Business and Marketing

Business and Marketing

How do you launch a successful marketing career in a digital-first world?

At Kent Business School, you’ll explore how to build brands, connect with audiences, and use data to make ethical and strategic decisions.

Our BSc Business and Marketing course combines critical thinking with real-world practice. Opportunities to work on live briefs, pitch to clients, and analyse consumer data across platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube are examples of learning methods that simulate a real career experience.

You’ll explore topics from digital strategy to consumer behaviour and can tailor your degree through specialist modules or a year in industry.

Accredited by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), this course helps you graduate career-ready with professional recognition.

Whether you're driven by creativity, curiosity or commercial ambition, you’ll gain the insight and practical skills to thrive in a fast-evolving, digital-first world.

Year in Industry

Taking a year in industry in the UK or abroad is the perfect way to put into practice the skills you’ve learnt, and build important industry connections.

Year Abroad

Expand your horizons and tailor your degree to suit you with a year abroad, where you'll study at one of our partner institutions for a year. Studying abroad helps you grow in confidence and enhances your employability. You'll make friends in the country you're studying in and meet other adventurous students from around the world.

Foundation Year

A course with a Foundation Year provides a pathway into degree-level study for students from a wide range of educational backgrounds and qualifications. It is the perfect option if you have school-leaving qualifications below the level required for direct entry onto a degree programme. It offers one year of full-time study prior to the start of your BSc course.

Year 0 (Foundation)

The following modules are what students typically study, but this may change year to year in response to new developments and innovations.

Global Market Dynamics

How do businesses function effectively in a global context? How do they understand their markets and consumers while managing and leading responsibly?

You’ll address these questions by exploring the importance of globalisation to business and finance. You’ll learn about the dynamic nature of marketing through concepts such as the marketing mix and in the process develop a holistic understanding of what is happening in the rapidly-changing global marketplace.

By taking a case-study based approach, you’ll gain essential insights into the contemporary business world and develop critical skills and confidence to prepare you for the rest of your degree.

Academic Skills Development

Unlock your potential and gain the essential skills for academic success at university. You’ll develop effective study habits, learn to manage your time, and gain strategies for independent learning. You’ll conduct academic research, by learning to find, evaluate, and use academic sources, while avoiding plagiarism. Your writing skills will be developed through extended writing activities, referencing, proofreading, and editing. You’ll also improve your communication skills by learning how to structure a presentation and use visual aids. You’ll develop your critical thinking through analysis, evaluation, and argumentation. By the end of this module, you’ll be building towards working at Level 4.

Business Decision Making

How do businesses operate today? What are their key functions and how are they organised? Most importantly, what do managers need to know in order to make sound decisions?

You’ll develop a broad understanding of essential business management and accounting models, exploring theories that are integral to how businesses work. By looking at fundamental business strategies and different tools of analysis – like break-even calculations, ratio analysis, capital appraisal models, and decision trees – you’ll develop your understanding of the basics of business and start building up your skills in Excel.

Analysing Global Dynamics with Data

Throughout the course, students actively engage in discussions and practical applications, preparing them to confront complex global economic challenges armed with a data-driven approach. By the end of the course, students emerge equipped with the necessary skills to analyse economic data effectively and contribute meaningfully to informed decision-making in the global economic landscape.

Foundation Project: Research and Reflection

Dive into a project that sparks your curiosity and hones your academic skills, as you choose a topic you’re passionate about and transform your research into a compelling essay. This module allows you to develop and apply the learning from your Autumn term module ‘Academic Skills Development’.  You will improve your research and writing skills further and refine your use of sources. While you conduct your reading and research, you’ll engage in reflective practices improving your ability to assess and evaluate your learning using various reflective models.  Independence and time management are key skills you’ll develop as you navigate this module.  To maximise your experience, you are expected to prepare and actively participate in our regular tutorials.  These are designed to provide invaluable opportunities to seek guidance and develop your project.

For full details of module content, please see website for details.

Year 1

The following modules are what students typically study, but this may change year to year in response to new developments and innovations.

Introduction to Management

How do you effectively manage people in organisations? In this module, we’ll tackle that question by exploring decision-making processes concerning work design, organisational structure, and accountability.

We'll consider classical management perspectives such as scientific management and human relations theory, as well as contemporary issues like culture management and diverse leadership styles.

Financial Accounting for Decision Makers

How do companies measure, assess and communicate their financial performance? Managers prepare, read and interpret financial information daily and they use it to communicate company financial results to a variety of stakeholders.

In this module you’ll learn how sole traders and limited companies record accounting transactions using bookkeeping and how they summarise and report their financial results to external stakeholders using financial statements. You’ll also gain essential knowledge of the regulatory framework of financial reporting which guides the process of preparing annual reports for a variety of companies.

Business Skills for a Sustainable Tomorrow

Given the startling pace at which human-driven changes are occurring to our social and ecological systems, what skills do you need to be ready for whatever challenges await you when you graduate?

You’ll look at the biggest challenge facing businesses in every industry today: how to organise themselves in ways that ensure a sustainable future for the global community. You’ll look at various case studies to examine the impact climate change is having on business. You’ll also consider the key theories, concepts, and practices of sustainable business, including the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Economics for Business

Economics is a crucial tool for businesses to utilise to help make informed decisions that support success and drive growth. Developing a knowledge of microeconomics will help you understand how millions of consumers and producers make decisions, how they interact, and how they use scarce resources.

You will learn how to apply microeconomic theories and tools to understand consumer and producer behaviour, resource allocation, and pricing policy, including cost-benefit analysis.

Introduction to Marketing

Marketing is an exciting and dynamic field that offers endless opportunities for innovation, creativity and growth. With advancements in technology, shifts in consumer behaviour and emerging trends, marketers have the opportunity to explore new strategies and tactics to help firms effectively reach and communicate with their target customers.

Creating brand awareness, engagement, satisfaction and loyalty is vital for sales growth in competitive and dynamic markets. You'll learn how to develop and implement effective marketing plans and strategies as well as exploring how key elements of the marketing mix can be used to create and communicate a distinctive value proposition that helps a product or service stand out from the competition.

Business Analysis Tools

Excel is the industry standard software for data processing and modelling, so if you want to hit the ground running in your career, mastery of Excel is crucial. You'll learn the techniques of Excel and spreadsheet modelling through realistic problems and extensive exercises, giving you real hands-on experience to make rapid progress.

By the end of the module, you won’t only have mastered excel to report, model and forecast for businesses, you'll have also developed the confidence you need to present your insights to managers, stakeholders and business leaders.

For full details of module content, please see website for details.

Year 2

The following modules are what students typically study, but this may change year to year in response to new developments and innovations.

Compulsory modules currently include the following:

Marketing Strategy and Planning

In competitive marketplaces, strategic marketing planning is essential for firms seeking to reach their target customers, foster brand awareness and increase revenue.

In this module, you’ll develop your understanding of marketing strategy and planning by learning how to systematically approach and develop a strategic marketing plan for a commercial or social organisation. Through this process, you’ll learn the tools marketers use to assess market opportunities and evaluate their competition. You’ll also practice your skills by responding to live briefs and practical marketing simulations, gaining crucial hands on experience.

Digital Business and Marketing Strategies

As businesses embrace digital marketing as a tool to reach key audiences and deliver results, they need experts in strategy and planning to give their campaigns an edge and ensure they are successful.

Through collaborative projects and hands-on workshops you'll become the kind of expert businesses are looking for. You’ll gain the skills, knowledge and confidence needed to develop, deliver and refine digital marketing strategies to drive results and enhance brand visibility in a competitive landscape.

Consumer Behaviour

Consumer behaviour is a critical exploration of how consumers and organisations engage with products and services. Society, culture, identity, and psychology all influence consumer habits. So, what can marketers learn from the social and cultural world?

You'll discover why consumers from different backgrounds react uniquely to the same products, what drives these consumption patterns, and how culture shapes our buying decisions. You’ll explore the social and cultural intricacies of consumer behaviour and gain the insights needed to connect, engage and succeed in a global marketplace.

Marketing Research and Analytics

Marketing research helps businesses to understand their markets and target consumers, and identify opportunities that inform decision-making about the business and customers.

You’ll learn how to use traditional marketing research techniques to gain insights into consumer behaviour before delving into the analysis of digital data from online sources and interactive dashboards. You’ll gain hands-on experience using analytical software that will give you the skills needed to navigate digital data landscapes, analyse customer behaviour and trends, and extract actionable insights into customers and competitors.

Brand Management

How do brands differentiate themselves from their competitors? How do they create competitive advantage in a crowded marketplace? This module covers four main areas: developing brand strategy, implementing brand management, evaluating brand performance, and sustaining brand growth.

By studying these four areas, you’ll gain insights into formulating effective strategies, executing brand management practices, assessing brand effectiveness, and fostering long-term brand growth in dynamic market environments.

Optional modules may include the following:

Enterprise and Entrepreneurship

Thriving and Leading in Today's Dynamic Workplace Student favourite

Management Accounting for Decision Makers

International Marketing

Decision Analysis

For full details of module content, please see website for details.

Year 3

The following modules are what students typically study, but this may change year to year in response to new developments and innovations.

Compulsory modules currently include the following:

Digital and Social Media Analytics

As digital marketing and social media become increasingly important to business strategy, knowing how to use analytics to drive success has never been more important. Digital analytics produce a wealth of insights that enable marketing managers to evaluate the success of digital and social media marketing initiatives. They are also useful for forecasting trends to inform future marketing decisions.

You'll learn how to use a range of analytical tools to interpret and evaluate data on consumer behaviour and preferences and social media engagement. You’ll also discover how to use key performance indicators (KPIs) - which are specific to digital and social media campaigns - to help drive improvement and performance.

Marketing Communications, Advertising and Promotion

Marketing communications serve as the voice of a brand. They create a dialogue that connects businesses with their audiences across various platforms and mediums. This module will examine how advertising fuses creativity and strategy to influence consumer behaviour and perceptions.

You’ll engage with tools like social media and search engine optimisation (SEO) to create conversations and nurture communities. Integrated marketing communications (IMC) ensure consistency across all channels, amplifying the resonance of each message. Ethics and sustainability practices that guide responsible marketing are at the heart of the module: respecting privacy, ensuring transparency and embracing sustainable practices that prioritise long-term well-being over short-term gains.

Optional modules may include the following:

Business Strategy

Cross-cultural Management

Leading People in Organisations

Behavioural Science in the Workplace

People Operations: An Analytic Approach

New Venture Creation

Corporate Social Responsibility

Services Marketing

International Entrepreneurship

KBS Challenge

Research Project in Business

Talking Cultures – Exploring Intercultural Awareness and Competencies

Global Leadership Development

For full details of module content, please see website for details.

https://www.kent.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/2027/868/business-marketing

Professionally accredited courses provide industry-wide recognition of the quality of your qualification.

• Chartered Institute of Marketing