MBA in Marketing

Course details

The Edinburgh Business School MBA with a Specialism in Marketing from Heriot-Watt University is designed for individuals wishing to gain advanced management skills and expertise. The MBA is a broad-based management degree and appeals to individuals from a wide range of backgrounds. The degree is aimed at people with experience who wish to develop themselves as effective managers. The programme includes the opportunity for students to extend their study to meet specific career requirements by taking one of the specialist awards. The specialisms provide students with a deeper understanding of the application of a specific discipline.

The programme offers general coverage of the key management disciplines – people skills, economics, marketing, accounting, finance, and project management. The capstone Strategic Planning course develops strategic thinking and the ability to recognise and use the various tools and techniques of the other core courses to identify and solve a wide range of business problems.

Programme Objectives

• To understand the business environment and the influence of both consumers and micro and macro influences that shape the industry.
• To understand the role of different cultures in shaping national, regional and global business practice.
• To develop in graduates, both within the business curriculum and in the context of their degree programme, a range of transferable skills appropriate to employers needs.
• To develop analytical and evaluative skills.

Assessment

100% Written Examination

Modules

1. Accounting: This module, which focuses on key developments in accounting including areas such as target costing, life-cycle costing and time-based activity costing, is aimed at sensitising students towards the changes in their organisations’ system.
2. Finance: This module aims at enhancing the students’ portfolio of financial concept and providing industry-specific examples. Through this module, students will be able to build their understanding of the underlying principles of finance and the application of tools of financial arithmetic when making financial decisions.
3. Marketing: This module encompasses topics such as marketing management process, corporate strategies, marketing implications, and business strategies. It provides in-depth marketing topics such as environmental analysis, industry analysis, competitive advantage, consumer and organisational buying behaviour, product life cycle and evaluating marketing performance.
4. Organizational Behaviour: This module clarifies how organisational behaviour (OB) and management are similar disciplines and also exposes students to the different ways to measure job satisfaction. It equips students with the knowledge of various organisational designs and new forms of service driven organisations, as well as organisational culture and change.
5. Strategic Planning: This module clarifies the meaning of strategic planning in business and explains how visioning can be applied to the complex strategy process. It also exposes to students why the understanding of the economy is important for managers.
6. Project Management: This module aims to familiarise students with the main concepts and the philosophies of project management. It also explores how project management may differ from traditional management, what the different organisational structures employed by companies are and what are the potential benefits and challenges of using a project management approach.
7. Economics: This module is aimed at equipping students with the knowledge of the main concepts in economics such as market demand and supply and the operation of markets, changes in market equilibrium, intervention and dynamic adjustments in the market and the concept of marginal analysis and opportunity cost. Students will also learn about fiscal and monetary policies in this module.

Electives

1. Negotiation: This module aims at providing students with a better understanding of various topics such as preparation and debating in Negotiation, the concept of proposals and styles of Negotiation.
2. Marketing Communications: This module aims at equipping students with the knowledge of the characteristics of each major tool in the communications mix, the basic model of the communication process, the effectiveness of each communication tool and marketing communications in the consumer and business markets. It also outlines the components of the model and what it contributes to and examines the impact of the media and personal influences on the communication process.
3. Services Marketing: This module is aimed with equipping students with the knowledge and understanding of the kinds of organisations which provide services, the major changes occurring in the service sector and also the various characteristics that make services different from goods. Through this module, students would understand why service businesses need to integrate the marketing operations and human resource functions.
4. International marketing: This module aims to expose students to what international marketing entails and also consolidates the students’ knowledge of international marketing, enabling them to not only identify and manage factors in influencing the internalisation of companies, but also to evaluate the growth of developing markets and its significance to regional trade. Students will also be able to identify and manage political and economics factors in influencing the stability of regional markets and to analyse the growing trends of emerging markets.