Marketing

Consumer Behaviour

This module provides students with an introduction to the study of buyer behaviour and consumer research. The various determinants of behaviour are examined and the applications of theory are considered and critiqued. The primary aim is to provide students with and understanding of customers and to explore how theory can inform managerial decisions. The module is theory laden as necessitated by the nature of the topic and the multi-disciplinary character of consumer research. At the end of this module, students will: understand the determinants of buyer actions, both psychological and social, be able to identify the strategic and managerial implications associated with buyer behaviour and be able to critically appraise various theories and apply them to managerial problems.

Division: MKT

Coordinator: Dr Julie Tinson

This module information is representative of what is included in the module in a given year. Details of actual reading, lectures and coursework may vary year to year and will be available at the beginning of the semester.

Marketing Research Techniques & Applications (previously MKTP04)

This module compares client-based and academic approaches to marketing research. It develops your knowledge and understanding of the nature, scope and types of marketing research, the range of research methods and techniques available to the market researcher, and their application to client-based and academic marketing problems. The specific objectives of this module are to develop the following skills:

• diagnosing the problems, issues and information requirements of client organisations and academic institutions,
• designing research that will obtain the required information,
• writing proposals for client-based and academic marketing research,
• distinguishing the different types of data that researchers use,
• constructing and analysing both qualitative and quantitative data,
• displaying, summarising and drawing inferences from quantitative survey data.

Division: MKT

Coordinator: Ray Kent

This module information is representative of what is included in the module in a given year. Details of actual reading, lectures and coursework may vary year to year and will be available at the beginning of the semester.

Reflective Practice and Learning

Aim: Teamwork provides a model of how to organize market-facing work activity. As a framework for analyzing that activity, it contributes to the successful realization of retail and marketing strategies. Teamwork is an activity and skills-based way of thinking about how to deliver marketplace goals through superior planning, coordination and cooperation. It brings together the ideas of internal and external marketing pathways to competitive success. The core subject of this module is the implementation of marketplace strategies through teamwork and self-reflection. Its key vision is that successful teamwork starts with you, the individual: for unless you are able to market yourself as a service providerwithin a team context, then you are unlikely to be successful at taking goods, services or ideas to market in the service of customers. Although the successful  implementation of marketing needs teambuilding skills, it also demands a professional approach to the work of learning and development, at the core of which are skills in reflective practice. This module lays the foundation for the development of such skills through providing opportunities for formal study, reflection and practice.

Objectives: The aim of this module is to embed participants in an action learning environment through which to nurture skills in teamwork and reflective practice as a strategy for understanding how to deliver marketplace goals. Specific objectives are to develop knowledge and skills in the following:

• Understanding teamwork as a way of organization marketing work activity.
• Understanding approaches to reflective practice and their place in teams;
• Critically reviewing teamwork processes and activities;
  Putting principles into practice through a marketing strategy simulation;
  

Teaching methods: A combination of lectures, tutorials, readings and team-based simulation events to build
a culture of observation and reflection on group and individual working practices.

Assessment: 100% examination

Recommended reading: Harvard Business School (2004),Teams that Succeed, HBS Press.

 

Division: MKT

Coordinator: Professor Douglas Brownlie

This module information is representative of what is included in the module in a given year. Details of actual reading, lectures and coursework may vary year to year and will be available at the beginning of the semester.

Professional Skills

Teamwork is an essential ingredient of the mix of skills that drive successful business partnerships. And as a framework for analyzing that work activity, it contributes to the successful realization of organizational strategies. Teamwork is an activity and skills-based way of thinking about how to deliver marketplace goals through superior coordination and cooperation. It brings together the ideas of internal and external marketing pathways to competitive success. The core subject of this module is the implementation of marketplace strategies through teamwork. Its key vision is that successful teamwork starts with you, the individual: for unless you are able to market yourself as a service provider within a team context, then you are unlikely to be successful at taking goods, services or ideas to market in the service of customers. This module lays the foundation for the development of skills in teamwork through providing opportunities for formal study and practice.

Division: MKT

Coordinator: Professor Douglas Brownlie

This module information is representative of what is included in the module in a given year. Details of actual reading, lectures and coursework may vary year to year and will be available at the beginning of the semester.

Retail Marketing

This module aims to increase your knowledge and understanding of the role of marketing in retailing and vice versa. The overall objective of this module is to develop an appreciation of the range and variety of issues in retail marketing. These include:

• The nature of the retail ‘product’
• Segmentation and positioning
• Consumer behaviour and retailing
• Marketing communication in a retail context
• Retail branding
• Store formats, design and layout
• Customer service.

Division: MKT

Coordinator: Dr Christoph Teller

This module information is representative of what is included in the module in a given year. Details of actual reading, lectures and coursework may vary year to year and will be available at the beginning of the semester.

Small Business Marketing

This module develops your knowledge and understanding of marketing in the smaller enterprise. In particular, the module is designed to put marketing theory into practice at the level of the smaller firm. The smaller firm by its very nature allows for the integration of theory and practice and requires students to take a holistic approach to marketing in the “real” world. The module reflects staff research interests in the areas of small business marketing and the marketing entrepreneurship interface.

Division: MKT

Coordinator: Dr Ian Fillis

This module information is representative of what is included in the module in a given year. Details of actual reading, lectures and coursework may vary year to year and will be available at the beginning of the semester.

Sports Marketing (previously MKTP19)

This module aims to investigate the application of modern marketing techniques to the sport industry. The objectives of this module are to:

• Extend knowledge of marketing approaches and applications into a lesser known sector,
• Sport
• Utilise marketing concepts in understanding business approaches to sport marketing
• Consider the extent to which sport marketing is ‘different’ to other sectors

Division: MKT

Coordinator:

This module information is representative of what is included in the module in a given year. Details of actual reading, lectures and coursework may vary year to year and will be available at the beginning of the semester.

Critical Thinking

This module focuses on how academic, published research may be evaluated in terms of its theory, methodology and knowledge systems, and then shows how these apply to academic research in marketing, in particular to producing research proposals and to the design of your dissertation.

The specific objectives of this module are to develop the following skills:

• to identify the styles and approaches taken by authors of articles in the major journals that report the results of peer-reviewed academic marketing research;
• to critically review and evaluate such articles on matters of methodology and analyse the findings according to a range of criteria; write a series of aims and objectives pertaining to your dissertation;
• evaluate a range of research methodologies and select those most suited to your dissertation topic area and to choose appropriate data analysis techniques to complement your chosen research methodologies.

The module will culminate in writing a research proposal that is an acceptable basis for proceeding to the dissertation.

Division: MKT

Coordinator:

This module information is representative of what is included in the module in a given year. Details of actual reading, lectures and coursework may vary year to year and will be available at the beginning of the semester.

International Marketing

This module develops your knowledge and understanding of how the marketing concept can be applied within the framework of competitive and changing world markets. Although the module focuses on internationalising firms of all sizes, there is a specific concentration on the smaller internationalising firm. At the end of this module students will be able to differentiate between international marketing and exporting, understand the dimensions of the international environment which influence marketing activities (especially culture), be aware of how companies adapt to the international environment and be able to apply this knowledge to current issues e.g. globalisation, ethics.    

Division: MKT

Coordinator: Dr Jennifer Thomson

This module information is representative of what is included in the module in a given year. Details of actual reading, lectures and coursework may vary year to year and will be available at the beginning of the semester.

Logistics & Channel Management

This module aims to develop an understanding of logistics, channel relationships and the supply chain. The objectives of this module are to: relate logistics to the economy and to business and extend knowledge of channel management, the supply chain and appropriate logistical concepts and practices.

Division: MKT

Coordinator:

This module information is representative of what is included in the module in a given year. Details of actual reading, lectures and coursework may vary year to year and will be available at the beginning of the semester.

Marketing Communications

This module is designed to build on existing knowledge and to help students to recognise, analyse and criticise the diverse range of theories that underpin marketing communications activities. Students will appreciate how marketing communications inform and influence not only customers in a narrow sense, but human beings as consumers in post-industrial society.

The objectives of the module are to develop students’ skills in the following areas:

• The ability to critically appraise various theories and to apply them to the problems of marketing communications.
• The ability to critically analyse a range of marketing communications and to provide a semiotic analysis of their content.
• To understand the role of communication in the exchange process in contemporary society

Division: MKT

Coordinator: Dr Julie Tinson

This module information is representative of what is included in the module in a given year. Details of actual reading, lectures and coursework may vary year to year and will be available at the beginning of the semester.

Retail Management Applications

By allowing students to make marketing management decisions typical of those undertaken within the contemporary environment, this module aims to further develop their marketing management expertise. The objectives are, firstly, to demonstrate the practical application of research techniques and, secondly, to make and communicate management decisions - on an individual and group basis - that benefit the client organisation.

Module content

This module is based on live, ‘hands-on’ projects undertaken by groups of around seven students. Each project has a financial budget for the purposes of research expenditure, whilst the clients are drawn from the private, public and non-profit sectors. As well as formulating apposite marketing management decisions in an individual and group context, the groups will have to interact and liaise with their client organisation. Project workshops will provide on-going staff support, although the emphasis is placed firmly upon student-centred learning and delivery. In addition to the submission of a written report, the process culminates with a presentation to the client’s management team and the academic staff.

Division: MKT

Coordinator: Professor Jimmy Young

This module information is representative of what is included in the module in a given year. Details of actual reading, lectures and coursework may vary year to year and will be available at the beginning of the semester.

Retail Buying & Merchandising

The aim of this module is develop an understanding of the principles of buying and merchandising in the retail sector. The module will cover strategic and operational issues and will examine these from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. After completing the module, students will be able to: explain the context of buying operations as part of a retailer's overall strategy, evaluate the strategic and operational issues facing retail buyers in different types of retail organisation, describe the activities of the retail buyer, with particular reference to new product development, sourcing, supplier choice and the merchandise management functions and discuss the interaction of the buyer with other functional areas within a retail organization; for example store operations, marketing and finance.

Division: MKT

Coordinator:

This module information is representative of what is included in the module in a given year. Details of actual reading, lectures and coursework may vary year to year and will be available at the beginning of the semester.

Services Marketing (previously MKTP08)

“Every business is a service business”   Philip Kotler, Professor of International Marketing, Kellogg School of Management.

Introduction

The size of the service sector is increasing in virtually all countries around the world, and it now accounts for almost two-thirds of the GDP globally. Through this module students can obtain an understanding of the distinctive nature of marketing in service organisations, and can critically assess the development of service marketing theories and their application in this diverse environment.

Objectives

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• Demonstrate an understanding of the unique challenges involved in marketing and managing services.
• Account for and explain the differences between services and goods;
• Understand how these differences influence the practice of services marketing management;
• Discuss the development of services marketing theories.

The management of customer relationships (and the behaviour of service users), which is of critical importance to organisations of all types and sizes, is a key area of focus in this module.  The measurement and assessment of service quality, both by the provider and by the user, is also studied. 

Division: MKT

Coordinator: Christine Tayor

This module information is representative of what is included in the module in a given year. Details of actual reading, lectures and coursework may vary year to year and will be available at the beginning of the semester.

Social Marketing

Marketing is at a cross roads. Some are asking whether powerful tools, such as branding and segmentation, can be used to promote socially desirable goals. If billboards have sold cigarettes to generations of children, can they be used with equal success to encourage non-smoking? Others are questioning the right of commercial marketers to sell the cigarettes in the first place. These twin notions, of both learning from and scrutinizing commercial marketing, are encapsulated in the concept of social marketing. This course will explain its principles, techniques and potential.

Objectives

The module will examine:

• The theoretical foundations of social marketing
• Social marketing planning, research and communication
• Contextual and relational thinking
• International social marketing
• Ethical issues and criticisms

Division: MKT

Coordinator:

This module information is representative of what is included in the module in a given year. Details of actual reading, lectures and coursework may vary year to year and will be available at the beginning of the semester.

Knowledge Management & Practice

The Knowledge Management and Practice module (to include reflective journal and an individual or group business focused piece of work) will be of utmost benefit to the students and prepare them more fully for the world of work (as this is the path most of them take) as opposed to the world of academia. Consequently, the new module offers 2 pathways towards fulfilling the research practice requirements of the final semester.

1. For those students who are disposed to a career in research/academia, the new module provides a pathway towards a sizeable piece of independent scholarship which leads to the production of an account of knowledge development in the form of a dissertation.

2. For those students disposed towards a career in business, industry and commerce, the new module provides a pathway towards a sizeable piece of group project work which leads to the production of an account of knowledge development in the form of a professional management report.

Both pathways represent a considerable opportunity to test and further develop skills in problem definition, information processing, critical thinking, decision-making, project management, reflective practice and interpretive reporting. The differences between the pathways are those of emphasis, style and form. But the overarching theme of both pathways is that of knowledge management and reflective practice.

Division: MKT

Coordinator:

This module information is representative of what is included in the module in a given year. Details of actual reading, lectures and coursework may vary year to year and will be available at the beginning of the semester.