Academics
Is a Master of Marketing right for you?
Do you want more opportunities and more meaningful work? If you’re a college junior or senior—or a recent university graduate—a master’s degree in marketing can prepare you for a fun, rewarding career where you can make a difference.
Build a solid foundation in marketing
The Master of Marketing faculty and curriculum prepare students to succeed in marketing careers after graduation and beyond.
Program Structure
The Master of Marketing program is a full-time, 32 credit, 9-month program. Like our other programs, the MSMK program is cohort based, so classes are lock-step and taken with the same classmates throughout. All courses are delivered in-person, on-campus during the day on weekdays, with Fridays reserved for workshops and career center events. There are no elective course offerings in this program.
Additionally, students in the program gain real-world marketing experience through our Brand Enterprise course, a one-of-a-kind consultancy where they work with senior management at leading companies to solve a marketing challenge by applying the tools and skills they learned throughout the program. Most recently, our MSMK Class of 2022 consulted with Cambria and Schwan's during the Brand Enterprise course.
Below is a sample schedule (subject to change):
|
Fall Semester |
Spring Semester |
||
|---|---|---|---|
| A Term (7 weeks) | B Term (7 weeks) | A Term (7 weeks) | B Term (7 weeks) |
|
MSMK 6211 |
MSMK 6505 |
||
|
MSMK 6205 |
MSMK 6055 |
MSMK 6052 |
MSMK 6088 |
|
MSMK 6078 |
MSMK 6086 |
MSMK 6053 |
MSMK 6076 |
|
MSMK 6281 |
MSMK 6051 |
MSMK 6082 |
|
|
MSMK 6901 |
|||
Course Descriptions
MSMK 6051: Marketing Intelligence (2 credits)
Methods for collecting/analyzing data to solve marketing problems. Survey research techniques. Research design, secondary/primary data collection, sample design, data analysis. Application of techniques to marketing problems, marketing research projects.
MSMK 6055: Buyer Behavior (2 credits)
Application of behavioral sciences to understanding buyer behavior. Perceptions, memory, affect, learning, persuasion, motivation, behavioral decision theory, social/cultural influences, and managerial implications. Emphasizes class discussion.
MSMK 6078: Advertising & Promotion (2 credits)
Managing communication. Advertising, sales promotion, public relations, direct marketing. Setting communications objectives and budgets, media selection, creative strategy, sales promotion techniques.
MSMK 6086: Digital Marketing (2 credits)
Marketing practices have dramatically shifted with the rise of social media and the proliferation of devices, platforms, and applications. This rapidly changing environment presents new opportunities and challenges for marketers. Through a combination of case studies, best practice examples, current news items, and assignments, students learn how the elements of a digital strategy work together with traditional media to attract prospective customers. Specifically, students learn best practices for social media marketing, content marketing, organic and paid search, search engine optimization, e-mail marketing, landing pages and display advertising. Students discuss strategies for reputation management in a world where information is disseminated virally and discover how social media monitoring and data analysis can be used to improve marketing and product development activities. The importance of establishing digital marketing goals and analytics is covered as well as how to measure return on investment for digital activities.
MSMK 6205: Business Fundamentals for Marketing (3 credits)
This course focuses on fundamental business topics and knowledge central for marketers. These include understanding the fundamentals of finance, accounting, management, and operations. After taking this course, students will understand business financials and the role of marketing with a larger business organization.
MSMK 6211: Marketing Management (3 credits)
Management of the marketing function; understanding the basic foundational marketing concepts and skills in strategy development and planning of operational and strategic levels pertaining to product offering decisions, distribution channels, pricing, and communication.
MSMK 6281: Customer Experience Management (2 credits)
Understanding your customer is key to marketing. In this course, we will explore qualitative research methodologies, including in-depth interviews, ethnographies and focus groups. To have a customer-centric culture, marketers need to understand the customer's experience including all the touch points. We will learn how to create personas based on research and map the customers' journey. Customer journey mapping is a powerful way to find pain points and opportunities in the customer experience. Students will learn fundamental techniques of qualitative data collection and analysis to solve specific marketing problems. The class offers hands-on learning-by-doing opportunities through group projects for students to practice every stage of the customer's experience.
MSMK 6901: Project Management (1 credit)
This course focuses on effective project management skills. Skills include working in groups, managing tasks and timelines, and effective communication. After taking this course, students will be prepared to effectively work in groups on business projects.
MSMK 6052: Marketing Analytics I (2 credits)
Customer Analytics addresses how to use data to learn about and market to individual customers. Marketing is evolving from an art to a science. Many firms have extensive data about consumers' choices and how they react to marketing campaigns, but few firms have the expertise to intelligently act on such information. In this course, students will learn the scientific approaches to analyze and act on customer information. While students will employ quantitative methods in the course, the goal is not to produce experts in statistics; rather, students will gain the competency and working experience to interact with and manage a marketing analytics team. The course uses a combination of lectures, cases, and exercises to learn the material. This course takes a hands-on approach with real-world databases and equips students with tools that can be used immediately on the job.
MSMK 6076: Customer Relationship Management (2 credits)
Management of personal selling. Sales force organization, effort allocation, personnel selection, motivation, compensation, performance evaluation.
MSMK 6082: Brand Strategy (2 credits)
Management of brands/brand equity in modern business enterprises. Measuring brand equity. Building brand equity. Leveraging brand equity through brand extensions/alliances. Lectures, case studies, group brand projects.
MSMK 6088: Strategic Marketing (3 credits)
Determining product-markets where organization should compete. Sustainable competitive advantage. Matching marketing strategy with environment. Coordinating marketing, other business functions. Organizing marketing function/management.
MSMK 6053: Marketing Analytics II (2 credits)
This course focuses on learning how to use quantitative analysis tools to solve real-life problems in business. Rather than developing complicated mathematical models, the course aims at learning how to apply analytic techniques to a typical business decision problem, obtaining business management insights, and developing recommendations. The lecture and group activities will be topic-driven and sample topics include market analysis, targeting, customer value assessment, and new product development. Considering the popularity and convenience of it in business decisions, Excel will be the main software for the course, with the occasional application of SPSS for a few specific functions.
MSMK 6505: Brand Enterprise (4 credits)
A core principle of the Carlson School is learning through doing and exposing students to real business challenges. The school is nationally recognized for innovation and cutting edge application in experiential learning. The Carlson Brand Enterprise (CBE) is a unique opportunity for our Master of Marketing students to work on a semester-long project with cross functional teams of graduate and undergraduate students. Each project focuses on strategic marketing projects for real companies and organizations, solving complex business challenges, utilizing strategic and analytical driven insights. Unlike most project-based student consultancies, the Carlson Brand Enterprise operates as a professional services firm, serving multiple external clients across a range of industries and business models by providing high impact, value added, objective solutions. Student consultants apply the concepts, principles, and frameworks they have learned in the classroom to practical and engaging business challenges with support from world class faculty and leading industry professionals.