Business and Marketing BA (Hons)

In this module, you will learn about the role of a project and project manager in organisations and the concepts and techniques required to manage the core aspects of a project.

The main topics covered include the core knowledge areas outlined in A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) published by Project Management Institute (PMI) as well as essential fundamental theories, knowledge, and techniques required to manage a project in contemporary business settings.

These topics include:
• Defining project characteristics, lifecycle, and activities.
• Understanding how projects drive change and achieve strategic goals in organisations.
• Realising the role of the project and project manager in various organisational structures and cultures.
• Managing core project aspects, such as stakeholder relationships, scope, cost, schedule, and risk.
• Distinguishing traditional, agile, and extreme project management approaches.

Drawing on contemporary project management research and business case studies, this module will develop your knowledge, skills, and confidence in managing projects and your learning with take place though lectures and practical IT workshops. Your learning will expose you to a wide range of project management examples (successful and unsuccessful) and project management approaches (classic and contemporary) to broaden your understanding of project management in a dynamic business setting. You will be given opportunities to work as a team and develop essential project management documents for a chosen project.

On completing this module, you will be able to utilise appropriate project management techniques and technical skills to effectively and efficiently manage different projects and you will be able to critically challenge the assumptions and existing practices in project management.

This module will provide you with a comprehensive understanding of how marketers can monitor and analyse the effectiveness of their marketing activity. Whilst marketers have always attempted to assess the effectiveness of their campaigns, the digital explosion now offers an almost limitless range of data through which to measure performance.

This module will consider the most suitable metrics for both online and offline marketing activity. Specifically, the module will address the following core themes:

- Overall Marketing Metrics: You will cover classic marketing metrics including return on investment and market share as a means of assessing overall marketing success. You will also consider how marketers can use external sources of market data to inform strategic marketing decisions.
- Offline Metrics: Here you will consider an array of techniques used to measure the success of traditional offline marketing channels. For example, you will utilise metrics such as brand awareness and opportunities to see (OTS) in the context of advertising and advertising value equivalent (AVE) for public relations.
- Online Metrics: You will interpret a range of online metrics used to assess digital marketing techniques. This will include an appreciation of Google Analytics and other dashboards that assess the effectiveness of email and social media marketing.
- Reporting: You will develop skills in how to interpret and present data in a way that can influence other business stakeholders.

The module provides students with a comprehensive understanding of concepts, theories and techniques in the context of strategic marketing, responsible marketing and sustainability. The intension is to support the development of knowledge and skills required to undertake strategic analysis of markets and organisations and formulate a competitive, responsible 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. In doing so you will examine, both theoretically and practically, a number of areas associated with responsible marketing strategies, such as:


Theme 1 Contemporary Strategic Marketing
• Marketing Audit and key trends that impact on marketing and the society
• Contemporary Marketing Research and Planning
• New product development and Disruptive Innovation
• Service-Dominant Logic and Value co-creation/Co-destruction
• Developing and implementing appropriate marketing strategies and metrics


Theme 2 Responsible Marketing
• Ethics and Sustainability in a marketing context
• Responsible Marketing strategies and Sustainable Development Goals
• Sustainable Consumer Behaviour and Ethical Consumerism
• Sustainability, Ethics and New Media
• The Future of Sustainability and Responsible Marketing

On completing the module, you will be able to critically evaluate the usefulness of marketing knowledge in the context of responsible business and sustainable consumer behaviour and apply theory to develop appropriate marketing strategies. You will also develop the skills required for effective Integration of learning from marketing and other business areas into a plan for solving business problems.

This module will provide you with a greater understanding and appreciation for how marketers research and target prospective customers. This module offers new insights into unearthing consumer preferences and developing insightful consumer personas. Furthermore, it provides knowledge and guidance on how this information can be used and transformed into implementing a successful marketing campaign.

The module is equally divided into two core sections. First, weeks 1-6 explore the theory and practice of ‘Buyer Behaviour’ (or consumer psychology). From here, weeks 7-12 focus on developing an ‘Integrated Marketing Communications’ (IMC) campaign.

In weeks 1-6 you will be introduced to the theory of buyer behaviour and identify the differences between consumer buyer behaviour and organisational buyer behaviour. Next you will learn about the different types of decisions that face consumers as well as learning and applying a consumer decision making framework. You will finish by learning about the various influences that face consumers when making planned decisions.

In weeks 7-12 you will be introduced to integrated marketing communications. You will apply a marketing communication planning framework to the development of a marketing campaign which will be based upon the insights created through buyer behaviour analysis. This will involve the critical marketing activities of campaign goal setting, positioning and specific campaign decisions such as media channels and campaign messaging.

An organisation’s brand is a major factor in how they are perceived by their current customers, potential customers, employees, media groups and the wider public. Brands act as a means of differentiating from competitors and maintaining a positive corporate image. This module will provide you with the opportunity to explore the branding strategies adopted by organisations and appreciate the true value of a strong, successful brand. Lectures and seminars provided both will include:

• Analysing elements of a Brand: attributes, core values, personality/character
• Brand Identity and Image; Key stakeholders to consider in relation to a brand – staff and customers; Employee/Employer branding
• Brand communities and brand co-creation
• Brand and (& in) the Brain: Semiotics & Neuromarketing aspects of branding
• Positioning and PR, and image/impression management, including re-branding and turnaround situations
• Non-commercial and ethical brands.
• Brand metrics, including especially brand equity and value (some financial aspects included here)
• Brand portfolio management (co-brands & sub-brands)

This module is designed to develop your skills in understanding how one-to-one forms of marketing communications, across offline and online channels, can be combined into an overall campaign to generate new customers and enhance existing relationships. To do this, the module is broken into three distinct themes:

• Principles of Direct and Digital Marketing: In this part of the module you will cover the fundamental practices in the direct marketing field, which will include acquisition and retention strategies, customer profiling and segmentation, database marketing, permission marketing and personalisation, relevant legislation and campaign testing.
• Digital Media: In this section you will explore the range of communications media available, ranging from traditional offline channels (such as direct mail and telemarketing) through to the ever-growing range of digital media options (including social media, email, web design and mobile commerce).
• Campaign Planning: Here you will be introduced to the principles of campaign design, from initial context analysis and goal setting through to campaign implementation and evaluation. You will be encouraged to combine different marketing communications tools as part of an integrated campaign and consider campsign budgeting and measurement.

This module provides the knowledge and skills necessary for you to understand, and pursue a career in, Business to Business Marketing and/or Sales Management. Learning will be via lectures, seminars and independent study.

Within the module, you will cover these main topics:

• The role, extent and importance of B2B Marketing
• Organisational Decision Making
• Marketing mix in B2B Marketing; products, value and pricing, comms (including trade shows)
• Interorganisational relationships & CRM
• Appointing and managing channel intermediaries
• Business services
• Sales and the Organisation / Sales Strategies / the Sales-Marketing interface
• Market Data, Customer Insight, Objectives and Metrics
• Prospecting, Negotiation & Sales-related Events
• New Business Sales vs Key Account Management
• Analysis and Planning in B2B Markets
• Strategy and implementation in B2B Markets

During the module you will fine-tune your existing Marketing skills and gain a robust understanding of the Sales function. You will critically analyse existing theory and practices, contribute your own ideas, and explore ways to apply this academic knowledge to an authentic commercial context. As a result, on embarking upon your career, you should be a skilled, informed practitioner able to deliver demonstrable value to your business and its stakeholders, and to differentiate yourself positively within a competitive employment market.

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

Part A (35%, 3,500 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 appropriate interview methods and provide evidence of the interview within the submitted enquiry report (e.g. within the appendices).
• Review: Critically examining the appropriate 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%, 6,500 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.

The dissertation module aims to equip you with the necessary intellectual and practical skills for undertaking an individual student-led, ethical investigation into an applied business (or the named degree) problem or issue. In addition, the dissertation aims to equip you with key transferable, employability skills, including: time management, project management, communication (written and verbal), negotiation, persuasion and influence, discovery, initiative, creativity and innovation in problem-solving, analysis.

The module is student-led but you are supported by, initially, weekly lectures and seminar-workshops which provide an introduction to undertaking Business-Management research followed by one-to-one or small-group supervision meetings.
The lectures and seminar-workshops will cover the following topics:
1. Developing a research aim/question (focusing and scoping the research)
2. Developing a literature review
3. Writing a research proposal
4. Researching ethically
5. Quantitative research techniques
6. Qualitative research techniques
7. Quantitative analysis techniques
8. Qualitative analysis techniques

Upon completion of the module you will be able to:
1. Conduct independent and ethical academic research involving the application and critical evaluation of appropriate theories and models,
2. Engage critically with relevant literature to establish a framework in which to analyse and synthesise the results of your primary or secondary research
3. Generate / collect relevant primary or secondary data using an appropriate and justified method
4. Analyse your data using an appropriate and justified method of analysis
5. Recognise the ethical implications of your work
6. Critically evaluate the source of your data and the method you adopted

The module aims to provide you with an opportunity to integrate the knowledge acquired during the programme and apply this to a consultancy project for a real organisation. This consultancy project provides a vehicle for participants to develop and demonstrate key employability skills, to relate theory to practice, and to undertake a significant piece of assessed work commensurate with a capstone module.

You will work on behalf of an external organisation, which has identified a business problem or question, requiring a solution, working in small group of typically 4 individuals (you will select their own team members), participating in group and individual activities. The host organisation will provide a project briefing, and review; students will be supported by appropriate academic input and guidance from Newcastle Business School in the form of a mentor and via the Business Clinic.