Marketing MSc
16 Months Full-Time | January Start

In this module you will learn about a comprehensive range of research methods and business analytics techniques. This will equip you with the knowledge and practical skills necessary for you to conduct research at Masters’ level and prepare you to complete a Master’s Dissertation, Consultancy Project or Management Enquiry. By the end of the module you will know how to apply both quantitative and qualitative data collection and business analysis techniques. In quantitative techniques you will learn about sampling, questionnaire design, statistical inference, and hypothesis testing while qualitative techniques covered will include methods such as interviewing and focus groups. Analysis methods such as content analysis and thematic analysis will also be covered. In addition, you will gain some understanding of research philosophy (positivism and interpretivism) and research ethics and you will be able to write a research proposal to bring these ideas together.
Furthermore, this module will provide clear, critical, and analysis of data, you will also be able to consider the use of analytics implementation skills, where you will be introduced to analytics software such as SPSS. SPSS statistics analysis is one of the powerful solutions that is designed to help businesses and researchers to solve problems by various methods (geospatial analysis, predictive analytics and hypothesis testing).

Studying away from your home country can differ due to cultural and language differences in teaching and assessment practices. This

module is designed to support your transition to postgraduate level study in the use and practice of subject specific skills around assessments

and teaching provision in your chosen subject. The overall aim of this module is to further develop your abilities to read and study effectively

for academic purposes; to develop your skills in analysing and using source material in seminars and academic writing and to develop your

use and application of language and communications skills suitable for a postgraduate level of study.

The topics you will cover on the module include:

• Understanding postgraduate assignment briefs.

• Developing advanced academic writing skills, including citation, paraphrasing, and summarising.

• Practising advanced ‘critical reading’ and ‘critical writing’

• Planning and structuring postgraduate level academic assignments (e.g. essays, reports and presentations).

• Avoiding academic misconduct and gaining credit by using academic sources and referencing effectively.

• Speaking in postgraduate seminar presentations.

• Presenting your ideas

• Giving discipline-related postgraduate level academic presentations, experiencing peer observation, and receiving formative feedback.

• Postgraduate level speed reading techniques.

• Developing self-reflection skills.

The module takes a contemporary and strategic view of marketing, and aims to help you develop a critical understanding of concepts, theories and techniques in the context of strategic marketing management at an advanced level. The intention is to support the development of knowledge and skills required to undertake strategic analysis of markets and organisations and formulate a competitive and sustainable marketing strategy. A contemporary approach to marketing is adopted throughout the module, as you will have the opportunity to learn and discuss the concepts that have changed the way we perceive marketing today, such as Responsible Marketing, Digital Marketing, value co-creation and disruptive innovation.

You will be introduced to Marketing at a strategic level of a business, and understand how marketing decisions are made in the context of other essential business functions; i.e. financial planning, operations and supply chain management, and human resource management. This will be addressed through engagement with a Business Simulation game delivered through workshops.

Within this module, you will cover three main areas associated with strategic marketing:

1) Developing appropriate marketing strategies:

• Marketing Audit
• Assessing Micro- and Macro-environmental factors
• Customer profiling and the customer journey
• New product development
• Delivering and communicating customer value

2) Implementation of strategies:

• Branding and brand management
• Sales management
• Retail Management and Marketing Channels
• Internet Marketing
• Marketing metrics
• Pricing Strategy

3) Emerging areas in contemporary marketing strategy:

• Internal marketing
• International Marketing - Marketing across the border
• Responsible Marketing and Sustainable Consumer Behaviour
• Digital marketing

The aim of this module is for you to develop a comprehensive understanding of the roles of ‘Marketing Research’ and ‘Marketing Analytics’ in a successful organisation. You will gain an understanding of how marketing analytics and marketing research can assist managers, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders in their relentless pursuit of gaining competitive advantages. First, the principles of marketing research are presented. This involves exploring areas such as qualitative and quantitative research. From here the fundamentals of marketing analytics are discussed. Thus, a highly structured approach will be provided for you to undertake the module successfully.

Upon completion of the module, you will be able to:

• Describe and explain the key theoretical terms and concepts of marketing research. You will furthermore receive first-hand experience of qualitative and quantitative marketing research in the interest of developing qualitative and quantitative marketing research skills.

• Describe and explain the key theoretical terms and concepts of marketing analytics. In addition, you will have the appropriate skills to develop analytic dashboards.

You will learn a rich breadth of knowledge on branding, including critical competence and skills in brand design, branding strategies and brand management. You will discover up-to-date cutting-edge theories and techniques that you will need at the strategic and operational levels for branding in local and global markets. Topics include:

• Brand dynamics (e.g., brand meaning and identity in culturally diverse markets, brand forms and design elements).
• Brand design (e.g., brand identity system, colour, typography, sound, visual psychology and videography applications).
• Branding in the new technological environments (e.g., new digital devices, wearables, social media, Apps, content and crises management).
• Consumer-brand relationships (e.g., brand trust, brand love/hate, brand addiction, customer experiences/choices, brand relationship management, brand communities, value co-creation).
• Brand research and auditing (e.g., tools/techniques for brand research, competition and media analysis, brand audit).
• Brand management (e.g., brand initiatives, design management, creating and co-ordinating touch points, intellectual property, measuring performance, managing a portfolio of brands).
• Branding strategies for products and services (e.g., brand innovation, branding and portfolios for new-tech products, place/nation branding).

Since the beginning as a stand-alone discipline, marketing theory and practice is underpinned by in-depth knowledge of consumers. However, understanding today’s consumer is a challenge, even for the most seasoned marketing practitioners and academics. Research in consumer behaviour suggests that we live in a consumer culture, where consumers seek experiences that are underpinned by expectations of engagement, co-creation, choice, hyper-reality, and instant gratification.

Therefore, we encourage our marketing students to understand the complex nature of postmodern consumers and key issues they face in order to become capable marketers or academics. To begin with, you will learn about postmodern consumer culture and its influence on contemporary marketing strategy. It enables you to understand the complex and ever-changing needs and wants of postmodern consumer society. This covers key postmodern consumer traits such as experience, co-creation, hyper-reality, engagement, instant gratification, and fragmentation of self. It also helps you to critically understand the nature and importance of relational orientation in developing contemporary marketing strategies. Building on this understanding, you will be introduced to key issues of postmodern consumer culture and how they influence marketing as a discipline. Here, you will learn the depths of consumerism and critically evaluate its nature, traits and influences on gender issues, ethical debates, sustainability strategies, brand communities, and globalisation trends. You will engage in critical debates to learn how these issues are everyday part of our lives in today’s postmodern culture, thus, bringing greater relevance to designing marketing strategies.

Owing to changing migration patterns and digital media, we live in an increasingly global society. Whilst posing many opportunities for business, the decision to internationalise a company’s offering involves as range of complex business decisions. In this module, you will explore how marketing practices can be applied to global business, and in doing so develop a thorough commercial appreciation of the complexities of marketing across nations.

The module is broadly composed of three themes:

• The Global Consumer: Consumers across the globe differ on a wide range of factors, including education levels, cultural norms, religious beliefs and wider lifestyle preferences. You will be introduced to some of these core differences, explore how cultural values differ across regions and the emergence of a global consumer culture. You will also explore how consumers tend to favour products from certain countries based on principles of country-of-origin and national identity.

• International Marketing Strategy: This theme will introduce you to the various market entry strategies utilised by organisations, including export, intermediate and hierarchical modes. Here you will explore the complexities of the global marketing environment (encapsulating political and economic differences) and developing international buyer-seller relationships.

• Global Marketing Decisions: Once an organisation chooses to internationalise, you will explore the range of marketing decisions that need to be made, including queries over product, pricing, marketing communications and branding. As part of this, you will be introduced to the ‘standardisation versus adaptation’ debate, which considers whether organisations should offer identical offerings across markets or implement a more tailored approach.

This module engages you in personal and professional development in order that you develop and hone your teamworking, management and leadership skills, capabilities and attributes, and in so doing, enhance your employability. On this module, you will not only prepare for your first job after you graduate but also kickstart your commitment to life-long personal and professional learning. In the first part of the module you will be supported in a self-analysis by a range of activities, including the completion of self-administered tool-kits to demonstrate an increased self-awareness and self-understanding. This will also involve applying theoretical frameworks and researching contemporary literature for a more in-depth understanding of self. A key outcome of this process is how you will be able to exploit this development in order to lead, and manage, more effectively in your future careers. The second part of the module contains activities which enable you to build on your self-analysis and explore further your strengths, weaknesses and areas for development in the context of your career development plans. You will receive guidance on how to craft professional, postgraduate CVs, LinkeIn profiles, and supporting documentation to meet the needs of employer. Furthermore, you will use your understanding of self to help you to understand the key issues and specific challenges that you face, with your skills profile, in relation to your employability prospects in your target profession/industry/sector. This will also include the development of knowledge into the global graduate market, (including routes such as self-employment and developing your career with an existing employer) drawing upon local, national and international examples.

This option is offered as an alternative to the NBS Masters’ Dissertation on all 1-year MSc programmes and in the second semester of year 2 on the 2-year programme variants with Study Abroad and with Advanced Practice (if the students select an Internship in semester 1), again as a Dissertation alternative. It is also offered as alternative to the Management Investigation on the MBA.

On this consultancy based module you will enhance your individual effectiveness and employability skills by locating the learning and development in an organisational context. In doing so, you will promote personal and group development, commercial awareness, and a range of inter-personal, intellectual and practical skills and knowledge centred on and demonstrated through a group negotiated real-time work-based project.

The content of the management report will be unique. The nature and scope of the area of your investigation will be defined and agreed in collaboration with the organisation and the University supervisor. The syllabus will include:

• Conducting research in organisations.
• Identifying researchable questions.
• Consultancy and project management skills.
• Research methods and doing a literature review
• Presentation, communication and report writing skills.
• Analysing findings.
• Writing recommendations and action plans.
• Reflecting on work based experiential learning.

In undertaking this project based module, you will critically reflect and evaluate upon organisational practices and their relation with academic theory, and in doing so, provide practical and actionable recommendations through an investigative management report.

The assessment for your module consists of a Group Consultancy Report (7,000 words) and Final Client Presentation, weighted at 60%, alongside an Individual Assignment comprising a Literature Review (4000 words) and a Reflective Learning Statement (2,000 words), weighted at 40%.

In this module you will gain an understanding of the academic skills that are required to produce a Masters Dissertation. By the end of the module you will have written a 15000 word Masters dissertation. The areas included are:

• Justification for the choice of topic
• Appropriate understanding, awareness and critical analysis of existing and up to date literature evidenced by a comprehensive and well-referenced literature review with an extensive reference list
• Selection, justification and application of an appropriately rigorous methodology - including limitations of the approach selected
• Clear statement of the findings of the research
• Critical analysis of the findings
• Explicit links between the analysis and the conclusions supported by critical argument
• Evidence of original work or thought for example in the form or context of the data collected, analytical process or application of findings

The Masters’ Management Enquiry module is a student-led individual project that enables you to undertake a significant piece of assessed

work commensurate with a capstone module and is offered as an alternative to the Masters’ Dissertation and Masters’ Consultancy Project.

The module aims to provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate an authentic engagement with managers and/or professionals in your

discipline (this enquiry has to be discipline specific), and to integrate the knowledge you have developed during your programme to explore

the theory in practice. The learning on this module is experiential and problem based, where the focus is upon you discovering, probing and

questioning key practice-based issues. Through the module you will be offered the opportunity to develop and enhance key transferable

employability skills including; time management, project management, communication (written, aural and verbal), negotiation, persuasion and

influence, discovery, initiative, problem-solving and analysis.


The module has five thematic areas; explore, review, engage, reflect and connect. These form the key elements of the assessed submission

which is a single 15,000 word report.


Part A (35%, 5,000-5,500 words)

Explore: Interviewing a manager and/or professional in your discipline. In this interview you will either explore a key issue which you feel the

discipline is facing or, alternatively, explore with the manager or professional the key issues that they feel they are facing in practice. It is

expected that you will apply non-verbatim documented conversation and provide evidence of the key ideas emerging within the submitted

enquiry report (e.g. within the appendices).

Review: Critically examining the academic and practitioner literature to support the exploration, displaying an ability to critically assess and

appraise the knowledge of your discipline related to a specific key issue arising from your exploration.


Part B (65%, 9,500-10,000 words)

Engage: Displaying an authentic engagement with the discipline problem/issue identified in Part A, by collecting/generating and analysing

further live data (beyond the initial interview) regarding the discipline problem/issue. This live data may be primary data (e.g. further interviews

with, or questionnaire to, managers and/or professionals in practice) or secondary data (e.g. industry data). Application of appropriate,

ethically-considered, research methods and appropriate qualitative or quantitative data analysis.

Reflect and Connect: Demonstrating an ability to critically evaluate and reflect on the issues arising from the Management Enquiry.

Demonstrating how you have connected and fed-back to the participants of the Enquiry (usually the manager and/or participants) your key

findings to provide clear prioritised, well-justified, practical and actionable recommendations for change/enhancement/improvement to existing

practice to show how the recommendations would potentially affect workplace professional decision making.