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MSc - Advanced Marketing

Dissertation

Marketing is not just a profession; it is an art, too. Marketing combines creative and communicative skills and has strong roots in critical strategic and analytical thinking at the same time. This makes marketing interesting, but also complex.

The last two decades have changed marketing tasks significantly and marketers need to be up-to-date with their capabilities and knowledge. Consumers have become a market power. Concepts such as post-modern consumers, tribalism, but especially the technologisation of the marketing context have shaped a new and very different marketing agenda, which is addressed in the individual modules. In addition to these direct requirements the increasing request for respecting ethics and the environment, two of the attributes at the core of the request for sustainable (marketing) management, are permanently embedded in the taught content. This awareness adds to the Degree's objectives to offer students the highest standards in marketing knowledge.

The MSc - Advanced Marketing provides students with the latest knowledge on marketing for the physical place, e- and mobile marketing.

Degree Programme Objectives

The marketing discipline has seen most significant changes in the last two decades, but has not been fully able to meet these in the same speed. The mission of the course is to embrace the radical changes and to adopt the new market(ing) realities consequentially. This leads to a distanced and critical consideration contrasting old theory with new approaches, which are expected to have more power and relevance for students and graduates, who have to work and manage the new complexities.

The programme is designed and structured to build a sound understanding of the key areas of strategic, tactical and function-oriented best practice in the complex and challenging environment of global markets in the 21st century. Its vision is to provide the necessary backgrounds and future-oriented paths for managers and students, who are seeking their careers in the marketing function.

Key marketing skills and specific tools and techniques are taught, which support students in their management roles to improve the performance of both their organisations and employees in turbulent and hyper-competitive marketplaces. The course’s objective is to enable students of the MSc - Advanced Marketing to apply their knowledge gained to the specific market(ing) situations of organisations.

Benefits

Shared aims unite the modules in the MSc - Advanced Marketing. These common aims are:

  • Understand current practices and issues in Marketing and to apply this knowledge and understanding in practical terms.
  • Apply effectively analytical and critical evaluation skills.
  • Undertake the formulation and apply problem-solving skills for all levels of Marketing.
  • Critically understand the various philosophies and methods of research and selection of the most appropriate application to solve Marketing’s strategic, tactical and operational problems.
  • To develop the reflective manager engaged in a lifelong cycle of learning, who respects corporate responsibility and sustainability by high standards of moral actions and ethical behaviour.

Programme Content

Candidates for the MSc - Advanced Marketing are requested to submit a disser- tation as part of the Degree. The dissertation is focused on a topic of the market- ing function in its organisational and/or market context. Ethical concerns and sus- tainability are expected to be integrated into the research and its discussion. Suggestions for the area of the topic, which are not limitations, are:

  • Contemporary marketing for physical markets
  • Actual and emerging trends in e-marketing and/or m-marketing
  • Innovation and marketing
  • A topic of cross-disciplinary research, e.g., marketing and ethics, market- ing and society, etc.
  • Strategic and/or tactical renewal of the marketing function
  • Consumer Culture Theory, tribalism, post-modern consumerism
  • Monitoring and evaluation in marketing

Within this dissertation students are requested to provide evidence of their intel- lectual capability to undertake own and independent research, which is robust, consistent and evidence-based.

The dissertation must meet the standards on postgraduate level. The dissertation requirements and specifications are:

  • Submission of a dissertation, which consists of 15,000 words (+/- 10%).
  • Submission within 12 weeks after the start of the dissertation module.
  • The dissertation module is counted as the core module, providing evi- dence for the overall learning achievements.

Admission to the Thesis:

The dissertation module can only be started, when all taught modules of this De- gree have been completed successfully.

Prior to start students will have to present a dissertation proposal (part of the Marketing Research Module) in which they explain

  •  The topic of their dissertation
  • The relevance of the topic with regard to ethical and sustainable management principles
  • The methodology of research (e.g., quantitative, qualitative, mixed method research, case study, empirical study, etc.)

The dissertation proposal will be moderated and approved by a member of the academic staff.

Assessment of the Dissertation:

The assessment of the dissertation is based on

  • Relevance and appropriateness of the discussion and the research findings
  • Academic depth
  • Appropriateness of the methodology
  • Practical orientation and scientific contribution to the field of management
  • Selection of relevant literature, such as peer-reviewed accepted and published research papers, book publications, relevant statistics and other academically acceptable publications
  • Narrative style and structure of the dissertation