Semester 1
Core
Academic Skills
This module serves as an introduction to the core academic skills required of students embarking on undergraduate studies in a range of courses and modules. Students will embed academic literacy, alongside the development of technical and interpersonal skills, as appropriate to study in specific disciplines. It takes a task-based and reflective learning approach to develop students’ existing skill sets, exploring and strengthening new skills and focusing on social and emotional skills.
Brand Essentials
This module offers students the chance to combine theory and practice to understand the most important concepts behind creating customer value in the short to medium term. Students are introduced to the importance of brands and the role of marketing across the organisation in building strong brands. All aspects of the brand are explored including the development of the brand based from consumer insight.
Marketing and Communications
This module focuses on the importance of marketing in its role in driving success and delivering results. It provides an introduction to the functions of marketing within the organisation, examines key marketing concepts and explores their application in the context of organisations. Students will examine the theories, processes and practices of good business communications to facilitate an understanding of the importance of effective internal and external communications in a business context.
Semester 2
Core
Professional Skills
This module serves as an introduction to the professional skills required of students embarking on undergraduate studies across all programmes. The module focuses on embedding professional skills needed to relate to specific disciplines. It takes a task-based and reflective learning approach to develop students’ existing skill sets, in both practical and theoretical terms, as well as exploring and strengthening new skills.
Plus 2 Electives
Brand Stream : -
Brand: Pricing
This module considers value based pricing in the context of the brand of a firm. The module examines how effective brand pricing can be profitable for firms. Pricing strategies are investigated and used to show that effective branding can allow premium branded products to sell at a premium price.
Brand: Supply Chain
The module provides information about practices and tools used in the supply chain. It explains and illustrates the concepts and principles of managing a brand. It enables the evaluation of brand performance and the analysis of a range of metrics and performance measures.
Brand: Product Innovation
Organisations need a flow of new products to keep their product portfolios fresh, their customers interested and sales growing. This module examines how new product development (NPD) is not only about the creation of ideas and physical products (invention) but also finding the appropriate applications and commercialising them (innovation). This module will focus on the management of the product portfolio and the new product development process.
Communications Stream: -
Communications: PR
Effective Public Relations (PR) can help manage reputation by communicating and building good relationships with all stakeholders of an organisation. The CIPR defines PR as “the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics”. This module examines how the discipline has evolved to embrace new media channels in addition to traditional print and broadcast, and its role within the communications mix.
Communications: Digital Essentials
This module explores the role of digital communication techniques in integrated marketing communication strategy. It examines how new communication technologies can be embraced for marketing and promotion purposes. It also focuses on the use and value of digital communication and the internet as vehicles for the generation and distribution of ideas, goods and services in the business world.
Communications: Advertising
This module provides an insight into the radically evolving world of advertising. It embraces account planning, creative strategy and planning, branding, image, organisation, consumerism and issues associated with traditional, social and interactive media. The broader changes occurring in the media industry which continue to have a dramatic effect on advertising practitioners and consumers are examined.
Semester 3
Core
Consumer Behaviour and Customer Insights
Consumer insight and understanding of buyer behaviour has become a key source of competitive advantage for businesses, enabling them to differentiate products and services through more precise targeting of specific consumer segments. This module explores traditional and current approaches to consumer research to generate unique behavioural insights that facilitate more effective marketing decision-making.
Employability Skills
A compulsory module in which students develop the knowledge and apply professional skills to achieve employability outcomes within the context of the local, regional and global marketplace. The content allows students to critically reflect upon their career journey, share and explore ideas and interests, analyse graduate stories, develop an action plan and build self-confidence when making successful career transitions through and beyond completion of their programmes.
Digital Marketing
This module recognises how digitality enables organisations to be agile and how digital channels and digital communications’ tools can help to achieve business objectives. It recognises that digitality is now one of the most important sales and marketing tools available to businesses. This is a practical digital marketing module which enables students to effectively use digital skills in a business context.
Semester 4
Core
Project/Placement Design and Implementation
Whilst many higher education studies have focused on the importance of developing subject knowledge and the critical and analytical skills relevant to the study, it has become increasingly important for students to be able to apply this knowledge and these skills within a work context. Thus, this module provides students with the opportunity to either undertake a work placement or engage in a work-related learning project implemented within a specified timescale.
Evaluation and Reflection (Work Based/Related Learning)
Students undertaking this module are expected to be engaged (or have recently engaged) in a project or work placement, and thus should evaluate their work and reflect critically.
Reflection is a key aspect of the learning process as it involves examining experiences, actions, feelings, and responses in order to interpret and analyse them so as to learn from them.
Semester 5
Core
Emerging Themes
Change is not only likely, it’s inevitable. This module critically reviews theories, concepts and practices applicable to emerging issues that exemplify the dynamic working environment confronting organisations and workers today. The identification and analysis of these emergent issues provides students with a functional knowledge of current issues and a critical understanding of how these affect the shaping the overall organisational strategy and decision-making. This will focus on the specific emerging themes relating to students’ disciplines of study and will change to reflect the contemporary debates of the day.
Strategic Marketing and Planning
Marketing is by definition a management process (CIM). The strategic application of marketing principles is a necessary requirement for corporate success, with strategic marketing and planning linking directly to organisational strategy. A dual focus exists; both the co-ordination of internal activities and management of organisational relationships externally with customers, supply chains and other key stakeholders.
Brand Management
This module blends the theory and practice of product and brand management as relevant to operating in a digital world. The module explores brand marketing strategy theories, concepts and models with an emphasis on strategic & operational decision-making. It recognises that while theory can provide strategic direction, it is the ability to apply theory that often determines the competitive success of brands in practice.
Plus 1 Elective
Research Methods
This module allows students to undertake supervised research in an area of their chosen field as appropriate to their programmes. The module aims to provide students with the tools and skills for developing their own academic research.
Research and the Professional
In business, there is a need to seek answers to questions, such as service levels, consumer perceptions or how satisfied employees are. To succeed, businesses need to gather information about their competitors, their consumers and their own performance.
Through the evaluation of different research methods, students apply business research methods in a range of contexts. These methods will not only prove useful in personal and professional development but will form the foundation for work on a Capstone Project.
Semester 6
Any Electives equal to 60 Credits
Digital Strategy
This module provides insight into how organisations can implement digital marketing capabilities into strategic marketing planning. It outlines how an understanding and analysis of the macro- and micro-environments can enable organisations to assess the impact of the digital landscape in delivering objectives and developing strategic recommendations.
Creativity and Innovation
This module focuses on creativity and innovation as crucial skills in driving organisations forward. The external environment has been unstable and is undergoing rapid change with the introduction of new technologies, which are swiftly adopted by consumers. Systems employed by organisations have tended to favour perpetuation rather than innovation and the challenge for companies therefore is to become truly visionary.
Marketing and Account Management
This module covers the management principles within a marketing context. It examines core management theory as well as the tools and techniques which make for effective marketers. It explores a range of marketing management and account management topics in context, e.g. company structure and culture, leadership and management, managing marketing performance, budgeting, marketing and account management roles and responsibilities.
International Market Development
This module examines the dynamics of the international market place and the complex and challenging forces shaping this environment. At a time of globalisation, marketers are presented with opportunities for international growth. To take advantage of these, students assess how market selection and market entry decisions need to be taken in the context of market, organisational and cultural situations.
Capstone Project (Dissertation/ Consultancy Project/ Work Based Learning)
A Capstone Project synthesises a student’s learning in a single project that demonstrates their fulfilment of the programme learning outcomes. Each project results in a final product such as a research paper, article, and documented action project, presentation of a body of visual / literary work, written project, dissertation or combination thereof. It also includes a student’s reflection in writing on his or her experience in relation to the material.
Destination Marketing
The opportunity to create a brand for a region or even a whole country that the rest of the world will see is one of the most challenging and rewarding in the entire marketing field. It requires basic marketing techniques to be applied in a quite unique and creative way. This module considers the journey from destination audit through to measurement of success via brand development and brand management.
Starting an Online Enterprise
This module provides students with the fundamental building blocks for setting up a successful and sustainable online enterprise. From analysing the marketplace to processing stock and providing a great end to end customer experience, students learn the ins and outs of trading successfully online whether using bespoke, out-of-the-box ecommerce platforms or selling wholly through a third party site such as eBay. The module also covers the legal aspect to keep students’ businesses on track online.