Master’s in International Marketing and Brand Management

MSc in Business and Economics, major in Business Administration | 1 year | 60 credits

Course content

The initial fifteen weeks of the programme are organised into two tracks.

When applying to this programme, you must also select which track you want to follow, either a more management-oriented perspective or a perspective that puts an emphasis on consumer and cultural aspects.

In addition, you will be able to choose courses that will give you the type of specialisation that you prefer within the broader area of international marketing and brand management.

Autumn semester (September–October)

Strategies for Brands and International Markets (track 1)

This course focuses upon the various strategic aspects that are relevant for international marketing. It aims to provide the student with both a theoretical and a practical insight into the dynamics of the international marketing process.
 
The objective of the course is to make students familiar with the main areas, constructs and theoretical models within the broad subject of international marketing and strategy, and to provide them with a general understanding of the different challenges that companies operating on international markets have to manage.
 
The course also includes guest lecturers with practitioners that are intended to give the students an increased insight into how companies work with their international marketing strategy. The course includes individual assignments as well as a group assignment.
 

Course code: BUSN20 | Download syllabus

Strategic Brand Management is a broad subject which touches upon many different scientific disciplines, for instance intellectual property right, strategy, marketing, organization, finance, semiotics, sociology and psychology. This gives excellent opportunities for scientific cross-fertilization. 
 
Brands are intangible assets, assets that provide benefits to business and society. This is the domain of Strategic Brand Management: how to create value with proper management.

Course code: BUSN21 | Download syllabus

International Consumer Trends, Brands and Innovation (track 2)

This is a course which takes the student on a challenging and intellectual journey through the modern history of consumption and production, into the present, and even into possible futures. The purpose of the course is to provide broad understanding of what has created the consumer trends we live by today and how what is happening today may form new trends tomorrow.
 
Necessary for this is a step away from mainstream business management literature, into relevant sociological, cultural and anthropological literature on historical changes and present phenomena in consumer culture. 

Course code: BUSO30 | Download syllabus

The course covers an area increasingly important to many companies, not least international and global companies namely the link between consumer studies and innovation. Being able to increase innovation on the market is of greatest importance to many companies, not least those working on consumer markets.
 
While internationalisation and decreasing loyalty drive margins down, there is a need to increase margins by being able to innovate. One important input into innovation processes is consumer studies and as the media situation is changing, consumer studies means more now than the traditional input via surveys etc.
 
New media and new methods have increased the number of ways to create and get access to relevant consumer input to drive the innovation process. The course intends to enhance students’ ability to create consumer input as well as to understand how this input can be turned into valuable innovation in terms of products, services, business models etc.

Course code: BUSO31 | Download syllabus

Autumn semester (November–January)

Strategies for Brands and International Markets (track 1)

The objective of the course is to introduce students to Retail management. The retail sector is the dynamic, multifaceted and highly competitive part of our economy from which some of the world’s leading firms originate, and it is also where production meets daily consumption. Today, the retail landscape is changing fast and the development of innovative business models create new conditions and challenges for the retail manager. The course aims at providing an overview and analysis of the development and current themes within the field of retail management, with particular focus on multichannel marketing and internationalization.

Course code: BUSP36 | Download syllabus

International Consumer Trends, Brands and Innovation (track 2)

Brands are today ascribed with great value. However they are valuable for different reasons and for different actors. For companies brands are considered as the most valuable asset, enabling them to compete successfully on global markets. For consumers brands simplify choice, they offer them identity value, social value, and the value of long-term relationships.  This course offers a multifaceted understanding of the value of brands and branding. The aim of the course is to provide the students with advanced knowledge of the value of brands, by treating brands and branding from various perspectives; including a brand management, a consumer, and a critical perspective.

Course code: BUSN33 | Download syllabus

All students choose one of the following two elective courses:

The objectives of this course are to promote theoretical perspectives as well as empirical knowledge about the challenges of corporate activities in the context of sustainability. The course encompasses managerial perspectives on the integration of business objectives with wider social and environmental well-being as a key function of contemporary management.

The Global business and sustainability management pathway aims to help students to become knowledgeable and socially and environmentally responsible business leaders. With learning drawn from many different disciplines, students will develop the skills to research issues and respond to opportunities in ways that balance business interests with wider social and resource implications. This pathway offers a forward-thinking learning experience which reveals the importance of sustainability to all sectors of global business.

The course outlines how social and environmental sustainability influences the firm. In doing so perspectives and models related to corporate social responsibility, stakeholder and shareholder theory, value creation and setting corporate objectives  and performance targets are utilized.

Course code: BUSP35 | Download syllabus

Today, almost all marketing related activities have a digital component. This advanced level course is targeted towards students who would like to specialize in digitalization of marketing. The course consists of six major parts.

  • The first part, think, is devoted to researching, planning and strategic preparation for digital marketing campaigns.
  • The second part, create, enables you to generate functional and appealing digital marketing contents.
  • In the third part, engage, you will focus on engaging potential and existing customers in order to drive traffic to the digital marketing contents.
  • The fourth part is labeled retain as the focus of the course shifts toward building and maintaining strong relationships with customers.
  • In the fifth part, optimize, you will learn how to track, analyze, and optimize the performance of digital marketing campaigns via data-driven insights.
  • The sixth and final part, build, emphasizes the process of building strong brands in the digital marketing environment.

Course code: BUSO38 | Download syllabus

Spring semester (January–March)

This is a course that aims to advance students’ philosophical, critical, and analytical understanding of fundamental concepts academic research leans upon, and ultimately be able to master this conceptual understanding in order to initiate their own research strategy and knowledge generation.

Among the most important concepts are the following included:

  • Theory
  • Theoretical Contribution
  • Problematisation
  • Positioning

Course code: BUSP37 | Download syllabus

All students choose one of the following method courses (elective course one):

Within marketing and management there is a long tradition of conducting qualitative fieldwork/research. The choice of research method should be based on careful consideration of the aim of the research project, the nature of the unit of analysis and empirical object, the epistemological basis of different methods, the type of empirical data available and accessible, and the desired outcomes of the project. Researchers thus face an array of methodological decisions, the answer to which will greatly impact the both the practical feasibility of the study and the validity, reliability, and generalizability of the findings.

Questions related to qualitative research methods are therefore of pivotal importance not only for students and researchers but also to management and marketing practitioners. This relates to (i) the ability to conduct scholarly research and business/market research in an informed and robust way and (ii) the ability to assess and critically review others’ research, be it scientific studies or market research.

Against this backdrop, the aim of the course is to enhance the students’ knowledge and understanding of the most commonly used methods for collecting and analyzing qualitative data within marketing and management. Moreover, the ambition is to offer examples of how different types of data can be used for different kinds of analyses. More specifically, the course aims to offer the students the possibility to develop:

  1. A broad methodological repertoire and the ability to assess the appropriateness of different methods
  2. The ability to argue for and defend methodological choices
  3. A reflexive and nuanced approach to knowledge claims

Course code: BUSR31 | Download syllabus

This course aims at providing the necessary statistical skills needed for a position as project manager of a marketing research study. The course focuses on the application of statistical methods and the interpretation of the results, not on the detailed statistical constructs. The course covers sampling techniques, questionnaire design and attitude measuring, design of experiments and variance analysis, regression and correlation analysis, factor analysis, cluster analysis, multidimensional scaling, correspondence analysis and conjoint analysis within the marketing research framework.

Course code: STAR04 | Download syllabus

All students choose one of the following method courses (elective course two):

In contemporary society consumption is regarded to be of great importance. From an economic point of view consumption is often considered as a key factor for prosperity where statistical patterns of peoples’ consumption often is used as an indicator of economic growth or decline. From a business- and marketing perspective consumption has for several years been considered a prerequisite for company operations and success. This has generated a profound need among marketers to not only understand consumption as a phenomenon but also to understand the behavior and practices of consumers.

This course aims at providing students with a holistic yet deep theoretical understanding of consumption, consumers, and contemporary consumer society. It contains not only the dominant perspective of consumer behavior, but also sociocultural, critical, and political perspectives that provide valuable theoretical insights of various forms of consumption practices, consumption phenomenon, and the role of consumption in contemporary society.

The different perspectives and their underlying assumptions and theoretical background are brought up, interrogated, compared and linked to each other in order to support the course’s aim. Typical questions that will be dealt with during the course are: 

How and why do people buy and consume things?

How do rationality, emotionality, and experience structure peoples’ consumption?

Why and how does consumption relate to identity and sociality?

How do status, recognition and social class connect to peoples’ consumption practices?

How may consumption become production?

What is the relationship between consumption and politics?

In what way has consumer society developed historically and what are the main characteristics of contemporary consumption society?

Course code: BUSN26 | Download syllabus

In order to study and understand the corporate brand management and reputation processes the following areas are covered:

  • The history of corporate branding and the key roles of modern branding (brands,logotypes and symbols) and the distinction between product brands and corporate brands
  • Corporate brand identity and alignment of its key elements
  • Corporate behaviour, corporate social responsibility and internal branding
  • The core of a corporate brand: Promise and core values
  • Corporate branding in different contexts: B2C, B2B, Service & Retailing, Public sector, Not-for-profits, Institutions, and Cities, regions and countries
  • Corporate brand strategy and structure: Roles and relations between brands (Mother brand, Mother and Daughter, Daughter and Mother, Daughter with Discrete Mother)
  • Corporate brand communication and reputation management
  • Corporate brand crisis management
  • Brand-oriented and market-oriented approaches

Course code: BUSN35 | Download syllabus

Course code: BUSN24 | Download syllabus

Spring semester (April–May)

The students work independently, in smaller groups with designing and conducting their own study and on presenting their study in the form of a final written master thesis. This includes to search for and to select relevant literature on the appropriate theoretical area as well as on research methodology, and to collect relevant empirical data through field studies and documentary research. The students are also expected to read and discuss the work of other students that attend the same course.

Course code: BUSN39 | Download syllabus

Please note

This is a preliminary course list, and is intended as guidance only. The course list may be subject to change.

Case studies and guest speakers

The teaching methods used focus on the critical analysis of the course content with the use of real case studies wherever possible.  International guest lecturers and speakers from business, government, NGOs and research regularly feature as part of the curriculum to further connect studies to the professional world.