MSc Business with Marketing

If you select the dissertation route, Research Methodology becomes a compulsory module for you and it gives you the academic skills to confidently approach your dissertation topic. The focus is on epistemological foundations, the design of a research project, the preparation for and execution of valid and reliable business research (whether qualitative or quantitative), and on the writing up and presentation of research results.

Technology has led to a proliferation of social media channels. These channels enable peer-to-peer communication as well as providing brands with many more ways to reach their customers, have relevant conversations with them, and listen to what matters to them. This module develops an understanding of how brand managers can access and use social media channels as part of their marketing strategy in order to build brand presence and maintain relevance in the life of their customers.

Through this module you will develop a greater understanding of the fast growing, changing world of social media channels and their relevance to customers, brands and the firm. The module aims to develop an appreciation of how the firm’s integrated marketing communications, brand management, and content management strategies are impacted by social media channels, and to examine the strategic opportunities and challenges these present.

Specific objectives of the module include:

• Understanding the role of social media in achieving the objectives of the firm's integrated marketing communications strategy.
• Understanding the significance of a content management strategy, including selecting and combining appropriate social media tools for stages of the customer journey.
• Linking social media into the marketing mix, including understanding their relevance in developing product, place, and service decisions.
• Understanding how to use social media as a tool for insight into changing customer needs
• Recognising the advantages and pitfalls of earned media including brand communities, viral marketing, and PR crises.

Through this module you’ll be introduced to a range of debates that are central to the human resource management and employment relations field, including the 'high commitment' models of human resource management. It will also provide you with an in-depth insight into a number of the specific HR practice areas, including: recruitment and selection; training and development; job design and teamworking, pay and rewards; unions and HRM, and equal opportunities and diversity management.

During this module you will:

• Demonstrate an understanding of the development of human resource management as a field of study
• Critically appreciate the contribution made by each of the core disciplines (e.g. sociology, psychology, law, economics)
• Analyse specific human resource management problems in their wider social context
• Understand, evaluate, and marshal critical social science research on human resource management
• Extrapolate from existing research and scholarship to identify new or revised approaches to human resource practice
• Demonstrate advanced study skills including written communication, location and retrieval of relevant reading from library stock and electronic resources, using information technology and employing appropriate quantitative methods.

This module aims to provide an overview about how today's firms use digital marketing technologies to achieve their business objectives. You will require theoretical and practical subject knowledge and understanding, cognitive and methodological skills (e.g. written assignment, critical reflections, discussions in seminars, hands-on excercises) and social/soft skills (e.g. leadership and team work).

The digital landscape is evolving and it is essential to understand the opportunities and challenges presented with the use of digital platforms and technologies. Develop a comprehensive insight into the practices of digital marketing and strategy. Develop knowledge-based skills linked to marketing, strategy, research and tactics. Examine the strategic underpinnings of digital implementation and market disruptions. Critically examine prevailing digital trends such as social media, search engine optimisation, viral marketing, virtual reality and artificial intelligence. 

There are two specific features about project management theory which make it a slightly different type of subject to most other academic modules. Firstly, the subject has its origins in large-scale, complex operations. This means that a large proportion of the published theory concerns the planning and control aspects of the management of such processes. Secondly, most of the concepts were developed in the heyday of the 1960s, where a lot of activity was taking place in the aerospace, defence and construction sectors. This means that most of the basic literature is reasonably old and technically focused.

In the modern context, project management methods are now used for a much wider variety of applications including change management, Third World development programmes and IT-based projects. As a consequence, this module aims to span a range of sectors and be as multi-disciplinary as possible. The planning and control aspects of the module occupy only about 20% of the total time available.

You will:

1. Develop an understanding of current project and programme management approaches and to make comparisons with your own organisation
2. Develop sensitivity to different project environments and to make comparisons and conclusions about them
3. Increase your understanding of commercial and behavioural issues in the management of projects
4. Provide experience of handling project management problems in a simulation setting.

Explore the importance of management of innovation in products, processes, technology and communications. Critically evaluate key indicators of innovation activity, examine internal and external factors that lead to new product failures and determine key innovation strategy issues for different situations and sectors. Develop understanding of conceptual, analytical and practical insights into the entrepreneurial process with reference to profit and non-profit enterprise contexts. Develop skills to help effective engagement in a world in which innovation and entrepreneurship are key drivers of change. 

This module introduces you to the ways in which economists and psychologists have used behavioural theories and experimental methods to provide extensions to, or alternatives to, the conventional economic wisdom described in the Fundamentals of Economic Behaviour module. It will examine recent cutting-edge research, and consider the implications of that research for individual decision making, the operation of markets and public sector policy making.

The aims of the module are to:

1) Introduce students to the principles, theories and research underlying the academic disciplines concerning the behaviour, leadership and management of people and organisations (Organisational Behaviour, OB and Human Resource Management, HRM) at four levels of analysis: individual, group, organisational and societal.

2) Develop a critical appreciation of the behavioural and social sciences as they relate to the study of behaviour in organisations.

3) Introduce students to a critical understanding of the practice of management, leadership and people management in particular.

4) Provide students with structured opportunities to practice applying OB and HRM principles, theories and research to analyse and solve organisational problems.

Businesses today have unprecedented access to information about their customers. However, many businesses fail to use this information to generate meaningful insights about the behaviour of their customers. The consequence is that these businesses fail to exploit opportunities for value creation, and improving their financial performance.

This module is inspired by the idea that 'It's not the size of the data, it's how you use it'. Hence, the principal aim of this module is to challenge your thinking about the appropriate and inappropriate use of customer data for strategic decision-making. Using real-world cases as context for data analyses, we will discuss good and bad practices for how to derive meaningful insights from data. Examples include comparing data for different groups of customers, finding clusters of customers, and how to analyse relationships between different types of customer data.

You'll not only improve their theoretical understanding of empirical methods, but will also learn how to apply these methods in the widely-used software R. Once these insights have been generated, it is also important to know how to use graphical representations of these insights for story-telling in business presentations. Accordingly, this module will also place great emphasis on good practices in the context of presentations with data.

This module will cover a wide range of cutting edge research in Big Data Analytics, with a particular focus on the extensive value of data from the Internet, much of which is freely available if you have the skills to mine it.

This module involves learning to program in R, but no prior programming knowledge is required.

Module aims will include:

• Linking stock market movements to online data
• Measuring sentiment with online data
• Predicting consumer behaviour with online data
• Getting quicker measurements of key economic indicators with online data
• Measuring where people are and where they are going with mobile phone data and online data
• Predicting crime and epidemics
• Understanding social networks.

The module will also teach you the practical skills needed to work with online data.

You will learn:

• How to mine data on Google searches
• How to mine data on Wikipedia page views
• How to mine data on photographs uploaded to Flickr
• How to make data visualisations
• How to design and execute a small data science project of your own.

Get an introduction to the principles of Corporate Finance and learn how the basic tools and techniques of modern finance theory can be applied to analyse and improve the investment and financing decisions of the firm.

Indicative themes include:

• Financial calculus
• Financial markets
• Valuing bonds
• Valuing stocks
• Portfolio choice and diversification
• The capital asset pricing model
• Capital budgeting
• NPV in action
• Market efficiency
• Financing and capital structure
• Payout policy
• Corporate risk management.

The main module aim is to build on your knowledge of the global economic and business environment and link this to strategies for managing in changing global contexts.  Key questions are:  How do changes in this environment affect the ways in which companies do business and managers manage across borders:  How should firms and individual managers respond (in theory)?  How can they respond (in practice)?

Topics will include: the drivers and processes of internationalisation, cross-cultural management challenges, the assessment of overseas investment opportunities and the specific challenges of emerging markets.

If you are considering further academic study (PhD) and you would like the opportunity to research a topic relating to marketing, the 6,000 word dissertation will enable you to test and apply the techniques and theories you have gained. You will be supervised and supported throughout and will usually submit your dissertation in early September. 

In total you will study eight core modules and one optional module, and complete a dissertation and a Research Methodology module. 

If you would like to develop further applied skills and specialist knowledge to suit your career aspirations, you can complete your studies with our applied Business in Practice module. You will develop deep functional and industry expertise with practical insights from our faculty and industry experts.

In total you will study eight core modules, two optional modules and also complete the compulsory Business in Practice capstone module.

If you select the dissertation route, Research Methodology becomes a compulsory module for you and it gives you the academic skills to confidently approach your dissertation topic. The focus is on epistemological foundations, the design of a research project, the preparation for and execution of valid and reliable business research (whether qualitative or quantitative), and on the writing up and presentation of research results.