CRM 4255 W2021 Course Outline GORDON v2
CRM 4255 W2021 Course Outline GORDON v2
CRM 4255 W2021 Course Outline GORDON v2
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CRM, AP/ADMS 4255 course outline Version date: October 18, 2020
Finally, students will need a stable, higher-speed Internet connection with the bandwidth
to enable videoconferencing such as the Zoom platform. If you are unsure about the
bandwidth of your Internet, please run a speed test using Ookla or a similar app.
Here are some useful links for student computing information, resources and help:
Student Guide to Moodle
Zoom@YorkU Best Practices
Zoom@YorkU User Reference Guide
Computing for Students Website
Student Guide to eLearning at York University
Here is a link to the Speedtest app for Internet speed performance testing
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Course readings
Two books are required for this course, as follows:
1. Managing Customer Experience and Relationships: A Strategic Framework, 3rd
Edition, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers: John Wiley & Sons. (The first edition of
the Peppers and Rogers text is not to be used for this course. The second edition is
also not encouraged). This text is available as an online e-resource. There is a free
trial period of 2 weeks but then the text needs to be purchased.
2. Managing the New Customer Relationship - Strategies to Engage the Social
Customer and Build Lasting Value, Ian Gordon, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 978-1-
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Evaluation
The makeup of the final course grade will be as follows:
Mid-term examination 20%
Final examination 20%
Individual analysis and hand-in of a case (max. 10 pages for case) 15%
Group project: research, analysis, and presentation 30%
Class participation 15%
Total 100%
Please note the due dates for the individual case assignment and the group term
project, and the dates for the midterm and final examinations. The dates can be found in
the Detailed Course Outline that appears below.
Course policies
Class participation
Grades will be assigned for class participation. On a voluntary basis, students are
invited to describe what they contributed to each class by sending an email within seven
days of a class to classparticipation4255@aol.com. Note that this email address is
ONLY to be used for the purpose as mentioned. [If students require urgent engagement
with the instructor, please note the email address at the beginning of this Course
Outline.] Class participation is based principally on the quality and quantity of
contributions in class and also to the team projects. “Quality” means demonstrating
academic thoughtfulness, insight and practical application to the instructor and other
students, and is more important than the frequency of in class contributions.
For this class to achieve the level of interaction and insight possible, and for student
participation to be gauged, it is essential that students are present at each class.
Attendance will be taken for each class. Discussion exercises are assigned and
discussions will be held on team assessments. This will be an important component of
the class participation mark. Those unable to attend should submit a written, 2-page
submission of the subject matter scheduled for discussion at that class. (Submissions
are not required if a student misses the first week of class but are required for other
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missed classes. The 2-page submission is due the week after the missed class).
Students may not miss more than two classes in the semester without professional
medical or equivalent documentation to support reasons for absence.
On nights when cases are discussed, individual students may be asked their views in
respect of specific topics. Responses will be considered as part of the class
participation grade.
Students will also have an opportunity to contribute to the class participation component
of the grade by commenting on the presentations of student groups at the end of the
semester by using a survey platform. Feedback from students regarding the
presentations of others will be provided to student groups anonymously.
Individual case submissions
Students should write up their individual case submissions using the following format:
• Situation Analysis (background to the issue)
• Objectives (Statement of issue to be addressed)
• Options to Address Objectives (list all options the company could undertake,
including status quo – do nothing different)
• Evaluation of Options (provide detailed evaluation, calculations, qualitative
assessment, etc, for each option. Use appendices as needed)
• Recommendations for Company (state clearly what the company should do and
why)
Cases should be written double-spaced, using Arial 12 point font and 1 inch margins.
Case submissions should not exceed 10 pages in length, excluding the cover page,
Table of Contents and appendices. Include all references to secondary sources using
good formatting with footnotes for every source that is not from you or your team.
Spelling and grammar count towards your grade. Use charts, tables and graphs where
appropriate. You can use bullets as appropriate (as I have done above!)
Note that all cases should be analyzed using only case material itself. That is, stay
within the case. Students are not expected to use external research to supplement case
material as this is not an exercise in research but rather one that explores students’
approach to analysis and critical thinking.
When you have completed your case, submit via the link provided on Moodle. Note the
date and time by when the submission must be made. No late submissions are
accepted. CASES MUST BE SUBMITTED ONE HOUR BEFORE THE START OF
CLASS as the cases will be discussed during class.
Note that Turnitin (via Moodle) and the instructor check for plagiarism; any evidence of
plagiarism is regarded as the serious offence it is and is treated accordingly.
Term paper to be researched, analyzed and presented by students working in groups
Students will be placed in groups by the course instructor.
The term paper will be done in groups and is intended to be based on detailed and
thoughtful secondary research [only secondary research] and should be no more than
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15 pages long [double spaced, in Arial 12 point font, 1 inch page margins]. The 15 page
limit excludes the cover page, table of contents and appendices. The 15 page limit is a
deliberate decision and is intended to focus the paper. Papers that are longer than 15
pages will incur a penalty of 5% per page over the 15 page limit.
Each team will have 20 minutes to present the results of their work. Only do secondary
research (e.g. Internet research and publications) – do not do any primary research
such as interviews or surveys for this paper. Secondary research is expected to be
detailed and extensive, and will involve considerable work. Approach this
assignment as a major TERM project, not a project to be completed in the last
week or two of the course. Groups that wait until the last few weeks of the course
to begin the assignment should not expect a good outcome – there would simply
not be enough time remaining to do justice to the subject matter.
Hand in long hand paper in soft copy [electronic copy] for grading (maximum 15 pages,
as described previously). Also, hand in your PowerPoint presentation in soft copy using
the link in Moodle 4 hours before you present – and use MSPowerPoint, no other format
(not Apple, not PDF).
All groups will work on the same project which will be discussed following group
presentations at the end of the semester.
Students are cautioned to comply with York University’s academic integrity policies and
specifically not to plagiarise. Do not reuse any content that did not originate with you
unless you place such content within inverted commas (“…..”) and then provide the
source. (APA formatting for citations should be used). In addition, do not paraphrase the
content of others without attribution as to source as this is plagiarism as well. The
matter of plagiarism and academic integrity more generally is treated very seriously by
the University and this course instructor. Turnitin will be used to help advise the
instructor as to the potential for plagiarism. The instructor has much experience
identifying plagiarism and uses sources in addition to Turnitin. He also subscribes to
various services such as those that some students might access.
Again, please treat this matter with the seriousness it deserves.
See additional notes on page 12 of this Course Outline.
The following describes the term paper background and expectation.
Background
The subject matter of this course considers how organizations can treat customers as
markets of one and explores the strategies, tools and techniques of so doing. Implicit in
this course is that consumers will benefit from the new and mutual value that is created
by organizations that seek to develop deeper relationships with their customers. Using
the theories and technologies considered by this course, it may be said that consumers
have never been better served as individuals by their suppliers of services and that data
accumulation has enabled much of this through the customization and personalization
that has led to even better service, goods, engagement, information, entertainment and
much else. This course is all about enabling the upsides of CRM such as those
mentioned. But what of the downsides? There is an emerging body of knowledge that
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suggests the downsides are material. A number of authors, informed observers and
politicians are growing concerned about the near-monopoly power of companies that
amass very big data repositories given to them by consumers and which then mine
these data, using artificial intelligence, algorithms and behavioral modification to benefit
their shareholders with relatively few safeguards for the consumers who provided the
data in the first place.
This term project seeks to understand three things: the current state environment for
very big data companies, the regulator environment of these organizations, and the
future state for consumers if the very big data companies continue on their current path.
This project is not focused on companies that accumulate large data sets about the
customers or even what might be termed “big data” companies but rather “very big data”
companies, those that have unusual access to customer data, its accumulation,
aggregation, analysis and insight, and have near monopoly power within their
respective markets. These are the main companies that are the subject of this
examination: Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter. In this
term project, these firms will be abbreviated as FAANGMT.
Major data organizations have been identified by a number of informed industry
observers and participants as having enormous economic and marketplace power that
derives directly from the data that as being provided freely by consumers and the firm’s
business model, which focuses as much or more on advertisers as it does on the
consumer. Companies that have been able to resell consumer data effectively have
created enormous shareholder value. The following are examples. While some of these
companies derive much of their revenues from their very big data repositories, others
are more diversified and/or derive a smaller percentage of their revenues from their
customer data. Still, it’s interesting to see how much value has been created in large
part by reuse of data that companies get for free from users of their services. As of July,
2020, the market capitalization of the companies mentioned is as follows:
• Facebook: US$700 billion
• Apple: US$1.7 trillion
• Amazon: US$1.6 trillion
• Netflix: US$241 billion
• Google’s parent company, Alphabet: US $1 trillion
• Microsoft: US$1.6 trillion
• Twitter, a company that makes much less use of the data available to them:
US$28 billion
Much of this market value stems from the ability of companies to monitor consumers in
multiple ways, including their locations [GPS functionality on their phones], behaviors
[such as their interactions and transactions], and even their very thoughts or states of
mind [e.g the searches that they plug into search engines, or their posts]. Given the
sheer scale of data that FAANGMT now have at their disposal, it might reasonably be
asked what potential downsides might derive from such data accumulation and its use
for individual consumers and society as a whole.
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Expectations
This then is the subject matter of this paper: to consider the implications of data
accumulation and its use by major data gatherers such as FAANGMT in the pursuit of
customer relationships both in their own interests and on behalf of others, such as
advertisers.
Student teams are expected to do much reading in order to inform this subject area
before considering how to respond to this project’s requirements.
Each team is expected to read at least FIVE (5) of the following books to prepare for
this project:
1. Anti-Social Media: How Facebook Has Disconnected Citizens and Undermined
Democracy, Siva Vaidhyanathan
2. Bezonomics, Brian Dumaine
3. Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your
World, Bruce Schneier
4. How Google Works, Eric Schmidt and Alan Eagle
5. Targeted: The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower's Inside Story of How Big
Data, Trump, and Facebook Broke Democracy and How It Can Happen Again,
Brittany Kaiser
6. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff
7. The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, Scott
Galloway
8. The Hacking of the American Mind, Robert H Lustig
9. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens
Democracy, Cathy O'Neil
10. Zucked, Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe, Roger McNamee
While there are other books that would serve to provide additional insights, this term
project requires the reading of only FIVE books from this list of books to inform the
background to the subject matter. It is obviously overwhelming for any one student to
read all these books and that is not the intent. I suggest that one book be assigned to
each team member and each team member should prepare a 2-3 page
summary/synopsis of the book they read for inclusion in the final report’s Appendix.
These books are all available in the Toronto library and most other library systems
(possibly including York’s); students should immediately place a hold on these books as
it can take some weeks for them to become available. If the hold will take longer than a
week or two, students will need to acquire the books other than via library systems.
Other secondary research, such as article gathering and review, viewing of a number of
TED talks on the subject, and gathering data on the regulator environment [as will be
discussed in the expected output] should also be undertaken. For example, there are a
number of articles that consider George Soros’ views when it comes to the near-
monopolies of major data gatherers and these articles should be reviewed. These tasks
might either be assigned to one student or shared among students in the team.
Once the books have been read and secondary research conducted, the team should
meet to assemble a framework to respond to the project as discussed below.
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Deliverables
The following is the recommended structure for the report. Use this as a starting point
and modify by adding subsections as you consider appropriate AFTER doing the
background research for which you have been asked. It is not expected that students
will subtract any sections from those that appear below. Importantly, note that this
project is FACT-based and should therefore provide as much factual evidence as
possible for any statements, with full referencing of any sources used:
A. Learning objectives [what do you want the reader of your report to know by
the end of this discussion]
B. Current state
a. Explain the business models of the FAANGMT and their reliance on
the use of consumer data
b. What data are gathered by FAANGMT?
A review of the types of data gathered by companies such as
FAANGMT, and the amount of data that each company has.
c. How do FAANGMT use the data they have?
d. Why do consumers provide data without being (directly) compensated
for it?
C. The regulatory environment
a. What restrictions are there at present on the gathering and use of
consumer data? Summarize restrictions in major markets such as:
• PIPEDA – Personal Information Protection and Electronic
Documents Act – in Canada,
• GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation – in Europe, and
• CCPA – the California Consumer Privacy Act.
The regulator environment is a lengthy, complex and detailed subject
on its own and a very detailed analysis is thus not expected here.
Provide a high-level view with a summary table to show what the
main areas are that are covered by the regulator the regimes as
mentioned and the major differences among them.
b. Describe the current state of consumer data protection and privacy in
the US [not just California].
D. Future state
Recognizing the data that FAANGMT companies have available, the uses
to which they put these data, and the restrictions that are presently in
place on their use, what might the future state look like for data use by
major organizations such as FAANGMT if no further restrictions apply?
That is, how might the future be different from the current state when it
comes to use of data, privacy and consumers’ satisfaction with their
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For greater clarity, all team members may not receive the same grade for a team
project, so work hard to get along, achieve the project objectives and do what is
expected of you – which is a lot like what will actually be expected of you in your future
business careers. More about this as we progress through the semester.
Individual work
York’s policy regarding academic honesty and integrity applies. It is assumed that work
submitted by an individual student is the original work of the student alone. Violation is
grounds for prosecution under the rules of the University. More specifically, identify
what content is not yours with full attribution with references, and:
• do not plagiarize anybody, ever, on any platform, using any media,
• do not self-plagiarize including reusing a paper you prepared previously –
perhaps for another course – in this course,
• do not copy the paper of another student in whole or in part,
• do not use any material purchased online or papers or other content from
the Internet or elsewhere without referencing the source.
Where no sources are mentioned, the work will be assumed to be yours alone. If this
proves not to be the case, VERY severe repercussions will generally result.
Academic honesty and integrity
In this course, we strive to maintain academic integrity to the highest extent possible.
Please familiarize yourself with the meaning of academic integrity by completing
SPARK’s Academic Integrity module at the beginning of the course. Breaches of
academic integrity range from cheating to plagiarism (i.e., the improper crediting of
another’s work, the representation of another’s ideas as your own, etc.). All instances of
academic dishonesty in this course will be reported to the appropriate university
authorities, and can be punishable according to the Senate Policy on Academic
Honesty.
Turnitin
All assignments are submitted through Turnitin which checks for plagiarism, as does the
course instructor. Students may opt out of the use of Turnitin for plagiarism by
requesting this from the course instructor. This may only be done in advance as it will
be generally assumed that Turnitin will be used for all students. Where a student seeks
to opt out from the use of Turnitin, other mechanisms, methods and/or technologies will
be identified and described by the course instructor to achieve the same objective.
The use of Turnitin means, among other things, that students consent to the use of their
material for inclusion as source documents in the Turnitin.com reference database,
where they will be used only for the purpose of detecting plagiarism. The terms that
apply to the University’s use of the Turnitin service are described at Turnitin.com.
Deferred standing
Deferred standing may be granted to students who are unable to write their final
examination at the scheduled time or to submit their outstanding course work on the last
day of classes. Details can be found at
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http://myacademicrecord.students.yorku.ca/deferred-standing
As communicated to the University community on March 13, 2020, Senate Executive
has agreed to waive until further notice the requirement for students to submit an
Attending Physician’s Statement in support of a request for deferred standing or
petitions.
DSA Form: http://www.registrar.yorku.ca/pdf/deferred_standing_agreement.pdf
In order to apply for deferred standing, students must register at https://sas-
app.laps.yorku.ca/. Followed by handing in a completed DSA form and supporting
documentation directly to the main office of the School of Administrative Studies via
email (apsas@yorku.ca) providing your ticket number and attaching the DSA form. The
DSA must be submitted no later than five (5) business days from the date of the exam.
These requests will be considered on their merit and decisions will be made available
by logging into the above-mentioned link. No individualized communication will be sent
by the School to the students (no letter or e-mails). Students with approved DSA will be
able to write their deferred examination during the School's deferred examination
period. No further extensions of deferred exams shall be granted. The format and
covered content of the deferred examination may be different from that of the originally
scheduled examination. The deferred exam may be closed book, cumulative and
comprehensive and may include all subjects/topics of the textbook whether they have
been covered in class or not.
Grades Release Dates (Grade Reports and Transcripts)
Grades submitted by an instructor are subject to review by the teaching unit in which the
course is offered and by the Faculty Council or Faculty Committee on Academic Policy
and Planning. Final course grades may be adjusted to conform to program or Faculty
grades distribution profiles. Normally, grades appear on grade reports and transcripts as
soon as they are submitted to the Registrar’s Office.
Schedule of readings and activities
Please note the following important dates for Fall/Winter 2020-21:
• For both full-year (Y) and Fall-term (F) courses, classes will start on September 9,
2020. Winter-term (W) classes will start on January 11, 2021.
• Reading Week will occur between October 10 and 16, 2020 in the Fall term, and
between February 13 and 19, 2021 in the Winter term.
• The last date to submit term work is December 9 in the Fall term, and April 13 in the
Winter term. December 9 is also a Fall Study Day.
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* Notes:
P&R = Peppers and Rogers text: Managing Customer Experience and Relationships: A
Strategic Framework, 3rd Edition, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers: John Wiley & Sons.
G = Gordon text, Managing the New Customer Relationship, Ian Gordon: John Wiley & Sons.
** - This discussion will draw on the seminal course text by Prof. B.J. Fogg, Persuasive
Technology, Stanford University. Students are not expected to purchase this text.
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