Marketing

If you are looking to forge yourself a career in marketing, the MSc in Marketing at Bristol Business School will give you a solid qualification, and the skills and insights, to lift you above other candidates in the job market.

This well-established and highly respected course will give you a thorough academic grounding in the subject, as well as developing your knowledge, experience and skills, to open the door to a wide range of rewarding marketing careers.

This is a fast-paced field, and the course is kept constantly updated and relevant to the latest developments in business practice. You will develop a comprehensive grounding in:

• Planning, strategy development and implementation
• Analysis of customers, markets and industry
• Marketing communications
• Research, investigations and data analysis.

The course is also designed to develop your problem-solving abilities and give you extensive opportunities for further personal development. We take a structured approach to developing the professional skills you need to be successful in this field. This includes both intellectual skills exploring different ways of thinking; and practical skills, such as communication, numerical and presentation capabilities.

The course draws heavily on real-world issues, so you will learn the theory but also how to apply it to real-life situations. You will also have plenty of opportunity to engage with employers, with guest lecturers from industry, and research opportunities where you can work on real marketing problems.

Compulsory modules

• Contemporary Marketing Practice - This module introduces you to the theory and practice of marketing.  It begins by looking at the traditional target marketing approach before looking at more recent developments in marketing thought. This module will also introduce the idea of thinking skills, encouraging you to take a systematic approach to the way you tackle business problems, using theory to structure your approach.
• Strategic Marketing Planning - In this module, you will learn how to analyse an organisation's environment, making decisions on how it can deploy its resources for maximum advantage. The module will review a number of different tools and techniques which aid strategic analysis, strategy development and implementation.
• Marketing Analytics - Marketing depends on good information about the organisation, its customers and its competitors. In Marketing Analytics, you will learn how to design and implement systems for monitoring marketing activities, integrating financial and non-financial information to support organisational learning.
• Principles of Marketing Communications - This module takes an in-depth look at the tools and techniques of promotion. As well as looking at the strengths of weaknesses of different communications media, you will learn the more fundamental principles of message development, framing and delivery, ensuring that communications media are used as effectively as possible.
• Research Methods for Marketing - This module builds on the learning from the Marketing Analytics module.  As well as learning how to define and plan research projects, you will develop skills in gathering data, whether from focus groups, surveys or observation. The focus on this module is primarily on marketing research, but we will also look at the similarities to and differences from academic research.
• Global marketing - Whilst all of the modules on the Masters programme adopt a global perspective, this module looks specifically at the challenges of developing international markets. As well as learning techniques for researching and evaluating intentional markets, you will become familiar with different modes of market entry, as well as the common dangers and benefits of global marketing.
• Dissertation Research Methods

Option modules

You will choose two additional subjects from the optional modules* below, allowing you to specialise in areas relevant to your chosen career path:

• Digital Marketing or Corporate Communications
• Customer Relationship Management
• Social Marketing Principles and Policy
• Promotion and Society

* The availability of optional modules is subject to demand. 

Dissertation

In addition to these modules, your dissertation gives you the chance to research an area of marketing of particular interest to you and of relevance to your career or company. You will have the choice of working on an academic-type dissertation or a work-based one, where you will work on a live marketing project. You will attend a number of dissertation workshops to provide you with the research training sufficient to produce a quality dissertation.

You will need:

• a good honours degree (minimum 2:2) from a recognised Higher Education institution or equivalent from a recognised overseas institution, or
• several years marketing or general business experience.