Year 1

Block 1: Foundations of Global Business in the Digital Age

Block 2: Marketing: Theory and Practice

Block 3: Essential Business Intelligence and Financial Decision Making

Block 4: Entrepreneurship and Business Ventures

Year 2

Block 1: Contemporary Issues in Strategic Marketing

Block 2: Brands and Consumer Behaviour

Block 3: Marketing Practice and Industry Insights

Block 4: Business Ethics and Social Responsibility

Year 3

Block 1: Marketing, Society and Global Impact

Block 2: Choose one from the below:

Digital Marketing for Business Managers

Crisis and Business Continuity Management

Block 3: Choose one from the below:

Managing Customer Relationships

Creative Leadership and Business Thinking

Block 4: Choose one from the below:

Marketing Consultancy Project

Marketing Dissertation

Note: All modules are indicative and based on the current academic session. Course information is correct at the time of publication and is subject to review. Exact modules may, therefore, vary for your intake in order to keep content current. If there are changes to your course we will, where reasonable, take steps to inform you as appropriate.

Detailed Module Descriptions

Year 1

Block 1: Foundations of Global Business in the Digital Age

This module aims to develop your knowledge and appreciation of current global business issues and the challenges that they pose for management. It will explore how digital technology and social media developments influence business operations of many firms. You will be introduced to a range of key business functions such as Human Resource Management, Marketing, and Finance and Accounting, and identify how these functions contribute to organisational success. The module is designed to be highly contemporary, and its content is therefore driven by current world events and how they impact both the internal and external environment of global businesses.

Block 2: Marketing: Theory and Practice

This module offers you a comprehensive introduction to marketing theory and practice. The aim is to give you an understanding of the breadth of marketing theory, brought to life by illustrating its practical applications. Upon completion of the module, you will be able to demonstrate an ability to work with the following core marketing concepts:

1. The marketing concept and its functional orientation
2. The marketing environment and making sense of markets
3. Marketing research
4. Market segmentation, targeting, and positioning
5. Marketing mix planning - including products, services, pricing, distribution, and communications
6. Contemporary challenges facing marketers - e.g., e-marketing, ethics, and globalisation.
7. The module will provide you with an understanding of how these parts fit together, along with the basic skills needed to get off to a flying start with your studies in more specialised marketing topics in subsequent years.

Block 3: Essential Business Intelligence and Financial Decision Making

This module is designed to give you an appreciation of the volume of data available to organisations and the opportunity to apply Business Intelligence to such data to analyse, extrapolate, and extract further insights, in order to develop meaningful information and knowledge that can be used in a multitude of ways to improve efficiency and enhance organisational performance. In addition, this module concentrates on the use of financial data by introducing you to the basic principles of accounting, financial reporting, business performance analysis, and the use of these by businesses.

Block 4: Entrepreneurship and Business Ventures

This module starts by exploring the concept of entrepreneurship and critically evaluates the similarities and differences between entrepreneurial ventures, SMEs, and large enterprises. The aim is to establish an understanding of how entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs, and an entrepreneurial mindset can help economies and individuals prosper. The module introduces you to the Creative Problem-Solving process where you will get to evaluate the world around you and identify societal problems in need of a solution. The objective here is to encourage creativity and push you to think outside the box to build innovative, sustainable, and timely businesses. Common challenges and success factors will be explored, and you will learn how to transform a business idea into a formal business plan.

A focus of this module is to develop competence in all the areas related to running a business such as finance, operations, and team management. However, significant attention will be given to commercialising and marketing entrepreneurial ventures, with an emphasis on equipping you with invaluable transferable skills such as communication skills, adaptability, and learning the art of negotiation.

The module concludes in a mock business idea pitch competition where groups will showcase their knowledge and skills in a professional setting.

Year 2

Block 1: Contemporary Issues in Strategic Marketing

This module builds on your prior marketing knowledge and applies it in the context of a specific organisation addressing issues related to both consumer and business markets. It encourages the development of a critical approach to discussing the strategies and actions of differing types of firms and the impact of those strategies on various stakeholder groups. The content may include, but not be limited to: marketing analysis; trend analysis; strategic relationships; social and cultural impacts; strategies for competitive advantage; forecasting and managing change. In particular, it will identify, analyse, and make strategic recommendations on contemporary issues, for example, the growing impact of and reactions to sustainability and climate change.

Block 2: Brands and Consumer Behaviour

This module provides you with an understanding of contemporary brand theory and practices in building, positioning, and managing brands. You will examine the various roles that brands and branding play in consumers’ everyday lives with a particular focus on brand-consumer relationships. The module enables you to gain theoretical and practical insights into the creative processes involved in creating, designing, developing, and managing a brand. Moreover, you will understand how consumers navigate modern society by exploring the psychological processes that occur before, during, and after a product/service is consumed. As such, the module investigates how internal factors (e.g., motives, attitudes, perceptions, personality, self-concept) and external factors (e.g., culture, reference groups) drive consumer behaviour, and the symbiotic relationship between consumers and society at large.

Block 3: Marketing Practice and Industry Insights

The intended purpose of this module is to introduce you to the world of marketing intelligence: competitive and market understanding. The focus around marketing intelligence is on the related business practices such as marketing and value metrics, marketing research, data analysis, and data mining. With the help of this knowledge, you will be able to manage the market and customer insight. You will understand the importance of internal and external data, how to collect it, and how to turn the data into actionable marketing insight for marketing decision-making.

Industry insights provide much of the information that allows the insight-driven marketing concept to be put into practice in different industries, from tourism to fashion and different environments, from retail to manufacturing. The module aims to improve analytic skills, data skills, and insight-driven marketing strategic thinking through case studies and best practices from both multinational corporations and the SME sector.

Block 4: Business Ethics and Social Responsibility

Recognising that managers shape, and are shaped by, organisational processes, this module focuses on responsibility and ethics at both the organisational and managerial level. It will equip you with a sound grasp of key concepts in corporate social responsibility and their application within business practice. It will also explore ethical issues that corporate decision-makers face and the causes and consequences of (un)ethical decision-making.

Year 3

Choose one option each from blocks 2, 3 and 4.

Block 1: Marketing, Society and Global Impact

The module is designed to provide you with a critical lens through which you can understand and critique contemporary consumer contexts. The course content is driven by the need to address the impacts of marketing as a system upon consumers, the environment, and society. Taking lead from Critical Marketing and the Transformative Consumer Research (TCR) movement, the module will focus on consumer well-being in a holistic sense, through an examination of social issues in context. The course content follows an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on theories from sociology, public policy, cultural studies, and psychology.

This research-informed module aims to facilitate critical thinking on the subject area through the utilisation of case studies (e.g., Oxfam discussion papers), educational documentaries (e.g., the Media Education Foundation), and policy studies (e.g., UN SDGs).

Through the integration of disciplines and supporting material, the module aims to encourage you to develop pragmatic ways of approaching the problems and opportunities of well-being most relevant to consumers and their environments, with the aim of producing positive and uplifting change.

Block 2: Digital Marketing for Business Managers (option 1)

This module introduces you to digital marketing with a particular focus on social media. You will be encouraged to appreciate and contribute to debate on contemporary digital marketing issues. For example, how should organisations respond to the growth and increasing influence of social media networks that are rapidly catching up with search engines as leading 'go to' web resources. This module also explores the key digital marketing principles and their application across a range of organisations and marketing contexts. Emphasis is placed on the central role of customer information and how databases are built and used to identify, attract, and retain profitable consumer groups. You will have the opportunity to gain hands-on experience of proprietary social media management tools e.g., Hootsuite, and be supported to achieve internationally recognised standards of competency.

Block 2: Crisis and Business Continuity Management (option 2)

The module challenges you to take a counter-intuitive but important step in your business education - to consider how organisations are exposed to, and deal with, crises and business interruptions. The module synthesises two essential components, each of which have underlying theory and practice - crisis management and business continuity management.

Throughout the duration of the module, you will immerse yourself in crisis and business continuity management theory and practice, having an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge and skills in critical, applied, and real-time manners.

Block 3: Managing Customer Relationships (option 1)

This module provides a comprehensive review of customer relationships in B2B and B2C contexts. It explains why businesses should aim to develop long-term relationships with their customers, whether this is beneficial or viable for all business types, the costs it creates, and the benefits it delivers, along with insight into how sustainable customer relationships can be implemented. You will be introduced to various CRM practices and technologies that are used by businesses to enhance the achievement of marketing, sales, and service objectives throughout the customer lifecycle stages of customer acquisition, retention, and development.

Block 3: Creative Leadership and Business Thinking (option 2)

This module aims to help you enhance your creative leadership skills, in particular, to become more self-aware of your personal leadership model and to strengthen your capabilities at influencing others. The module is structured around three particular perspectives:

1. Leadership in General (Mainstream Perspective)
2. Creative Leadership
3. Critical & Contextual Leadership (Critical Perspective)
4. Leadership in Practice

The module will look at the influence of different leadership styles on business thinking and explore creative solutions to business problems.

Block 4: Marketing Consultancy Project (option 1)

This module is an individual marketing consultancy project that serves as a commercial and employability-relevant experience. It requires you to compile a report that acts as a solution to a marketing business problem. You will submit your preferred project choice, and after consultation with the programme leader, you will be allocated to a project you are most suited to. In an identical way to a marketing consultancy, the organisation will give a summary briefing to you either face-to-face or by Skype before the project starts, enabling you to question and investigate further details. This is an important part of the marketing consultancy process. You will then form your own investigation proposal document to give a summary outline of how you will research and analyse the project. After feedback, you will continue your project following the direction given.

Marketing Consultancy project briefs are sourced by the Module leader from local companies and advertising/PR/Creative agencies, and are live projects. All project briefs will be scrutinised to ensure they are appropriate to give a high level of commercial marketing experience. In this way, you gain a guaranteed marketing consultancy experience, use your learned skills to make a genuine impact and benefit for the company, and are able to summarise the experience on your CV/LinkedIn profile and describe the value of your project at an interview.

This employability aspect to the Marketing Consultancy project is crucial as it provides evidence of using your degree in action and provides a focus area for job applications. Each Marketing Consultancy project student will be allocated a supervisor to assist with both the interpretation and the marketing proposal for the report, and academic standards. This is an individual project, although a cluster of students will be formed (up to 6 students per project), who work on the same (or similar parts of) the project. This results in the client gaining a variety of innovative solutions to their marketing situation.

Block 4: Marketing Dissertation (option 2)

The marketing dissertation is designed to give you the opportunity to research a topic of your individual interest. You will have the opportunity to expand on an area that has been of interest in previous marketing modules, link the study to issues that intrigued you from your work placements, or explore a topic that has not been studied in a formal module. With the guidance of several lecturers and appointments with an assigned dissertation supervisor, the dissertation should demonstrate the application of academic theory to actual marketing situations. The module requires you to work independently and set your own goals in exchange for the opportunity to research a topic that excites and interests you personally.

Teaching and assessment

A mixture of large group sessions, tutorials, on line resources and formative assessments are used. Students are given feedback throughout the course to develop and improve their technical knowledge, skills and understanding.

Emphasis is placed on the application of technical understanding to case based and impact focused scenarios through the use of assessments.

Teaching contact hours

This is a full-time course. Each module is worth 30 credits. It is expected that student will spend a total of 300 hours of study for each module. You should be prepared to devote approximately 10 contact hours a week to your studies and additional independent hours of study in order to succeed. Teaching is through a mix of lectures, tutorials, seminars and lab sessions and the breakdown of these activity types is shown in each module description.

Other: In addition, each module provides a two-hour surgery each week for individual consultation with the lecturer. You will also have timetabled meetings with your personal tutor and careers and/or subject meetings scheduled throughout the year.

Self-directed study: In order to prepare for, and assimilate, the work in lectures and seminars you will be expected to use our on-line resources, participate in flipped or virtual classroom discussions on our virtual learning environment (VLE) and engage in personal study and revision for approximately 25 hours per week.

Accreditations

Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) Accredited Study Centre

Institute of Direct Marketing (IDM) Key Educational Partner

Programme modules are aimed to map to certain CIM professional qualifications. This means that when students successfully complete the programme they are exempt from certain modules of CIM qualifications. Possible exemptions are subject to approval from the professional bodies.