MA Marketing and Brand Management

This module introduces the key concepts in strategic brand management:

• The principles of building strong brands.
• The concept of brand equity, and the tools adopted by leading marketing research firms in brand building.
• Measuring brand performance, from the perspective of functional and emotional values.
• Implementing brand strategies.

‘A brand is a net present value of a cumulative trust that the owners’ past marketing efforts have earned from consumers.’ (Ed Burke, the former CEO of Johnson & Johnson). Firms can build favourable reputations through well-conceived and well-managed brands, which enhance the confidence of staff, buyers, and users. This module explores how businesses create strong brands that persuade consumers to remain loyal to them and even pay higher prices. Building a strong brand demands time, commitment, and a value-creation approach from companies that need to learn how to create functional and emotional values better than their competitors.

Digital marketing is an increasingly powerful tool for growing businesses and increasing revenue and market presence. We assume that Millennials and Generation Z have social media and digital marketing channels/apps/etc. woven through their lives. But this does not automatically correlate to organisations and businesses understanding how to successfully navigate and make the most of the rapidly expanding and complex opportunities for digital marketing.

How will consumers act in the future? What will the demand for our products and services be? What is the probability that a customer will visit our website and make a purchase/take up a service?

Answering these questions is not possible without the skills to find, extract, organise and analyse a range of data and information that can be used to support business decisions. This module explores how analytics can help make strategic marketing and brand management decisions and contribute to wider organisational strategic planning.

Students will use real data and appropriate techniques to consider issues such as how to segment the market, how to target specific customers and user groups, how to predict individual consumer and user behaviour, and what value propositions should be used under which circumstances.

The purpose of this module is to provide an understanding of the importance of the marketing concept within any organisation. The module outlines both the philosophical underpinning supporting contemporary marketing theory and its application in different organisational contexts. Key marketing tools (segmentation and the marketing mix) are analysed and applied through the context of the management of the marketing process.

The nature of contemporary marketing theory and practice is developed alongside the concept of market orientation. The importance of marketing research, strategic analysis, and alignment with organisational strategy through branding is developed.

The module focuses upon the identification and application of key marketing management tools (segmentation, targeting, positioning,) and their impact on the delineation of markets and key stakeholder groups. Tactical marketing concepts are analysed and evaluated within a relational, services and social marketing conceptualisation.

The discipline of marketing planning is developed around the creation of an integrated strategic framework.

Marketing communications are constantly developing and changing. New theories, new approaches and the diversity of cultural influences, impacted by technological advances all combine to create a dynamic environment.

This module explores the key issues and challenges in contemporary marketing communications. It will cover strategic issues of brand strategy, planning, channel and social media integration as well as the tactical considerations needed to execute relevant and appropriate marketing communications campaigns that meet the needs of key identified audiences.

The module focuses on the need to develop resonant, effective marketing communications targeted to key audiences for a clear and distinctive purpose. The elements comprising modern integrated marketing communications – conventional, digital, and social – are analysed alongside the development of the creative process applicable to each.

This module explores the contribution of entrepreneurship and of individual entrepreneurs to future organisational growth and sustainability. It defines the different roles of the entrepreneur in different organisational contexts – small, medium, and international entrepreneurs – and identifies the necessary requirements associated with the creation and management of an entrepreneurial culture.

This module provides students with an introduction to the principles and practices of research in the social sciences, offering them a solid foundation upon which to design, propose and implement a research project. It introduces a range of practical, qualitative and quantitative methodologies and methods from which they can select the most appropriate for your 60-credit ‘capstone’ module (dissertation, consultancy project, extended project, etc.).

This module allows students to develop an understanding of sustainability-related challenges facing society, organisations, and the economy to explore the implications of these for contemporary practices. Students will engage in debates concerning the relationship between business and issues such as climate change; the environment; humankind’s relationship to nature; inequality; social problems; and the challenge of sustainability in capitalist economies that privilege economic growth.

The dissertation/consultancy project is an essential requirement of the MA in Marketing and Brand Management. It offers students the opportunity to demonstrate the knowledge and skills they have gained across their taught modules in an extended scholarly research project that justifies the ‘Master’s’ award.