myself having to rewatch them often. He provides handholding spreadsheets to go over the various models and for us to try the data on our own; however, I feel that I haven't been able to truly learn the idea behind the models and how I can ever build my own in practice. Echoing the comments above, this class may be better for in-person.