Edition 2026
T H E A M S T E R D A M E X A M - PA S S B L U E P R I N T
Marketing
The complete crash course for passing your exam: a full
summary with exam-style problems, every calculation
shown, every variable explained.
One summary. One notebook. A pass.
01 The Harsh Truth & Psychological Launchpad p. 1
02 Core Concepts & Variable Mechanics p. 3
03 The Deep-Dive Exam Problem Factory p. 12
04 The 48-Hour Emergency Panic Index p. 43
Independent study material. Not affiliated with, or endorsed by, any university, school or publisher. Check your own course requirements.
, T HE HARSH T RUT H & PSYCHO LO G ICAL L AUNCHPAD
MODULE 1
The Harsh Truth & Psychological
Launchpad
To the student who started yesterday and has an exam coming up,
Print this document today. Not tonight, not after the next lecture. Today. A file on a laptop com‐
petes with messages, tabs and sleep; paper does not. Put the printed pages in your bag now, be‐
cause everything below assumes you can touch them.
Then buy one notebook. Completely clean, completely empty, no old lecture notes in the back.
This notebook has one job: every calculation step, written by hand, with the numbers substituted.
Not z = (x
̄ − μ)/(σ/√n) as a symbol, but z = (18.40 − 17.50) / (2.70 / √36) = 0..45 = 2.00, with
the rounding stated. Hand-writing forces you to slow down at the exact moment where marks are
lost: the wrong denominator, the forgotten square root, the mean of the sample confused with the
mean of the population. Fill that notebook, problem after problem, until the last page is used. If the
notebook is still half empty the day before the exam, you did not study enough. That is the meas‐
urement.
Now protect the hours. If your situation allows it, ask your employer for fewer shifts or a short
break before the exam. Many students cannot, and there is no shame in that, so here is the real al‐
ternative: two protected study blocks around every shift. Ninety minutes before you leave, ninety
minutes after you come home, phone in another room, both blocks written into your calendar like
they are paid work. Two blocks a day adds up to serious hours of real work. That is enough for
Marketing 1 theory and the statistics, if the hours are clean.
Do not study where you sleep. Pack the printed pages, the notebook, a pen and a basic calculator,
and go to a room full of people who are also working: your university library, a public library or a
quiet study room. Check their current opening hours and access rules yourself, because these
change. The mechanism is simple and it is not motivation: when the people around you are fo‐
cused, the cost of opening your phone rises, so you open it less, so your effective study time per
hour rises.
Grade every attempt with the Self-Grading Scorecard below, and grade it brutally. Awarding your‐
self a point for an answer you "basically knew" is how students arrive at the exam convinced they
are ready and leave the hall confused. In past Marketing exams, both definition questions and full
statistical calculations appear, and calculation marks are usually split across steps, so a missing in‐
termediate line costs points even when the final number is right. Your scorecard must punish that
the way an examiner does.
You are not behind because you are incapable. You are behind because you started yesterday.
The time before your exam is short, but it is not nothing, and it is entirely enough if every study day
leaves ink on a page.
Print it, buy the notebook, and start today. I will not accept excuses, and I will not stop expecting
you to pass.
The Academic Mother
The Amsterdam Exam-Pass Blueprint · Marketing 1
, T HE HARSH T RUT H & PSYCHO LO G ICAL L AUNCHPAD
Your four non-negotiables
1 2
Print this booklet today One clean, empty notebook
Paper, not a screen. You will write on it, fold it and Write every calculation step by hand, problem after
carry it. problem, until the notebook is completely full.
3 4
Protect your study time Sit among focused people
If your situation allows, ask for fewer shifts before the Pack your bag and go to your university library, a
exam. If it doesn't, that's fine: guard two focused public library or a quiet study room. Their focus
hours around each shift. becomes yours.
How to grade yourself
1. Score the page you actually wrote, never the thinking you remember having. If a step is not visible in ink, it
earns zero.
2. Score before you check the answer key for presentation and method, then check the key for the number.
Never adjust an earlier score afterwards.
3. A correct final answer with missing intermediate lines is a partial fail, because exam markers award points
per step and cannot see your head.
4. Write the score and the verdict at the top of the page in a different colour, so that in your final review you
can find every weak page in seconds.
Self-Grading Scorecard: 10 points, any problem in this booklet Pass line:
Criterion Proof in your notebook Pts Mine
Correct concept or The formula or the named concept is written out at the top of the page 2
formula selected before any number appears, in its full symbolic form.
All numbers correctly A second line showing the same formula with every symbol replaced by the 2
substituted actual figure and its unit, for example 2.70 / √36 and not just 0.45.
Arithmetic executed and Every intermediate result is on its own line; no jump of more than one 2
shown step by step operation between two written lines.
Units, rounding and Euros, counts, percentages or 'dimensionless' written next to each result, 2
direction stated and an explicit rounding statement such as 'rounded to two decimals'.
Conclusion in plain One or two sentences naming what the result means for the firm, and for 2
business language tests, the explicit reject or do not reject decision against the critical value.
• 8 points or more: pass for now, move on, but write the one point you lost at the top of the page.
• Below 8 points: redo the same problem tomorrow from a completely blank page, without looking at today's attempt.
• Two failures on the same problem type: that topic becomes the first item of your next morning block, before anything new.
The Amsterdam Exam-Pass Blueprint · Marketing 2
, C O RE CO NCE PTS & VARIABL E ME CHANICS
MODULE 2
Core Concepts & Variable Mechanics
That is enough, but only if you stop reading slides and start rebuilding models from a blank page. This module gives
you the six concept families that the Marketing 1 and Marketing 2 exams keep coming back to: the value creation
chain, consumer buying behaviour, segmentation and targeting, differentiation and positioning, products, services and
brands, and new-product development with the product life cycle and target costing. In past exams the paper was split
into short definitional items worth one point each and longer case questions worth five to ten points, where you were
asked to apply a model, draw or label it, and justify a recommendation. That means two different skills. Short items re‐
ward an exact definition in one sentence. Case items reward a chain: here is the number, here is the model, here is
what the number forces the company to do. Every concept below is built as that chain, with invented Amsterdam busi‐
nesses and invented figures so you practise the skill and not the memory of an old answer. Where a formula exists on
your verified sheet, you get it with units. Where marketing uses plain arithmetic instead of a sheet formula, I say so
openly, because writing a formula that is not on your sheet is how students lose marks for invented theory. Read each
concept once, close the page, and rewrite it from memory into your notebook. The scorecard at the end tells you
whether what you wrote would survive a marker.
THE BOOK BEHIND THIS COURSE
Principles of
Marketing Principles of Marketing
Philip Kotler, Gary Philip Kotler, Gary Armstrong · 8th edition · Pearson Education (confirmed by "PEARSON EDUCATION, INC."
Armstrong
copyright lines in the lecture slide disclaimers)
Check which edition your own course uses: chapter numbers can shift between editions.
Chapter-by-chapter map: Module 4.
8TH EDITION
The value creation chain: customer value, satisfaction, customer equity and CRM
groups
It is the spine of Chapter 1 and almost every exam opens with a definitional item from it and closes with a case asking which customers the firm
should keep, grow or drop.
Marketing is a process by which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships to capture
value from customers in return. Read that sentence twice: value goes out, value comes back. Customer value is the con‐
sumer's assessment of a product's overall capacity to satisfy his or her needs. Customer satisfaction is the extent to which a
product's perceived performance matches a buyer's expectations. The promise you make before purchase is the value pro‐
position: the set of benefits or values a company promises to deliver to customers to satisfy their needs. After purchase, the
money that comes back over the whole relationship, added across all customers, is customer equity: the total combined cus‐
tomer lifetime values of all of the company's customers. Customer relationship groups sort customers on two axes, loyalty
(how long they stay) and profitability (how much margin they bring): butterflies are profitable but short-lived, true friends are
profitable and loyal, strangers are neither, and barnacles are loyal but not profitable. The arithmetic below is ordinary multi‐
plication, not a formula from an official formula sheet, so do not present it in the exam as a named marketing formula.
Symbol Variable Unit Role in the model
average spend per visit EUR per visit Pushed up by price, upselling and basket size; pushes annual revenue per
customer up proportionally.
visits per year visits per year Pushed by loyalty programmes and service reminders; multiplies spend into
annual revenue.
gross margin rate % of revenue Pushed down by discounts and supplier cost rises; converts revenue into
margin.
expected years retained years Pushed by satisfaction and switching barriers; stretches annual margin into
lifetime value.
number of customers in the customers Scales lifetime value into customer equity for the whole firm.
group
The Amsterdam Exam-Pass Blueprint · Marketing 3
T H E A M S T E R D A M E X A M - PA S S B L U E P R I N T
Marketing
The complete crash course for passing your exam: a full
summary with exam-style problems, every calculation
shown, every variable explained.
One summary. One notebook. A pass.
01 The Harsh Truth & Psychological Launchpad p. 1
02 Core Concepts & Variable Mechanics p. 3
03 The Deep-Dive Exam Problem Factory p. 12
04 The 48-Hour Emergency Panic Index p. 43
Independent study material. Not affiliated with, or endorsed by, any university, school or publisher. Check your own course requirements.
, T HE HARSH T RUT H & PSYCHO LO G ICAL L AUNCHPAD
MODULE 1
The Harsh Truth & Psychological
Launchpad
To the student who started yesterday and has an exam coming up,
Print this document today. Not tonight, not after the next lecture. Today. A file on a laptop com‐
petes with messages, tabs and sleep; paper does not. Put the printed pages in your bag now, be‐
cause everything below assumes you can touch them.
Then buy one notebook. Completely clean, completely empty, no old lecture notes in the back.
This notebook has one job: every calculation step, written by hand, with the numbers substituted.
Not z = (x
̄ − μ)/(σ/√n) as a symbol, but z = (18.40 − 17.50) / (2.70 / √36) = 0..45 = 2.00, with
the rounding stated. Hand-writing forces you to slow down at the exact moment where marks are
lost: the wrong denominator, the forgotten square root, the mean of the sample confused with the
mean of the population. Fill that notebook, problem after problem, until the last page is used. If the
notebook is still half empty the day before the exam, you did not study enough. That is the meas‐
urement.
Now protect the hours. If your situation allows it, ask your employer for fewer shifts or a short
break before the exam. Many students cannot, and there is no shame in that, so here is the real al‐
ternative: two protected study blocks around every shift. Ninety minutes before you leave, ninety
minutes after you come home, phone in another room, both blocks written into your calendar like
they are paid work. Two blocks a day adds up to serious hours of real work. That is enough for
Marketing 1 theory and the statistics, if the hours are clean.
Do not study where you sleep. Pack the printed pages, the notebook, a pen and a basic calculator,
and go to a room full of people who are also working: your university library, a public library or a
quiet study room. Check their current opening hours and access rules yourself, because these
change. The mechanism is simple and it is not motivation: when the people around you are fo‐
cused, the cost of opening your phone rises, so you open it less, so your effective study time per
hour rises.
Grade every attempt with the Self-Grading Scorecard below, and grade it brutally. Awarding your‐
self a point for an answer you "basically knew" is how students arrive at the exam convinced they
are ready and leave the hall confused. In past Marketing exams, both definition questions and full
statistical calculations appear, and calculation marks are usually split across steps, so a missing in‐
termediate line costs points even when the final number is right. Your scorecard must punish that
the way an examiner does.
You are not behind because you are incapable. You are behind because you started yesterday.
The time before your exam is short, but it is not nothing, and it is entirely enough if every study day
leaves ink on a page.
Print it, buy the notebook, and start today. I will not accept excuses, and I will not stop expecting
you to pass.
The Academic Mother
The Amsterdam Exam-Pass Blueprint · Marketing 1
, T HE HARSH T RUT H & PSYCHO LO G ICAL L AUNCHPAD
Your four non-negotiables
1 2
Print this booklet today One clean, empty notebook
Paper, not a screen. You will write on it, fold it and Write every calculation step by hand, problem after
carry it. problem, until the notebook is completely full.
3 4
Protect your study time Sit among focused people
If your situation allows, ask for fewer shifts before the Pack your bag and go to your university library, a
exam. If it doesn't, that's fine: guard two focused public library or a quiet study room. Their focus
hours around each shift. becomes yours.
How to grade yourself
1. Score the page you actually wrote, never the thinking you remember having. If a step is not visible in ink, it
earns zero.
2. Score before you check the answer key for presentation and method, then check the key for the number.
Never adjust an earlier score afterwards.
3. A correct final answer with missing intermediate lines is a partial fail, because exam markers award points
per step and cannot see your head.
4. Write the score and the verdict at the top of the page in a different colour, so that in your final review you
can find every weak page in seconds.
Self-Grading Scorecard: 10 points, any problem in this booklet Pass line:
Criterion Proof in your notebook Pts Mine
Correct concept or The formula or the named concept is written out at the top of the page 2
formula selected before any number appears, in its full symbolic form.
All numbers correctly A second line showing the same formula with every symbol replaced by the 2
substituted actual figure and its unit, for example 2.70 / √36 and not just 0.45.
Arithmetic executed and Every intermediate result is on its own line; no jump of more than one 2
shown step by step operation between two written lines.
Units, rounding and Euros, counts, percentages or 'dimensionless' written next to each result, 2
direction stated and an explicit rounding statement such as 'rounded to two decimals'.
Conclusion in plain One or two sentences naming what the result means for the firm, and for 2
business language tests, the explicit reject or do not reject decision against the critical value.
• 8 points or more: pass for now, move on, but write the one point you lost at the top of the page.
• Below 8 points: redo the same problem tomorrow from a completely blank page, without looking at today's attempt.
• Two failures on the same problem type: that topic becomes the first item of your next morning block, before anything new.
The Amsterdam Exam-Pass Blueprint · Marketing 2
, C O RE CO NCE PTS & VARIABL E ME CHANICS
MODULE 2
Core Concepts & Variable Mechanics
That is enough, but only if you stop reading slides and start rebuilding models from a blank page. This module gives
you the six concept families that the Marketing 1 and Marketing 2 exams keep coming back to: the value creation
chain, consumer buying behaviour, segmentation and targeting, differentiation and positioning, products, services and
brands, and new-product development with the product life cycle and target costing. In past exams the paper was split
into short definitional items worth one point each and longer case questions worth five to ten points, where you were
asked to apply a model, draw or label it, and justify a recommendation. That means two different skills. Short items re‐
ward an exact definition in one sentence. Case items reward a chain: here is the number, here is the model, here is
what the number forces the company to do. Every concept below is built as that chain, with invented Amsterdam busi‐
nesses and invented figures so you practise the skill and not the memory of an old answer. Where a formula exists on
your verified sheet, you get it with units. Where marketing uses plain arithmetic instead of a sheet formula, I say so
openly, because writing a formula that is not on your sheet is how students lose marks for invented theory. Read each
concept once, close the page, and rewrite it from memory into your notebook. The scorecard at the end tells you
whether what you wrote would survive a marker.
THE BOOK BEHIND THIS COURSE
Principles of
Marketing Principles of Marketing
Philip Kotler, Gary Philip Kotler, Gary Armstrong · 8th edition · Pearson Education (confirmed by "PEARSON EDUCATION, INC."
Armstrong
copyright lines in the lecture slide disclaimers)
Check which edition your own course uses: chapter numbers can shift between editions.
Chapter-by-chapter map: Module 4.
8TH EDITION
The value creation chain: customer value, satisfaction, customer equity and CRM
groups
It is the spine of Chapter 1 and almost every exam opens with a definitional item from it and closes with a case asking which customers the firm
should keep, grow or drop.
Marketing is a process by which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships to capture
value from customers in return. Read that sentence twice: value goes out, value comes back. Customer value is the con‐
sumer's assessment of a product's overall capacity to satisfy his or her needs. Customer satisfaction is the extent to which a
product's perceived performance matches a buyer's expectations. The promise you make before purchase is the value pro‐
position: the set of benefits or values a company promises to deliver to customers to satisfy their needs. After purchase, the
money that comes back over the whole relationship, added across all customers, is customer equity: the total combined cus‐
tomer lifetime values of all of the company's customers. Customer relationship groups sort customers on two axes, loyalty
(how long they stay) and profitability (how much margin they bring): butterflies are profitable but short-lived, true friends are
profitable and loyal, strangers are neither, and barnacles are loyal but not profitable. The arithmetic below is ordinary multi‐
plication, not a formula from an official formula sheet, so do not present it in the exam as a named marketing formula.
Symbol Variable Unit Role in the model
average spend per visit EUR per visit Pushed up by price, upselling and basket size; pushes annual revenue per
customer up proportionally.
visits per year visits per year Pushed by loyalty programmes and service reminders; multiplies spend into
annual revenue.
gross margin rate % of revenue Pushed down by discounts and supplier cost rises; converts revenue into
margin.
expected years retained years Pushed by satisfaction and switching barriers; stretches annual margin into
lifetime value.
number of customers in the customers Scales lifetime value into customer equity for the whole firm.
group
The Amsterdam Exam-Pass Blueprint · Marketing 3
