MSc Marketing Curriculum
The programme consists of 11 taught modules (10 core and 1 elective), assessed through a blend of written examinations and continuous coursework. Taught modules run across two terms: Michaelmas Term (September–December) and Hilary Term (January–April). The final Trinity Term (April–August) is dedicated to your dissertation or company project.
| Module | ECTS |
|---|---|
| Advertising Management | 5 |
| Entrepreneurship | 5 |
| Marketing Management | 5 |
| Marketing & Society | 5 |
| Research Methods | 5 |
| Strategic Storytelling: Creativity that Connects | 10 |
| Brand Management | 5 |
| Consumer Behaviour | 5 |
| Digital Marketing Communication | 5 |
| Marketing Design Consultancy for "Good" | 10 |
| Dissertation or Company Research Project | 30 |
Taught modules normally take place across Michaelmas and Hilary terms, with the final Trinity term dedicated to the dissertation.
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September-December Michaelmas Term |
January-April Hilary Term |
May-August Trinity Term |
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Core |
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Electives (Choose one) |
Note: Modules offered each academic year are subject to change. The modules listed above and below are the modules and timetable for 2026/2027.
Module Descriptions
Advertising Management (5 ECTS)
Learn how effective advertising is planned, created, distributed and measured. Follow the campaign process from customer research and insight development through strategy, creative execution, media planning and performance evaluation. Combining current theory with industry practice, you will use practical frameworks and playbooks to respond to a real organisational brief and develop a compelling advertising pitch.
How this fits your MSc journey: Understand advertising's evolving role within the marketing mix and gain practical experience of managing a campaign from initial insight to delivery and measurement.
Learning outcomes:
- Understand the advertising landscape: Evaluate the principles driving the industry and the trends shaping its future.
- Plan advertising strategically: Move from research and customer understanding to insight, strategy and execution.
- Develop creative work: Apply ideation, copywriting, art direction and content creation principles from brief to campaign delivery.
- Build brand stories: Use modern communications and media-planning principles to connect with target audiences.
- Measure what matters: Assess campaign effectiveness and identify the factors behind successful advertising.
Entrepreneurship (5 ECTS)
Turn an early idea into a rigorously evaluated business opportunity. Using the Disciplined Entrepreneurship framework, work in a team through the core stages of venture creation, from opportunity assessment and market sizing to customer-focused problem definition, positioning and assumption testing. The fast-paced process develops entrepreneurial capabilities that are valuable in start-ups, product management, corporate innovation and brand strategy.
How this fits your MSc journey: Apply core marketing concepts such as segmentation, customer insight and positioning within the uncertain, resource-constrained environment of innovation-based venture creation.
Learning outcomes:
- Understand venture creation:Explain the major phases involved in developing an innovation-driven business.
- Identifymarket opportunities: Discover, assess and quantify attractive entrepreneurial opportunities.
- Develop a business idea:Create,refine and present a customer-focused venture concept.
- Test and revise assumptions:Use evidence and feedback to challenge venture logic and make informed pivots.
- Build entrepreneurial capabilities:Strengthen creativity, initiative, research,teamwork and reflective judgement.
- Evaluate entrepreneurship critically:Assess its role across international markets,start-ups and established organisations.
Marketing Management (5 ECTS)
Develop the judgement needed to make effective marketing decisions in a complex, digital and AI-enabled environment. Explore customer centricity, data, experimentation, innovation, customer experience and future readiness while learning to balance incomplete evidence, competing stakeholder interests and organisational realities. Through cases, debate and AI-supported analysis, you will diagnose challenges, compare alternatives and defend practical recommendations.
How this fits your MSc journey: Build the marketing mindset, critical thinking and professional judgement needed to manage marketing as both an organisational function and a managerial philosophy.
Learning outcomes:
- Evaluate marketing philosophies: Compare marketing management with other contemporary approaches to organisational decision-making.
- Diagnose emerging challenges: Assess the effects of digitalisation, data, AI and changing customer and geopolitical expectations.
- Navigate organisational trade-offs: Examine the realities of implementing customer-centric marketing strategies across competing priorities.
- Design meaningful experiences: Apply customer insight, experimentation, innovation and design thinking to services and distribution channels.
- Challenge AI-generated analysis: Combine technology outputs with theory, evidence, organisational context and human judgement.
- Defend future-focused decisions: Develop and communicate accountable recommendations through effective individual and collaborative work.
Marketing & Society (5 ECTS)
Examine marketing's positive contribution to growth, competitiveness, employment and consumer choice, alongside its potential social and environmental harms. The module introduces a critical perspective on commercial marketing and explores how social marketing can influence individual behaviour, public awareness and wider structural or policy change. You will apply behavioural and social theories to a live social, environmental or public-health challenge.
How this fits your MSc journey:
This module places marketing within the broader context of ethical and sustainable business. It encourages you to question assumptions, understand marketing's influence on society and develop the balanced judgement required to practise marketing responsibly.
Learning outcomes:
- Critique how commercial marketing can contribute to complex social, environmental and sustainability challenges.
- Explain the main theories of behaviour change and their application in social marketing.
- Design a social marketing intervention or advocacy programme for a defined societal challenge.
- Address both individual behaviours and wider structural influences in campaign planning.
- Develop persuasive arguments and work effectively both independently and in teams.
Research Methods (5 ECTS)
Understand the importance of scientific research for evidence-based marketing and develop the skills required for the dissertation or company project. The module examines what counts as evidence, how to source and appraise academic literature, how to define a research problem and question, and how qualitative and quantitative data can be collected and analysed. Practical activities progressively support the development of a research proposal.
How this fits your MSc journey:
This module prepares you to become a research-minded and evidence-based marketing practitioner. It provides the conceptual and methodological foundation needed to investigate a relevant marketing issue rigorously and complete the programme's final research or company project.
Learning outcomes:
- Explain core research concepts and the main approaches used in a master's research or company project.
- Develop a clear problem statement, research purpose and focused research question.
- Source, review and critically appraise relevant academic literature.
- Compare qualitative and quantitative data collection approaches and select an appropriate methodology.
- Explain and apply foundational approaches to qualitative data analysis.
Strategic Storytelling: Creativity that Connects (5 ECTS)
Cut through a world saturated with content by learning to tell clear, compelling and human stories. Drawing on screenwriting, performance poetry, design thinking and strategic communication frameworks used by leading technology companies, you will explore creativity as a driver of culture and business impact. Through creative sprints, rapid prototyping and collaborative challenges, you will turn original ideas into persuasive brand narratives and confident pitches.
How this fits your MSc journey: Develop the strategic communications thinking and creative confidence to lead campaigns, influence stakeholders and position storytelling as a source of business value.
Learning outcomes:
- Generate original ideas: Use structured creative frameworks, including Design Thinking and the three-act structure, to find and develop ideas.
- Design communication strategies: Build scalable plans that combine strategic rigour with a memorable creative approach.
- Create persuasive stories: Develop brand narratives and emotionally intelligent writing that influence audiences, leaders and culture.
- Pitch with confidence: Apply public speaking, presentation and strategic improvisation skills in high-stakes situations.
- Critique narratives: Deconstruct how contemporary storytelling shapes, and is shaped by, society and consumer culture.
Brand Management (ECTS 5)
Learn how to build brands with meaning, authenticity and cultural resonance. Beginning with brand fundamentals and positioning, the module progresses to socio-cultural theories of branding and contemporary tools for developing brand strategy. You will examine brand stories, myths, communities, sensory appeal and the wider cultural forces that shape how brands are created and experienced.
How this fits your MSc journey:
Brand management sits at the centre of the MSc, connecting consumer behaviour with strategy, communications and digital marketing. The module builds capabilities relevant to brand management, planning, consultancy and agency careers, with close attention to responsible and sustainable practice.
Learning outcomes:
- Apply established branding concepts and frameworks to the analysis and development of brands.
- Analyse how socio-cultural forces influence brand management strategy.
- Use contemporary tools to formulate and implement brand strategies across categories and contexts.
- Develop practical brand management recommendations for real-world settings.
- Present and defend culturally resonant and responsible brand strategies to a professional audience.
Consumer Behaviour (5 ECTS)
Explore how and why people consume through sociological, anthropological, psychological and cultural perspectives. Moving beyond traditional behavioural approaches, the module examines how consumption shapes individual and social identities and how wider cultural, historical and social forces influence consumer choices. You will also use ethnographic and netnographic techniques to generate insight and apply it to a live creative brief.
How this fits your MSc journey:
Consumer insight is the foundation of effective marketing strategy. This module provides the interpretive and qualitative research skills that support work in marketing management, branding, communications, digital marketing and the dissertation or company project.
Learning outcomes:
- Apply consumer behaviour concepts to real-world consumption phenomena.
- Evaluate how consumer insight informs effective marketing strategy.
- Analyse the cultural, social and historical forces shaping consumption.
- Design and conduct small-scale ethnographic and netnographic research.
- Present consumer insight persuasively while considering social, political, economic and environmental implications.
Digital Marketing Communication (5 ECTS)
Learn how to develop digital communications that understand customers, evoke action and stand out in a crowded content environment. The module combines marketing strategy with buyer personas, value propositions, emotional marketing, content planning, influencers, websites, customer journeys and search. You will apply these frameworks to build communications strategies for organisations of different sizes.
How this fits your MSc journey:
This module connects consumer behaviour and brand management with the practical execution of digital communication. It also supports advertising, e-commerce and consultancy work by developing the ability to guide customers through relevant content and effective conversion journeys.
Learning outcomes:
- Construct an end-to-end marketing communications strategy for a business.
- Evaluate how psychology and emotion influence marketing campaigns.
- Design and execute an effective content marketing strategy.
- Research, select and engage influencers appropriately for marketing activity.
- Analyse e-commerce journeys and develop organic and paid search strategies.
Marketing Design Consultancy Project (ECTS 10)
Work hands-on with a real client to co-create sustainable marketing solutions. This project-based module blends consultancy practice, design thinking and marketing strategy to help you tackle live challenges with creativity and critical insight. You'll learn how to frame problems, shape strategies and deliver impactful, actionable recommendations.
How this fits your MSc journey: Integrates marketing, design and entrepreneurship, giving you real-world experience and a portfolio-ready consultancy project.
Learning outcomes:
- Deliver client-ready solutions: Develop and present a tailored marketing strategy for a real organisation.
- Apply theory to practice: Use cutting-edge research and sustainability principles to inform strategic recommendations.
- Think like a consultant: Master key tools in marketing, design and project management for real-world problem solving.
- Collaborate and lead: Build effective teamworking, communication and stakeholder engagement skills.
- Drive change creatively: Combine critical thinking with design thinking to develop go-to-market strategies that create lasting impact.
Digital Business Models (5 ECTS)
Explore how digital technologies reshape industries, disrupt competition, and unlock new value. This module equips you with the tools to understand, analyse and design business models fit for the digital age—whether for startups, pure-players or digitally transforming incumbents.
How this fits your MSc journey: Strengthens your ability to evaluate digital strategy, helping you design forward-looking models that drive long-term marketing and business success.
Learning outcomes:
- Understand digital-first models: Identify the defining traits of modern digital business models.
- Tackle operational realities: Explore the challenges of maintaining high-performance digital operations.
- Analyse real-world cases: Apply consulting frameworks to evaluate and improve business models.
- Collaborate strategically: Work in teams to develop insights and solve business model challenges.
- Think ahead: Develop a future-oriented mindset to diagnose and reimagine digital value creation.
Social and E-Commerce (5 ECTS)
Learn how contemporary brands grow profitably across their own websites, marketplaces and social-commerce platforms. Take an operator's view of direct-to-consumer retail, the creator economy, generative AI, product discovery, conversion optimisation, customer retention, measurement and demand planning. You will analyse real businesses and build a functional Shopify store using AI-supported tools.
How this fits your MSc journey: Bring together brand, content, media and analytics around a measurable commercial outcome: profitable sales and repeat customers.
Learning outcomes:
- Evaluate the commerce landscape: Compare DTC, marketplaces and social platforms within a wider digital growth strategy.
- Design social-commerce approaches: Develop creator, influencer and affiliate strategies for a brand.
- Apply AI and Martech: Use tools across product discovery, service, creative, CRO, CRM and measurement.
- Build and grow a store: Create a functional Shopify storefront and drive, measure and improve traffic conversion.
- Use commercial data: Apply contribution margin, CAC, LTV, MER and cohort analysis to recommend a path to profitability.
- Recommend growth strategies: Use retailer and DTC cases to identify and defend evidence-based opportunities.
Sales Management (5 ECTS)
Master the art and science of selling in a digital-first world. Learn how to lead high-performing sales teams, convert leads into loyal customers, and navigate shifting buyer behaviours with proven, real-world strategies. Gain practical skills in SPIN selling, sales pipeline management, and go-to-market execution.
How this fits your MSc journey: Build strategic sales capabilities and leadership insight essential for driving business growth in modern markets.
Learning outcomes:
- Apply modern selling techniques: Use proven frameworks like SPIN selling to convert leads into opportunities.
- Understand evolving buyer behaviour: Analyse how technology and shifting preferences shape customer engagement.
- Lead with purpose and ethics: Evaluate the role of leadership and ethical decision-making in sales performance.
- Bridge sales and marketing: Examine how alignment drives value throughout the customer journey.
- Design effective go-to-market strategies: Craft integrated sales and marketing plans that deliver results.
Dissertation or Company Project (ECTS 30)
Bring your learning to life with a self-directed research or consultancy experience that reflects your personal interests and professional ambitions. Choose between a traditional academic dissertation or a company-based project, both designed to test your ability to think critically, work independently, and apply advanced marketing knowledge in a meaningful way.
How this fits your MSc journey: Serves as the final, integrative challenge of your degree, demonstrating your capacity for research, strategic thinking, and real-world application.
Learning outcomes:
- Frame a research challenge: Define and contextualise a relevant academic or business question with clear motivation and purpose.
- Draw on the literature: Critically engage with academic theory and practitioner sources to underpin your work.
- Design the right method: Select and justify research approaches that align with your goals and data needs.
- Analyse with insight: Collect and interpret primary or secondary data to deliver evidence-based conclusions.
- Manage independently: Plan and execute a substantial project with autonomy and professionalism.
- Deliver impact: Produce a polished dissertation or report that meets academic standards and/or adds value to a partner organisation.