Study Details: MA full-time 1 year, part-time flexible
The course aims to develop analytical and strategic marketing skills using concepts founded in today’s business environment. This approach enables students to respond creatively and effectively to the challenges presented by a global business environment, and to ensure their marketing skill matches the challenge.
Marketing is a core business area that impacts on everyone, from consumers, business, heavy industry and governments so understanding, operating and engaging with the world of marketing can impact on us all.
Many employers place great value on the advanced knowledge and skills developed in a postgraduate course. Undertaking further study confirms your intellect and capacity to achieve complex goals. It demonstrates determination to succeed in a chosen career area and shows you are prepared to undertake professional development of your knowledge, experience and skills.
The MA Marketing provides an opportunity for you to grow in career and personal terms, to make new professional contacts and to stand out from the crowd on what may well be an International stage for your future employer. A student undertaking this Programme of Study is likely to have their goals set on becoming a Marketing Director or Senior Manager in a customer facing organisation, an Agency, or working in an International Business Development role.
The course is:
Academic
Meeting the exacting standards required of this internationally recognised qualification, you would develop your analytical and problem solving skills, learn how to apply business models and theories, and present solutions through seminars, reports, group work and presentations.
Distinctive
It not only embraces marketing practice in a variety of markets, but includes an Integrated Digital Marketing module which will enable students to operate confidently within the modern digital world – an area which is offering highly attractive employment opportunities.
Some of the work you do can be linked to an internationally recognized professional qualification from the Institute of Direct Marketing (The IDM), and you could receive significant exemptions from their professional certificate. You may have the chance to leave UCS with an excellent degree, and, possibly an internationally recognised certificate from the IDM, and membership of that professional body.
Practical
As a student you would be involved in various creative but rigorous projects and exercises. Your marketing expertise, knowledge and undertaking will be developed by both group work and individual assignments. The use of “guest lectures” by practitioners provides opportunities to share many aspects of current and best marketing practice.
Prospective students should:
Ipswich Campus (campus code I)
Typical International Entry Requirements:
For country specific entry requirements click here
£5490.00
Full-time students complete the course over one calendar year. It is possible to progress straight from an undergraduate course into the MA Marketing. You don’t have to have prior experience at working in a marketing function before joining the course.
Part-time students complete the course over two and half years, and this gentler pace allows you to obtain your MA without having to give up a current job or restart your career afterwards.
Prior to the commencement of teaching, all students are expected to attend two MA Academic Skills Sessions. The study skills sessions aim to equip students with an awareness of key academic requirements at postgraduate level.
Both full and part-time modules include the same curriculum:
The Operations and Functions of Management
This module addresses four significant and related management topics, which together provide a foundation in both content and learning for subsequent modules. The topics are; managing people in a technological environment, managing technology, managing responsibly and managing operations.
Contemporary Issues in the Business Environment
Of interest here are the external factors that affect the strategy and operations of businesses such as regulation, political and economic actions as well as social forces. The module enables students to develop a critical awareness of the implications of those factors. Contemporary issues such as employment law, globalisation and its impacts, contract law and environmental regulation are also covered.
This module aims to develop a critical understanding of organisational strategy, and to apply this to different contexts, including commercial and not-for-profit organisations of various sizes. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach to problem solving, drawing on skills developed in other modules. The content will cover contextual analysis, culture and stakeholder analysis, approaches to organisational change management, and methods of implementing and evaluating change interventions.
Strategic Marketing
Marketing is fundamental to profitable business operations, achieved through strategic analysis, strategy formulation, strategic implementation and control. It is largely responsible for delivering core corporate objectives by offering value propositions to targeted customer segments, helping to sustain competitive advantage in the longer term. It is desirable for the contemporary MA Marketing programme to contain a designated marketing module, which demonstrates a customer-facing approach, integrated across and throughout a business organisation. As a set of principles and practices, marketing also has relevance to public sector and other not-for-profit sectors.
Markets and Marketing
Understanding markets and marketing is fundamental to the success of any business and is essential in making informed product and marketing decisions. This module enables students to develop the skills to profile the market place in terms of market and associated market dynamics, market segmentation and market positioning, and to interpret that information to be able to create a marketing plan.
International Marketing
This module builds on the Markets and Marketing module, and relates strongly to the Strategic Marketing module, setting all of these activities implicitly and explicitly into the contemporary European and globalizing business environment.
Integrated Digital Marketing
Essential for current marketing operations, this module offers students an opportunity to gain an understanding of the key principles that will allow the identification, acquisition and retention of customers using modern interactive and digital marketing methods and integrating them appropriately with traditional media.
Research Methods
The aim of this module is to introduce students to the wide variety of approaches and techniques of quantitative and qualitative research and to equip students with the skills required to collect, collate, analyse, present and interpret data. It also aims to provide a firm foundation for the dissertation. The content will cover the context of qualitative research, data collection techniques, qualitative data analysis techniques, statistical analysis or relationships and trends, sampling, and exploratory and descriptive research.
Dissertation
The dissertation provides students with an opportunity to undertake a substantial piece of independent research in an area of particular interest and to allow students to demonstrate their understanding of research methods and their application. It also provides an opportunity for students to relate their learning in taught modules to the analysis of a problem relevant to their Masters programme. On completion of the dissertation students will have designed an appropriate and feasible research plan, developed appropriate research instruments and written a dissertation of 15,000 words.