This issue features how LSBE is developing students into globally engaged citizens through a powerful combination of education and hands-on experience. We also bring you this bonus, told in Assistant Professor of Marketing Pradeep Jacob’s own words.
Jacob teaches a capstone course, helping students learn that marketing goes beyond brand in our interconnected global business world. In his own words, this is how he does it.
Why do Americans feel poorer in the richest economy in human history? Why do brands like Hermes and LVMH boom while Macy’s and JCPenney fade? And why does the world still send its money to Wall Street—despite everything?
These are the kinds of questions my Marketing Strategy capstone students wrestle with every semester.
We begin not with frameworks, but with friction. Something doesn’t add up in today’s economic reality, and my job is to make students curious enough to ask why.
We explore the strange math of modern prosperity. In 1980, the median home cost about 3 times the median income. Today, it costs over 6 times. And while U.S. GDP keeps climbing—now over $29 trillion—half of all consumer spending in the past year came from just 10% of the population. The middle class is hollowing out. Affordable luxury is vanishing. And yet, the S&P 500 keeps reaching new highs.
Students unpack the forces behind this paradox: stagnant wages despite rising productivity, the consolidation of corporate power, and the role of government policy in shaping winner-take-most markets. They look at how tech giants dominate not just industries, but entire indices. The “Magnificent Seven” stocks alone now account for nearly 30% of the S&P 500’s total value.
Then we go global.
We examine why the United States remains the gravitational center of global finance. Despite being home to less than 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. absorbs 70% of all global capital allocations—across stocks, bonds, and institutional flows. Investors pay a premium to park their money here. U.S. firms routinely trade at 20–25x earnings. For comparison, the average forward P/E ratio across G7 countries is far lower: Germany trades around 12x, the UK around 11x, France around 14x, Japan around 16x, and Italy even lower. In global capital markets, belief in Brand America comes with a pricing premium.
But what happens if that belief fades?
That’s the question I pose in our final lecture. Because there are signs that Brand America’s soft power is eroding. In recent global polls, more citizens now believe China is a greater force for good in the world than the United States. If this trend continues, it’s not just a diplomatic problem—it’s a strategic one.
Soft power isn’t just cultural exports and Hollywood movies. It’s a financial asset. It underwrites our ability to borrow cheaply. It invites the world’s capital to buy our stocks, our debt, our brands. If global belief in America as a stable, rules-based, opportunity-rich system fades, capital will look elsewhere. Cost of capital will rise. Multiples will compress. And the foundational assumption of American business strategy—that the world will keep believing—will be tested.
To bring it closer to home, I give my students a controlled environment to strip away all the noise. In our capstone simulation, they run a virtual company—making real marketing decisions on product design, pricing, segmentation, distribution, and branding. Here, they learn what it means to create value without the tailwinds of soft power or macroeconomic scale. They make mistakes, course-correct, and learn how strategy actually works when you're not Apple or Amazon.
And finally, we turn the lens inward.
What’s your brand strategy? What are you good at? What can you be paid for? What does the world need? What do you love? We end by helping students think of themselves as institutions—with reputations to build, capital to allocate, and stories to tell.
Because in the end, my goal isn’t just to teach students how to manage a brand. It’s to teach them to be global citizens—people who understand the economic, cultural, and geopolitical forces shaping the world, and who are equipped to lead in it.
Main image - Dr. Pradeep Jacob's (back) Marketing Strategy capstone class.