Marketing Communications Management

Taught modules

Compulsory modules

• Introduction to the Principles of Marketing

  This module introduces the key principles of marketing by studying the theories that underpin the subject. You will explore the roles of buyers, the marketing environment, and the ways in which marketers plan, manage, implement and monitor marketing programmes in the context of the international environment of the 21st century.

• Understanding Customer Behaviour

  You will critically appraise the behaviours of customers and their interactions with marketing. Informed by behavioural science, you will analyse why customers behave as they do and how marketing activity influences their behaviours. This analysis informs your critical understanding and implementation of both strategic and responsible marketing practice. An innovative dimension of this course is the investigation of change agents that will significantly influence the behaviours of customers in the future, for example neuroscience, climate change and technology innovation. This is an analytical module that utilises research evidence to inform evaluation, behavioural and communications research.

• Research Methods for Events and Marketing

  This module delivers the skills that enable you to conduct marketing research independently. Students on the MSc programmes are expected to undertake effective research drawing upon a range of secondary and primary data sources in the preparation of coursework. It is important that you are exposed to a range of methodological issues, data collection techniques and study skills. In addition, this module is geared towards the preparation for, and successful completion of, high quality, rigorous and systematic research for business and management.

• Professional and Academic Development

  This professional and academic skills development module helps you to become a lifelong learner, develop career focus and enhances your employability. Starting with a focus on how to achieve your best academically, you then develop your skills for employment and career planning. You will work through a self-development plan, taking the lead in your own learning and development. You will be coached in identifying, engaging in and reflecting on how you can gain from developmental activities within the university and externally.

• Strategic Brand Management

  You will examine how brands are created and successfully managed. You will explore the latest research and practice in strategic brand management and focus on innovative approaches to new product development. Key ethical, environmental and socio-cultural implications for contemporary brand management are analysed within regional, national and global contexts. The latest research and practice in strategic brand management and the use of social media and digital communications technology, is investigated. On completing this module, you will have gained an advanced knowledge of the latest tools, techniques and broader societal implications of contemporary strategic brand management.

• Brand and Marketing Communications

  You will explore the role and usage of contemporary brand and marketing communications and the fundamental insight that an organisation's brand strategy needs to be at the heart of all its marketing communications activities. A professional and ethically responsible focus will help you to consider multiple stakeholders' needs – eg consumers, businesses, the media, pressure groups – in a global context. A broad range of marketing communications channels and tools will be critically assessed. This includes advertising, public relations, sponsorship and digital marketing communications. Creative and strategic insights from current practice will help your understanding and application of marketing communications skills.

• Content Marketing Management

  This module investigates the concepts of branded content and content marketing. You will particularly focus on the role and application of content marketing as a new managerial approach in marketing communications. The module critically examines the fundamental paradigm shift within the marketing communications landscape from push to pull marketing which has led to the rise of branded content and content marketing. Furthermore, this module clarifies what differentiates branded content and content marketing from other key marketing communications concepts and management approaches. You will learn to develop ethically responsible content marketing management practices across a variety of sectors and consider multiple stakeholders on a regional, national and international level.

• Digital and Social Media Marketing Strategy

  Digital technologies have transformed marketing, they offer new sources of customer insight, they have dramatically changed customer behaviour, enabled new business models and impacted how organisations interact with their customers and key stakeholders. This module aims to take a strategic perspective of the digital and social media environment. It focuses on the interaction between consumers, businesses and other organisations and how thinking digitally can assist in effective marketing. Web based media, mobile platforms, social media and digital tools are reviewed, practised and critically evaluated to identify successful performance and to create contemporary digital marketing strategies.