Business and Marketing BA module details

Year one

Block 1: Foundations of Global Business in the Digital Age

This module aims to developing students’ interest in, knowledge and appreciation of current global business issues and the challenges that they pose for management. It will be explored how digital technology and social media developments influence business operations of many firms. Students will be introduced to a range of key business functions such as Human Resource Management, Marketing and Finance and Accounting, and identify how these functions contribute to organisational success. The module is designed to be highly contemporary and its content is therefore highly driven by current world events and how they impact upon both the internal and external environment of global businesses.

Block 2: Marketing: Theory and Practice

The module offers students a comprehensive introduction to marketing theory and practice. The aim is to give students an understanding of the breadth of marketing theory; brought to life by illustrating its practical applications. Successful students will be able to demonstrate an ability to work with the following core marketing concepts:

(1) The marketing concept and its functional orientation

(2) The marketing environment and making sense of markets

(3) Marketing research

(4) Market segmentation, targeting and positioning

(5) Marketing mix planning - including products, services, pricing, distribution and communications, and

(6) Contemporary challenges facing marketers - e.g. e-marketing, ethics and globalisation.

The module will provide students with an understanding of how these parts fit together, along with the basic skills needed to get off to a flying start with their studies in the more specialised marketing topics in subsequent years.

Block 3: Essential Business Intelligence and Financial Decision Making

This module is designed to give students an appreciation of the volume of data available to organisations and the opportunity to apply Business Intelligence to such data to analyse, extrapolate and extract further insights, in order to develop meaningful information and knowledge that can be used in a multitude of ways to improve efficiency and enhance organisational performance. In addition, this module concentrates on the use of financial data by introducing students to the basic principles and accounting, financial reporting, business performance analysis, and the use of these by businesses.

Block 4: Entrepreneurship and Business Ventures

This module starts by exploring the concept of entrepreneurship and critically evaluate the similarities and differences between entrepreneurial ventures, SMEs and large enterprises. The aim is to establish an understanding of how entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs, and an entrepreneurial mindset can help economies and individuals prosper. The module introduces students to the Creative Problem-Solving process where they will get to evaluate the world around them and identify societal problems in need for a solution. The objective here is to encourage creativity and push students to think outside the box to build innovative, sustainable and timely businesses. Common challenges and success factors will be explored and students will learn how to transform a business idea into a formal business plan.

A focus of this module is to develop competence in all the areas related to running a business such as finance, operations and teams’ management. However, significant attention will be given to commercialising and marketing entrepreneurial ventures with an emphasis on equipping students with invaluable transferrable skills such as communication skills, adaptability and learning the art of negotiation.

The module concludes in a mock business idea pitch competition where groups will showcase their knowledge and skills in a professional setting.

Year two

Block 1: Contemporary Issues in Strategic Marketing

This module builds on prior marketing knowledge and applies it in the context of a specific organisation addressing issues related to both consumer and business markets. It encourages the development of a critical approach to discussing the strategies and actions of differing types of firms and the impact of those strategies on various stakeholder groups. The content may include, but not be limited to: marketing analysis; trend analysis; strategic relationships; social and cultural impacts; strategies for competitive advantage; forecasting and managing change. In particular it will identify, analyse and make strategic recommendations on contemporary issues, for example the growing impact of and reactions to sustainability and climate change.

Block 2: Brands and Consumer Behaviour

The module provides students with an understanding of contemporary brand theory and practices in building, positioning and managing brands. Student will examine the various roles that brands and branding play in consumers’ everyday lives with a particular focus on brand-consumer relationships. The module enables students to gain theoretical and practical insights into the creative processes involved in creating, designing, developing and managing a brand. Moreover, students will get an understanding on how consumers navigate modern society by exploring the psychological processes that occur before, during and after a product/service is consumed. As such, the module investigates how internal factors (e.g. motives, attitudes, perceptions, personality, self-concept) and external factors (e.g. culture, reference groups) drive consumer behaviour, and the symbiotic relationship between consumers and society at large

Block 3: Marketing Practice and Industry Insights

The intended purpose of this module is to introduce students to the world of marketing intelligence: competitive and market understanding. The focus around marketing intelligence is on the related business practices such as marketing and value metrics, marketing research, data analysis and data mining. With the help of this knowledge students will be able to manage the market and customer insight. Students will understand the importance of internal and external data, how to collect it and how to turn the data to actionable marketing insight for marketing decision making.

Industry insights provides much of the information that allows the insight-driven marketing concept to be put into practice in different industries from tourism to fashion and different environments from retail to manufacturing. The module aims to improve analytic skills, data skills and insight driven marketing strategic thinking through case studies and best practices from both the multinational corporations and the SME sector.

Block 4: Business Ethics and Social Responsibility

Recognising that managers shape, and are shaped by, organisational processes this module focuses on responsibility and ethics at both the organisational and managerial level. It will equip students with a sound grasp of key concepts in corporate social responsibility and their application within business practice. It will also explore ethical issues that corporate decision-makers face and the causes and consequences of (un)ethical decision-making.

Year three

Block 1: Marketing, Society and Global Impact

The module is designed to provide students with a critical lens through which they can understand and critique contemporary consumer contexts. The course content is driven by the need to address the impacts of marketing as a system upon consumers, the environment and society. Taking lead from Critical Marketing and the Transformative Consumer Research (TCR) movement, the module will look to focus on consumer well-being in a holistic sense, through an examination of social issues in context. The course content follows an inter-disciplinary approach, drawing on theories from sociology, public policy, cultural studies and psychology. This research-informed module aims to facilitate critical thinking on the subject area through the utilisation of case studies (e.g. Oxfam discussion papers), educational documentaries (e.g. the Media Education Foundation) and policy studies (e.g. UN SDGs). Through the integration of disciplines and supporting material, the module aims to encourage students to develop pragmatic ways of approaching the problems and opportunities of well‐being most relevant to consumers and their environments, with the aim of producing positive and uplifting change.

Block 2: Digital Marketing for Business Managers

The module introduces students to digital marketing with a particular focus on social media. Students will be encouraged to appreciate and contribute to debate on contemporary digital marketing issues. For example, how should organisations respond to the growth and increasing influence of social media networks that are rapidly catching up with search engines as leading 'go to' web resources. This module also explores the key digital marketing principles and their application across a range of organisations and marketing contexts. Emphasis is placed on the central role of customer information and how databases are built and used to identify, attract and retain profitable consumer groups. Students will have the opportunity to gain hands on experience of proprietary social media management tools e.g. Hootsuite and supported to achieve internationally recognised standards of competency

Crisis and Business Continuity Management

The module challenges participants to take a counter-intuitive but important step in their business education - to consider how organisations are exposed to, and deal with, crises and business interruptions. The module synthesises two essential components, each of which have underlying theory and practice - crisis management and business continuity management.

Through the duration of the module, students will immerse themselves in crisis and business continuity management theory and practice, having an opportunity to demonstrate their fomentation of knowledge and skills in critical, applied and real-time manners.

Block 3: Managing Customer Relationships

This module provides a comprehensive review of customer relationships in B2B and B2C contexts. It explains why businesses should aim to develop long term relationships with their customers, whether this is beneficial or viable for all business types, the costs it creates and the benefits it delivers along with insight into how sustainable customer relationships can be implemented. Students will be introduced to various CRM practices and technologies that are used by businesses to enhance the achievement of marketing, sales, and service objectives throughout the customer lifecycle stages of customer acquisition, retention and development.

Creative Leadership and Business Thinking

This module aims to help you enhance your creative leadership skills, in particular, to become more self-aware of your personal leadership model, and to strengthen your capabilities at influencing others. The module is structured around three particular perspectives; namely: 1) Leadership in General (Mainstream Perspective) 2) Creative Leadership 3) Critical & Contextual Leadership (Critical Perspective) 4) Leadership in Practice. The module will look at the influence of different leadership styles on Business Thinking and look at creative solutions to business problems.

Block 4: Marketing Consultancy Project

This module is an individual marketing consultancy project that serves as a commercial and employability- relevant experience. It requires a student to compile a report that acts as a solution to a marketing business problem. Students submit their preferred project choice and after consultation with the programme leader are allocated to a project they are most suited to. In an identical way to a Marketing consultancy, the organisation will give a summary briefing to students either face-to-face or by Skype before the project starts, this enables students to question and investigate further detail. This is an important part of the marketing consultancy process. Students then form their own investigation proposal document to give a summary outline of how they will research and analyse the project. After feedback, students continue their project following the direction given. Marketing Consultancy project briefs are sourced by the Module leader from local companies and advertising/PR/Creative agencies, and are live projects. All project briefs will be scrutinised to ensure they are appropriate to give a high level of commercial marketing experience required. In this way students gain a guaranteed marketing consultancy experience, use their learned skills to make a genuine impact and benefit for the company, and are able to summarise the experience on their CV/LinkedIn profile, and described the value of their project at an interview. This employability aspect to the Marketing Consultancy project is crucial as it provides evidence of using their degree in action, and provides a focus area for job applications. Each Marketing Consultancy project student will be allocated a supervisor to assist with both the interpretation and the marketing proposal for the report, and academic standards. This is an individual project although a cluster of students will be formed (up to 6 students per project), who work on the same (or similar parts of) the project. This results in the client gaining a variety of innovative solutions to their marketing situation.

Marketing Dissertation

The marketing dissertation is designed to give students the opportunity to research a topic of their individual interest. Students frequently expand on an area that has been of interest in previous marketing modules, link the study to issues that intrigued them from their work placements, or explore a topic that has not been studied in a formal module, with the guidance of several lectures and appointments with an assigned dissertation supervisor, the dissertation should demonstrate the application of academic theory to actual marketing situations. The module requires the student to be able to work independently and set their own goals in exchange for the opportunity to research a topic that excites and interest them personally

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