Marketing and Events Management

Year 2

Compulsory modules

• Consumer Behaviour for Tourism, Hospitality and Events

  You'll explore, critically analyses and applies theories, models and frameworks of tourist consumer behaviour to the specific behaviour of consumers for different sub-sectors of the tourism, hospitality and events (THE) industries. 

  You'll examine consumer behaviour before, during and after a tourism, hospitality or events experience and interprets its relevancy for onward management decisions. The theories, models and frameworks used will focus on consumer behaviour as understood in the discipline of marketing but will also draw from the social sciences, that investigate THE consumer behaviour. 

  You'll evaluate relevant material from academic research, practitioner reports and websites and documents, traditional news media pieces, and the tourist voice as expressed via social media and to arrive at a series of workable recommendations.

• Managing The Sustainable Event

  You’ll continue to develop skills required for planning, managing and coordinating all aspects involved in the staging of a live sustainable event at a professional level. 

  You’ll learn how to produce events that respond to public policy, regulation and global industry standards. You’ll learn how to:

  • identify and engage key stakeholders 
  • identify, manage and mitigate risk
  • establish key targets and performance indicators
  • monitor and manage progress indicators 
  • deal with the impact of change on the project
  • and develop and implement post evaluation (environmental, social and economic) to capture learning and, if necessary, an exit and legacy strategy. 

  You’ll develop and build the skills necessary to gain employment in the events management industry as you recruit to the roles for the project. You’ll analyse and evaluate job roles that match your existing skill sets and identify how to develop new skills to enhance your employability and plan for your career development.

• Methods of Research in Tourism, Hospitality and Events

  This module will help you prepare for your final year compulsory modules and will also prepare you for other advanced modules you’ll study. 

  Through this module you’ll develop your evidence-based research skills and techniques. Along with those skills and techniques of problem definition, the collection, analysis and critical evaluation of data (both secondary and primary). By the end of the module you’ll be able to argue and present a case based on evidence and analysis to an audience.
   

• Marketing and Digital Transformations

  This is your introduction to the core principles of marketing within the current digital environment. You’ll develop an understanding of the current changes in digital marketplaces and the need to adapt Tourism, Hospitality or Event (THE) products and services for those markets. Also you’ll explore the discipline of Digital Marketing in the wider context of service industries’ marketing activities combining theoretical foundations with a hands-on approach to the topic. You’ll have the opportunity to work in teams to audit an existing THE brand and/or develop your own team brand, draft a marketing plan and engage in the creation of a realistic digital marketing campaign.

• Professional Skills and Preparing for Employability

  On this module you'll build on your acquired professional skills from your first year module Building Professional and Academic Skills for Success to help you further prepare you for your future employment. You'll be able to reflect on your experiences and increase your self-awareness about the skills that you'll need to gain employment in the tourism, hospitality and events management sector as you work through your live projects.

• Placement Search and Preparation (only compulsory for who will take the optional Year 3 work placement)

  This module is designed to provide practical guidance and support in undertaking a placement search, preparing for the placement experience, and succeeding in the modern workplace. Throughout the module, you will develop critical self-awareness and personal literacy skills, enabling you to self-reflect on your own strengths and weaknesses and target your placement search effectively. Additionally, you will also explore methods of effective and targeted placement search, increasing your chances of securing a placement.

  In summary, this module is an essential component of your employability journey. By integrating with co-curricular activities, the module provides a holistic approach to employability, ensuring that students have a broad range of skills and experiences to draw upon in their future careers.

• Contemporary Omnichannel Retail and Marketing

  This is your introduction to the nature, scope and characteristics of the various marketing and sales strategies used in the retail industry. You'll explore how these strategies are evolving, in line with changing customer buying habits and expectations.

  You will look at the drivers impacting on the sector and the interaction between digital platforms and physical outlets, combined with new technologies, to enhance the customer experience and bring new efficiencies to retail sales and marketing. You’ll build your knowledge of how these various factors can combine to create the ideal Omnichannel retail experience for the customer.

Optional modules

• Environmentally Sustainable Business

  You’ll look at the environmental sustainability challenges facing society and businesses. You’ll discuss key environmental issues such as:

  • global warming
  • pollution
  • biodiversity loss 
  • freshwater depletion 
  • and the role of business in causing as well as responding to such issues. 

  You’ll explore macro (economic, policy, governance) as well as micro (organisational and individual) perspectives. You’ll also be introduced to a variety of stakeholder perspectives and frameworks for evaluating business responses. Through the module you’ll develop your key competencies for sustainability that are endorsed by UNESCO (2017) and the QAA/Advance HE (2021). The competencies are:

  • systems thinking
  • anticipatory thinking
  • normative competency 
  • strategic thinking
  • collaborative competency 
  • critical thinking
  • self-awareness 
  • integrated problem-solving competency. 

• Oxford: the City and the Creative Industries

  Explore Oxford's historical and modern role as a literary and media hub. With more authors per square mile than anywhere else in the world, and the location of many media companies and professionals, Oxford has a unique creative cluster that warrants review and analysis. 

  Build your unrivalled media network through Oxford Brookes' circle of dynamic and diverse media professionals, and explore critical issues and key themes encompassing the global media world as it is today.

  By the end of this module, you'll have a firm understanding of Oxford's unparalleled literary history, and how you can apply this knowledge to building your own creative connections.

• Wedding Planning and Celebratory Events

  You’ll explore the socio-cultural origins and place in society of a range of celebratory events, such as:

  • weddings
  • anniversaries
  • celebrations of birth and death.

  You’ll critically review the religious, ethnic and social associations of such events in various settings. Also you’ll apply the key practical and creative requirements of designing and staging such events. 

  Through your studies you’ll develop core events skills like taking a client brief, managing stakeholders and events communications. You’ll have the opportunity to work with a live client brief. Practising your core skills you’ll acknowledge the cultural expectations of the client, and reflect on difference and opportunity, to celebrate diversity.

• Social Media and Influencer Marketing

  You'll get to grips with social media marketing. You'll learn how and why it has become one of the most important tools used by businesses to find and engage with customers and the increasingly key role that Influencer Marketing plays. Through both a strategic and practical approach, you will build a Social Media and Influencer Marketing Plan for a real business. This will help you to gain an understanding of:

  • the changing face of Social Media and Influencer Marketing
  • how to choose and find influencers
  • how to use influencers to improve customer engagement and ultimately drive sales.

• Revenue Management and Financial Essentials

  Managing revenue effectively is of ultimate importance to maximising value and profit for the Hospitality, Tourism and Event industry. Management of revenue involves a co-ordinated application of a range of financial, operational and marketing skills, ranging from 

  • price determination
  • demand forecasting
  • customer value perception
  • inventory control 
  • to channel distribution management. 

  On this module you’ll examine all these topics and it will give you a holistic insight into Revenue Management from a combined financial and customer-centric approach. Your study will help prepare you for a fast-tracked career in the hospitality industry, in the Revenue Management area. You’ll finish this module equipped with the financial knowledge to tackle your final year financial modules.

• Business Planning for Innovation in Hospitality, Tourism and Events

  A novel idea underpinned by a business that provides focus and credibility is the starting point of every innovative business. You'll be introduced to theoretical and practical aspects of a business model, business planning, and its fundamental importance in the progression of innovative business ideas from concept to implementation. You'll focus on developing a business plan of a new enterprise within an existing firm. This will help you to evaluate feasibility of a proposed enterprising venture within a business planning framework and familiarise you with the issues encountered in managing enterprises.

• Digital Advertising and Creative Content

  This is your introduction to the world of digital marketing in a global context. It builds on your earlier module, Contemporary Marketing Communications, and will help give you insights into a range of contexts, including mobile advertising, in-game advertising and user generated advertising.

  This will help to prepare you for your final year modules and will also enhance your employability skills with the opportunity for you to engage with practical and written assessments linked to creative industry scenarios.

Year 3 (Work Placement)

Optional modules

• Choose one module from:

• Supervised Work Experience

  You can spend your third year on a work placement. This is a great opportunity to enhance your CV; preparing you for future employment. You will gain commercial and practical experience and often students are offered graduate positions by their placement employer.

  During the placement year itself students are supported by an assigned Placement Tutor who remains in regular contact with the student and their line manager. WAVES also supports students in identifying volunteering or internship opportunities. Voluntary work associated with local community events, for example, provide additional opportunity for the development of students’ employability skills.

  Recently, students have enjoyed inspiring and intellectually challenging positions at Disney, Harley Davidson, BMW, Dyson, Sharky and George, GlaxoSmithKline, Nestlé and PayPal. Learn more about how Oxford Brookes Business School supports students secure a work placement.

• Full Year International Study Abroad

• OR two modules:

• Short Placement

• Work-Based Learning

Year 4 (or year 3 if no placement)

Compulsory modules

• Research Project of Tourism, Hospitality and Events

  Through this Research Project you’ll have the opportunity to conduct sustained, self-directed, independent work through an in-depth study of a hospitality or tourism-related topic where you can analyse theory, evaluate it and apply it to examining practice.

• Events Industry Insights

  This module will focus on the analytical aspects of a range of current and emerging issues in the events industry through the lived experience of events practitioners. Students undertake a comprehensive analysis of how industry trends are developing and what these changes mean for a range of key stakeholders and the wider network that supports the events industry.

• Leadership and Professional Practice

  You will be challenged to advance your reflective skills and reassess the personal ability to effectively manage a diverse range of relationships. Also you’ll look at authentic leadership skills within the Events industries.

  By the end of the module, you will have developed

  • leadership knowledge
  • competencies and skills by using your own work
  • university and/or community-based experiences to explore key relationships
  • professional sector competencies
  • and how to evaluate contemporary leadership challenges.

• Experiential Marketing

  This is your introduction to Experiential Marketing and how it combines digital platforms, new technologies and Artificial Intelligence to engage with its customers in unique, emotional, and immersive ways. You'll learn about its engagement with customers across both physical and digital (hybrid) settings. 

  You’ll explore how Experiential Marketing has evolved from the product and service focus of the traditional marketing mix to the point where customers and businesses are co-creating new products and immersive experiences. You will examine the effectiveness of Experiential Marketing in real businesses and, in doing so, apply theory to practice.

Optional modules

• Entrepreneurship and Creativity Enterprise in Hospitality and Tourism

  You will be exposed to what is involved in being a successful entrepreneur in the Hospitality and Tourism industry sectors. Also you’ll learn techniques to foster creativity and innovation.

  You’ll undertake informed reflection on your entrepreneurial predispositions and have the opportunity to work up and present an idea for your own potential venture to a panel of expert entrepreneurs.

• Environmentally Sustainable Business

  You'll build skills in thinking logically and critically about complex managerial issues that hospitality organisations face today and structure solutions with a data-driven approach.
  
  You’ll develop your understanding of the content, importance and relevance of business analytics and data visualisation in business decision-making with a focus on the hospitality and tourism industry.
  
  You'll gain knowledge of the key concepts and methods combined with extensive opportunities to develop your hands-on skills for applying business analytics and data visualisation to managerial decision-making.

• Food, Drink and Culture

  You’ll have the opportunity to explore complex relationships between food and drink, individuals and societies.You will build your critical thinking skills and be able to argue and present about the extensive implications of food and drink-related practices for society. 

  You’ll analyse a variety of factors that shape these relationships and examine the

  • consequences for health
  • environment
  • distinctiveness of cultures
  • cohesiveness of communities.

• Future Marketing Trends

  Today’s professionals in the field of marketing management, like many other fields, deal with major changes and challenges which are driven by emerging technologies, economic changes, climate change and other social challenges. This requires marketing management professionals to develop an agile mindset and required skills. 

  This module will help you understand, critically evaluate and appreciate future marketing trends and how to respond to them using suitable methods and tools. You’ll also progress your appreciation of diversity, inclusivity, ethics, and sustainability, as well as skills in responsible marketing.

• Critical Issues in Digital Marketing

  You'll look at the emerging digital environment and future trends, which will help you to develop a critical understanding of the research and practice trajectory of digital marketing. You’ll also progress your critical understanding of how consumers engage with brands online and the ethical dilemmas that may require critical consideration with the further adoption of future digital developments.

• Work-Based Learning in Tourism, Hospitality and Events

  This module offers you an opportunity to obtain knowledge and experience in making applications for and working in the sector related to your course. 

  Through this module you will have access to paid work experience to develop your employability and enterprise skills and mindset as part of your degree.

• Contemporary Issues in Responsible Leadership

  The challenges faced by society today are placing new demands upon a new generation of leaders for whom ‘global responsibility’ will be a central component for how they lead.

  This module uses the traditional leadership theory to explore the leadership practices in multiple settings, sectors and societies. Students focus on the theme of responsible leadership, emphasising on collaborative relationships with stakeholders. Students emerge capable to critically analyse theories of leadership, understanding the limitations and strengths of various theoretical propositions. More importantly, they join a community of moral and ethical leaders.