Marketing is increasingly moving into the post-digital era – as consumers spend more time online and traditional media turns digital, the lines between these become blurred. This module introduces you to core marketing theories, principles, and techniques, providing a grounding for the rest of the course. Together, we’ll cover a broad spectrum of topics, from macro and microenvironments to product and branding, and digital tactics to marketing research. You’ll realise that a blend of marketing concepts often yields more effective results and enables you to achieve both specific marketing and wider strategic and operational objectives. You’ll summarise what you’ve learnt by writing a marketing audit of a case study organisation with marketing recommendations.
Gain an awareness of the basics of planning and managing an organisation’s strategic communications, including the initial steps required to propose a campaign. We’ll begin by exploring how these steps are applied in various contexts across the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors. You’ll learn how strategic brand communication plays a vital role in achieving an organisation’s KPIs and objectives. The assessment involves you applying your newly acquired knowledge by developing a communication plan for a real client. You’ll cover various topics, including initial research and evaluation, how to define your communication objectives, messaging and storytelling, digital communication, strategies and tactics, project management, and budgeting.
Consumer Behaviour & Culture explores the psychology and sociology behind consumer behaviour. You’ll gain an appreciation of the importance of understanding consumer behaviour and patterns from a retail perspective and begin to develop your own critical analysis of influencing factors. As culture is almost always a dominant influence, you’ll look specifically at the role of culture when it comes to decision making, in numerous international contexts. Throughout the module, you’ll cover a broad range of topics including decision making, learning and memory, attitude theory, how culture influences consumer behaviour, and more.
Explore how social media fits into and complements a marketer’s toolbox. Combining theory with practice, this module covers core skills and explores how social media can be effectively integrated into wider marketing campaigns. We’ll cover the ‘four zones’ of social media that marketers can use to achieve strategic objectives: community (such as Instagram), publishing (Tumblr), entertainment (apps like Candy Crush Saga), and commerce (Groupon). You’ll gain insight on strategic planning, incorporating social platforms into communications strategies, using data to yield customer insights, and how to measure the value of social media activity. For your assessment, you’ll work as a group to pull together and present an analysis of an organisation’s social media strategy, including recommendations for improvement.
Understand the role brand management play in today’s dynamic and highly competitive marketing environment. You'll study branding, exploring topics ranging from key principles and concepts like positioning, identity, and loyalty, to exciting special interest areas, including celebrity endorsements, global branding, not-for-profit branding, and ethical issues. We’ll examine how consumers interact with brands, the need to measure brand performance – and how, and the brand management process for operating in a dynamic global environment. Upon completion, you’ll be able to analyse brands and produce a brand management report, reviewing and evaluating performance, and suggesting branding recommendations.
As marketers we’re ever faced with an increasing volume and range of data, innovative methods of analysis, and new means to measure marketing activity. In this module, you’ll discover the importance of employing relevant marketing data to inform strategic decision making. We’ll explore how to identify the most appropriate data, metrics, and analytics tools to plan, monitor, and measure the outcomes of marketing campaign and activity and ensure effective marketing decision making. For your assessment, you’ll build your own marketing metrics dashboard using the most suitable key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure marketing performance. By the end of the module, you’ll be well equipped to selectively analyse different marketing data for insight and undertake effective decision making in relation to marketing resources.
Marketing Project is where you’ll synthesise the knowledge you’ve gained throughout your course and develop into an area of specialism, demonstrating application of theory and your originality. You’ll undertake one of four marketing-based project pathways, where you’ll propose, produce, and defend your extended individual project. The four pathways you can choose from are: dissertation pathway, literature review pathway, business plan pathway, or consultancy project pathway. This provides flexibility and enables you to select the most relevant pathway to develop your skills and tailor your degree to your future aspirations. Ultimately as part of Marketing Project, you’ll produce a significant piece of individual work at a high standard.