Unit of Study FORS5004 Product Development and Marketing (2025)

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Unit Snapshot

Unit type

PG Coursework Unit
Credit points

12
Faculty & College

Faculty of Science and Engineering
Placement

No

Anti-requisites

FORS2007 - Product Development and Marketing

Enrolment information

This unit is delivered intensively and will include a 5-day field trip that has a student contribution cost.

Unit description

Exposes students to the general principles of marketing, highlights the unique challenges renewable materials such as wood present in respect of meeting consumer expectations and explores the variety of strategies and technologies that are used to gain a competitive advantage in the market place.

Unit content

Introduction to the principles of marketing
Global wood supplies and uses of wood products
The character of the Australian market for wood products
A quick review of wood science
Specific challenges for wood products manufacturers
Preparing input/output tables to calculate net returns
Introduction to wood products manufacturing processes
Value adding strategies
Emerging technologies
Domestic and international trading conventions

Availabilities

Not currently available in 2025

Learning outcomes

Unit Learning Outcomes express learning achievement in terms of what a student should know, understand and be able to do on completion of a unit. These outcomes are aligned with the graduate attributes. The unit learning outcomes and graduate attributes are also the basis of evaluating prior learning.

On completion of this unit, students should be able to:

understand and apply the general principles of marketing goods and the conventions of domestic and foreign trade.

recognise the general attributes of global and domestic wood products markets and how these can vary over short times.

describe the contrast between consumer expectations of predictability and consistency and the variability of natural materials like wood.

understand the concept of multiple outputs from wood manufacturing processes due to variability in the input and how to optimise returns from a mix of high and low value products.

demonstrate a capacity to prepare a cost-benefit table for all process inputs/outputs, and the final net return.

demonstrate an understanding of the common manufacturing processes applied to wood products manufacturing and develop strategies for adding value to wood products in a given market context.

offer an informed opinion of the medium-term outlook of the Australian wood producing and processing industries.

Fee information

Domestic

Commonwealth Supported courses
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