MA International Retail Business, Sustainability & Technologies

This module considers the modern evolution of retail across the globe, and how within a single generation, there has been a surge of technological advancement bringing a plethora of challenges and opportunities for the sector. Technology can be found throughout the industry from the operational aspects; databases; logistical improvements; and efficiencies; to being responsible for the enhancement of a stronger marketing presence; securing more consumer contact; touchpoints; and sales.  

The distinctiveness of this module is in that it provides you with the key principles of retailing whilst placing particular emphasis on advancements in technology and what are the resulting pros and cons for the future of the industry and the end consumer. You'll explore the history of retailing and how consumption practices keep in step with social, economic, and cultural change. You'll examine case studies and conduct a comparative analysis of retail leadership globally, in critical discourse on the subject to challenge, articulate and explore your own perspective and position.

The practice of greenwashing through over-publicised or under-scrutinised, sustainable, or ethical accomplishments, has been used for decades to wilfully mislead. More recently, the subject of sustainability and the language surrounding it, has been widely adopted by both business and consumers alike. This familiarity with the terms has caused a vagueness of what they represent. Within a commotion of activity by almost every industry globally, there is a distinct dilution of the meaning of sustainability, and a reduction of the precision of comprehension for what it represents.  

This module aims to provide you with a base of understanding of sustainability principles and the approaches used in services, systems, products, and the circular economy. This will assist you to challenge the current view of the discipline. You'll be supported by developing a professional comprehension of frameworks that outline, measure, and report an organisations’ environmental behaviours and responsibility. You'll undertake a critical review of Corporate Social Responsibly reports (CSR) and sustainability indexes and audits and will become familiar with the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals (SDG’s) along with other frameworks that are currently being used.

This module is designed to explore how to engage with retail data and technology applications to optimise retail operations and development.  

Over the last two decades, digital technologies have resulted in a revolution in the retail sector. The web, then mobile and now immersive technologies have opened up new avenues for retail beyond bricks and mortar. Retailers have been making increasingly sophisticated use of data, and can mine it for increasingly complex insights into customer behaviour driving new business innovations.  

This module will focus on two, intertwined, elements. The first is digital retail channels such as e-commerce, mobile apps and new developments such as VR and AR. The second is retail data and how it can be used to drive retail innovation and supply chains. These two are closely connected as digital retail channels are a major source of data and data analytics can be used to update and personalise digital channels in real-time.  

This module will be taught from a global perspective that does not assume that all retail follows the western technology model, for example focusing on the mobile first and digital payment economies in Asia and Africa.  

There is no need for prior experience of mathematical or computer science.

The Dissertation is an extended piece of written work based on an original piece of research on a topic of the student’s own choice (subject to the supervisor’s approval) drawn from the programme themes of retail, technology and sustainability. The dissertation will be based upon original research relating, ideally, to all three of the core themes, but with scope to specialize on one theme in particular. The Dissertation is undertaken during the Spring and Summer terms, with workshops, preparation and consultation in the Spring Term, and research and writing up in the Summer Term. The dissertation comprises a critical review of the literature, the formulation and design of a research investigation including the identification of an appropriate methodology, and original analysis of secondary and/or primary evidence on the chosen topic.

This module provides students with an in-depth engagement with the principles and practices of creative social media. The course introduces the foundations of a marketing approach to social media, but moves beyond this, focusing on the creative use of social media for storytelling, political campaigning, audience engagement, multiplatform and interactive production. From a theoretical perspective, it will look at how digital identities are created, and how we perform ourselves online. By specifically referencing the work of Douglas Rushkoff, Sherry Turkle, Jose Van Dijk, most recently looking at the ideas of ‘Lively Data’ (Lupton:2016) we examine the uses and abuses of the information that we leave behind. It will also take in the work of Goldsmiths’ Liz Moor and the rise of brands in modern culture and how this has impacted on the idea of ‘personal brand’.

On a practical level, it will explore creative uses of tools and techniques such as GIFs, live streaming, pre-roll advertising, click-bait, social storytelling and virality. The syllabus will respond to developments in the creative industries and fields of research related to social media. It will also ground students in the relevance and significance of social, aesthetic, theoretical, political and historical contexts in which social media operate. This provides students the opportunity to develop proficiency in the techniques and relevant software packages for realizing and analysing creative projects. Students will develop an ability to generate and develop social media strategies, they will understand the process by which a digital brand is created, and the production techniques to that respond to a range of different creative ideas – led by themselves and others working across different platforms – and potential client needs. They will learn how to translate narrative, conceptual and some marketing ideas into creative social media form.

This module provides you with a thorough understanding of the unique practices associated with successful luxury brand management. You'll probe the essence of luxury brand management, and explore the diversity of meanings associated with luxury across different markets, as well as the impact of social networks and digital developments.

In the contemporary luxury market, companies have to be connected with customers in increasingly creative ways. Luxury has to distinguish itself through distinctive approaches to retail, information technology and marketing. Luxury provides the opportunity to stay close to one’s customers and to provide the things that they want. Luxury has traditionally been seen in a tangible way, especially with regard to fashion goods, but an emerging field on inquiry is the growth of experiential luxury and the expansion of luxury management skills into new areas such as tourism and hospitality, museums and art galleries, and theatres. The distinctive features of luxury brand management arose from a combination of theory and practice, and consideration is given to emerging future trends. You'll explore geographical and regional perspectives within their historical contexts with regard to the luxury sector or knowledge domain with reference to the development of luxury brands in Europe, and to the use of luxury items in Asian and African court-based societies. You'll examine, in particular, the rapid emergence of Japan as a major consumer and developer of luxury brands and how its own distinctive practices in retail, notably the close relationship between customer and retailer, became influential.

In this module, you'll explore the relationship between culture, tourism, and regeneration. Tourism has long played a role in the economic, social and physical transformation of towns, cities and rural areas.  However, in recent decades the nature of tourism, particularly city tourism, has changed, and concerns with sustainability have become of utmost importance. 

You'll analyse the growth and increasing diversity of cultural tourism, the role it plays in urban centres and their regions and the ways in which cities, regions and rural areas, have reinvented and rebranded themselves as centres of leisure and recreation consumption using major cultural infrastructure investment, heritage commodification, events, and festivals.

This module places emphasis on the discussion of current themes and issues at policy and practice level in this transdisciplinary area. It fosters a reflexive and entrepreneurial approach to international cultural relations, by encouraging students to actively engage in the area by developing their own research and projects, relating them to wider debates. The module thus allows for the development of critical, creative, practical and reflexive skills complementing other elements of the MA Cultural Policy, Relations and Diplomacy programme.

The module covers a range of trans-disciplinary contemporary issues that concern those researching and practicing in the areas of cultural relations and diplomacy. It will consider key questions faced by countries, regions, cities, organisations and individuals in creating and delivering policy and projects. The topics are broad and changeable responding to the current issues concerning policy makers, practitioners and the public engaged in the field – an indicative list of topics to be covered in the sessions is provided below.

While providing space for student led education through individual and collaborative presentations, the module works around topical and geographical sessions, each representing a contemporary issue and/or area of current interest in cultural relations and cultural diplomacy. These include for example: culture and international development policies and practices; the role of the cultural and creative industries in cultural relations and diplomacy; migration and (transnational) cultural citizenship; language, communication and identity in international cultural relations; international cultural policies and cultural co-operation; sessions with a geographical focus e.g China’s cultural diplomacy, EU strategy for culture in external relations; project planning, monitoring and evaluation for cultural relations and diplomacy.

This module will introduce students to a range of innovation and entrepreneurial tools that will provide them with techniques to situate a creative idea within a framework of entrepreneurial thinking. This will enable them to develop the idea to become a project or enterprise with audiences, clients, customers, users and funders. The students will be introduced to and will critically review and appraise a range of methods and techniques that have been evolved from Nesta’s Creative Pioneer Programme, use elements of Design Thinking. The module will engage with new developments in technology that is changing both the way that ideas are reaching audiences/customers and being created. Issues of audience engagement relating to access and diversity as well as funding sources which have a political dimension will be addressed in parallele with an understanding of the techniques and toold used. The culmination will involve both written reflection and a proprisition for how this knowledge can inform their future careers and projects. The students will be required to make a report of their engagement with the materials and also create a presentation of their proposed professional practice plans that takes the knowledge and synthesizes it in to their own plan. This will be presented to a forum, either live or recorded of staff, students and invited guests.

What is technology and how does it evolve? How can managers stimulate technological innovation in organisations? How can managers use technology to disrupt existing markets, and create entirely new ones? These questions lie at the heart of this module. Students will learn how to appreciate the potential commercial and social implications of emerging technologies, and how to orchestrate marketing processes for the creation of new markets.

The objective of this module is to equip students with some of the knowledge and tools to analyse the internal and external business environment and devise marketing strategies that help to distinguish businesses from their key competitors whilst adding value to the product/service offering. The module will be divided into two section: one more theoretical and one more practice. The module will start defining the role of marketing strategy within the business strategy and the corporate strategy of the company. It will also help to differentiate the three levels, and it will highlight the relationships between these three levels of strategy. The module will then look into the process of creation of a marketing plan as a core tool for the definition of the strategy. The marketing planning process will start from understanding the market opportunities of the company, through the identification of attractive market segments, to the differentiation and brand positioning. The module will then move on the formulation of marketing strategies such as marketing strategies for new market entries, growth markets strategies, mature and declining markets strategies. Finally, students will learn how to implement and control strategy, and to measure effectively the performance of a specific strategy. In the second section, students will be required to complete a business simulation. In order to show a practical understanding of the concepts of the first part, students will be divided into teams and will be asked to complete in a simulation related to marketing strategy (i.e. Markstrat). This simulation will allow students to draw a parallel between marketing strategy and marketing tactics (4Ps). This will also allow them to apply the knowledge about other elements of marketing management that they have been studying in other modules.

This lecture course will introduce you to the fundamentals of consumer psychology and behavioural economics.

It will give you an understanding of the fundamental decision making processes and the factors that influence these processes. It covers topics such as prospect theory and classical economics, brain structures and information processing, heuristics and rules of thumb, and framing and influencing techniques.

It also discloses the various strategies used by marketers to differentiate their products, leverage brands, set strategic prices, reduce the effectiveness of consumer search, and it compares the effectiveness of each.

The course covers topics such as the types and effectiveness of pricing strategies, individual differences in uptake of pricing strategies, value perceptions and subconscious influences (priming), and ethical and legal issues around influencing consumer choice.

The lectures in this course will be supplemented by several assignments designed to develop and enhance practical skills, and further develop familiarity with consumer psychological methods and theories.

Over the past three decades, customers have gained centre stage in marketing education and practice. Establishing close and intimate relationships with customers is considered to be key to marketing success, and customer equity has become an important marketing performance indicator.

The advent of digital technology and social media have had a major impact on the nature of customer relationships. Today, companies are seeking to engage the customer by creating interactive, participative marketing landscapes which will be the focus of this module.

Based on a solid understanding of traditional customer relationship management and contemporary customer engagement theories, this module discusses the creation of customer experiences from two perspectives.

First, the module will teach students how managers involve customers throughout the marketing process. Existing technology allows customers to participate in product design (for example online product customization), pricing (for example pay-what-you-want), and marketing communications (creation of viral online content). 3D printing may revolutionize the distribution of material goods, with customers designing products online and printing them at home.

Virtual Reality will add further customer touch points to our existing marketing landscapes in the near future. Specifically, Virtual Reality has the potential to transform retail environments and create entirely new marketing communication channels. Furthermore, companies are increasingly engaging customers in brand building, especially via brand communities. The merits as well as the limitations of participative customer experiences will be discussed in this module. Also, the potential impact of other emerging technologies on the customer experience will be examined.

Second, this module focuses on customer involvement in the innovation process. Companies are increasingly involving customers directly in the development of novel products and services. On the one hand, this occurs via crowdsourcing efforts and product idea competitions. On the other hand, selected customers may work directly with engineers and managers during the innovation process. Furthermore, customers often innovate on their own, which is well-documented in the lead user and market creation literature. The module demonstrates how managers can create fertile grounds for successful customer co-creation of new products and services. Also, it will debate the value and limitations of customer engagement in companies’ innovation efforts.

This module is designed to provide students with a thorough understanding of leadership and talent in organisations. Moreover, students will learn about methods for assessing leadership potential and talent, along with approaches to enhancing leadership ability and talent. The module will also cover use of technology in leadership development and talent management. By using case material and practical examples, students are introduced to the importance of theory and research-based practice in these fields.

A large amount of data is available in electronic resources, both offline and online. This module will give a broad introduction to techniques for gathering data from electronic sources, such as databases and the internet. It will cover both fundamental ideas and the use of some of the most important currently available tools. The module will also present tools and ideas for more effectively using the internet to communicate, visualise and generate news stories. 

This module immerses participants in the latest developments around social media reporting and campaigning. This is a participatory module which mixes up-to-the-minute case studies with a hands-on exploration of the tools and concepts.

Students will become familiar with the affordances of digitally enabled crowdsourcing and participation as well as social media reporting, UGC verification, forensics and analysis

This module examines visual advertising media and the proliferation of neo-liberal philosophies of consumer citizenship. In the milieu from which universal rights are disappearing, consumer citizenship imposes a moral obligation on subjects to make provision for themselves and their families well into the future. The logical implication here is that autonomous consumers come to adopt a certain entrepreneurial form of practical relationship to their selves. Enterprise is represented here as playing a vital translating role, promising to align general political-ethical principles, with the goals of industry and the self–regulating activities of individuals. Within this politico-ethical environment, consumers are constituted as both objects of enterprise and instruments of enterprise as they make 'entrepreneurs of themselves, seeking to maximize their ‘quality of life’ through the artful assembly of a ‘life-style’ put together through the world of goods’ (Miller and Rose 2008:49). 

Divided into four main sections. Part One: examines reflexive modernity and the linking of postmodern visual culture with citizenship as part of the development of political consumerism. Part Two: is informed by Michel Foucault's 1978-1979 lectures at the College de France, in conjunction with Miller and Rose (2008), so as to provide an account of the entrepreneurial self. Central objective of Part Two is to examine the 'governing of humanity', in the context of Neoliberal governmental rationality and market reform of public sector services (with emphasis on recent healthcare market reform). Part Three raises pertinent issues about visual media: the embodiment of consumer citizenship; the body as a site of self-discipline; body praxis and life-politics; and cultural political resistance to the commodity-sign. Part Four: examines Fairtrade branding and the geopolitics of ethical consumerism in the context of global advertising media.

The module explores the consequences of social and mobile media in a comparative context. What does it mean to live entangled with social and mobile media? What are the consequences of the culture of ‘always on’ connectivity for our identities, relationships and communities? What are the implications for inequality? Are there any opportunities for protest movements or for coping during emergencies? These questions have never been as urgent as they are today. During the pandemic, we have collectively experienced a huge dependency on social and mobile media as our professional and social lives migrated online. The module offers an opportunity to critically unpack some of the assumptions made about media technologies, starting by unravelling the very notion of social media.

The module pivots on the double logic of social media: while social media enable socialities and intimacies at a distance, they are also key instruments of extraction and surveillance. This tension between agency and corporate or state control through datafication is a theme that runs across all lectures. The module takes a distinctly non-western approach focusing on the experience of social media in the context of everyday life. The key texts informing our seminar discussions are ethnographies from the global south. Through this comparative approach, we aim to question widely held assumptions about social media as well notions of intimacy, care, labour, protest and inequalities.