Fashion Marketing and ManagementMA

Business Consultancy Project-portfolio assessment

This module provides you with the opportunity to work on specific business issues that organisations are facing. Utilising your competences of handling and managing business challenges, starting from problem identification and concluding with solution-related recommendations, thus encouraging research into real world business issues impacting organisations.
Useful and applied business research, like useful reflection, leads to change. To that end, students will be encouraged to take a pragmatic approach to their research, seeking always to create actionable conclusions of value to business managers, owners and entrepreneurs.
The aims of the module are to:
1. Foster a critical awareness and deep interest in a management/business issue or topic associated with their subject specialist area and to combine knowledge and analyses acquired in modules to explore that topic in depth
2. Enable students to produce a full business research report and a management summary on an appropriate topic to a professional and engaging standard that provides the basis for action.
3. Encourage reflection to critically evaluate the success of a business-related project and assess personal competence in the light of current knowledge and skills.
4. Build each student’s knowledge and confidence in their chosen subject to facilitate employability.
The expectation is that students will undertake research in areas of interest to them that is in context to their chosen programme and that develops knowledge and skills that support employment. Examples of possible areas of research include:
• Evaluation of an opportunity to enter a new market e.g. is it feasible for a low cost airline to enter the market in Brazil?
• Evaluation of a specific firm’s strategy and performance e.g. how is Ford responding to the advent of electric vehicles, driverless technology and ride sharing?
• Analysis of the impact of technology change on a company, industry or sector e.g. how will driverless technology and ride sharing impact on car ownership?
• Analysis of trends to create potential strategic scenarios for a firm or industry e.g. what are the future scenarios for law firms in the light of the adoption of AI?
• Analysis of competition in a specific market or industry e.g. global competition in the rapidly growing e-bike industry
• Identifying solutions to a specific business problem e.g. with a small or medium sized business e.g. what needs to be done to grow the business to the next level
• Analysis of disruption in an industry and the implications for a specific incumbent e.g. how should a black cab driver respond to Uber and other ride sharing platforms?
• Analysis of the effect of government intervention in a particular industry e.g. the current trade dispute over subsidies to Boeing and Airbus
• Response from Banks and FIs to the changing customer interaction and business landscape in the post pandemic era

Contemporary Issues in Fashion and Sustainability

The module provides a motivational learning context for the co-creation of knowledge pertaining to issues engendered by the operation of a globalised fashion system. A holistic overview of the apparel business addresses both the impacts of apparel production processes and the practices of fashion consumption within a framework of economic, environmental and ethical concerns. The content complements material disseminated in the other subject-specific core module offered as part of the award. The module is designed to prepare those taking it with the skills and knowledge necessary to embark on careers in the fields of fashion marketing and management. Specifically, the aims of the module are to develop:

1. critical reading and writing skills
2. innovative research strategies
3. analytical thinking
4. presentational and communicative skills.
5. subject-specific knowledge pertaining to the fashion sector
6. awareness of professional career options

Digital Marketing and Social media

This module will equip you with Masters-level skills and awareness of the challenges and opportunities within the everchanging digital ecosystem. You will be able to critically explore the theoretical frameworks and models which are relevant to digital and social media marketing practice. You will look at the development and planning of supporting technologies for digital marketing and examine digital channels and their suitability for inclusion for effective integrated marketing programmes and campaigns.

The module aims to:

- enable you gain a comprehensive understanding of digital and social media marketing techniques applicable to marketing theory and practice, research and advanced scholarship.

- provide you with an understanding and the development of critical awareness of current theoretical research in digital and social media for the evaluation and effectiveness of different tools and technologies in digital and social media marketing.

- enhance your cognitive/intellectual, transferable digital practical skills and applied decision-making skills needed successful career in digital and social media marketing.

Fashion Business Market Practice

Fashion Business Market Practice is a practical module designed to help build capabilities to deal with competitive and fast-moving fashion environment and
aims to turn ‘the learners into the professional’. You are expected to develop a more focused and resolved approach to your practice as well as performing more complex skills with confidence, evaluating your work and developing ideas from inception to realisation. In this module, you will create collections of work in preparation for an industry based and practical fashion portfolio. You will also start to edit and finalise your Professional Portfolio in readiness for graduation and future career movement. This module has a very strong connection with the fashion industry through our partners such as Polimoda, Black Neon Digital, Otherday, Sefleuria, Crawford Creative, Puddinglingerie.com, Asos, etc.

Fashion Sales, Negotiations and Procurement

This module is designed to equip students with a broad-based knowledge and understanding of the nature and background of fashion supply chain management and the operational aspects of managing international sales, procurement and negotiations. The module introduces students to the concepts, principles and practicalities underlying the business discipline of fashion supply chain.
This module explores the diverse roles and responsibilities of a fashion buyer and merchandiser, and explore the associated roles that are key within the modern fashion industry.
Students develop in-depth knowledge of the buying cycle and the critical path, and key activities around trading the range, reacting to sales and managing sales promotions. The merchandising pathway focuses on the numbers behind buying a fashion range, its selection process and strategic stock management and negotiation skills.
This module aims to generate an understanding of the main processes and contemporary issues involved in the international manufacturing, sourcing and retailing of fashion brands by looking at the manufacturing and production sector, examining its systems and approaches to quality and efficiency. It continues down the various types of fashion supply chain to distinguish the types of supplier requirements and product allocation systems used by International fashion brands.
Also, the fashion business is recognised as a global industry and as such is affected by environmental issues, unethical practices and sustainability. Hence this module, takes account of these issues throughout the teaching, in particular the international fashion supply chain and garment production, and aims to inform and develop the students understanding and critical awareness of these issues.

Understanding Consumer Behaviour

The module will enable you to gain an in-depth understanding of the buyer decision-making process and the factors influencing consumer buying behaviour. You will examine relevant consumer behaviour concepts, principles, and frameworks applied across business sectors and cultural boundaries. The main focus is to develop the link between theory and practical application.

The module aims and learning outcomes have been formulated in relation to these QAA benchmark statements.

The aims of the module are to:
• Critically explore the marketing implications of psychological personal and group influences of consumer behaviour from a customer perspective.
• Enable students to select and apply appropriate tools for analysing consumer behaviour, and evaluate the links between consumer analysis and marketing strategy.
• Foster a critical awareness and understanding of contemporary issues and trends in consumer behaviour studies and their application to marketing campaign.
• Enhance students’ cognitive, transferable and applied decision-making skills needed for a successful career in marketing and consumer analysis.

Major Account Marketing Management

With the complexity in the marketplaces ever increasing, knowing how to navigate sales with key accounts by tailoring sales and marketing to align with the buying decision making process is a significant source of competitive advantage.

Winning and retaining major accounts is critical to all businesses whether B2C or B2B. Managing key account is a strategic capability that organisations must embrace through analysis and planning.

This is a practical module designed to help build capabilities to deal with competitive situations, manage negotiations and offer the ongoing support needed to keep your major accounts.

Retail Design, Buying and Merchandising

In this module, you will be introduced to the concept of retail design as an intrinsic part of marketing strategy in order that you acquire a sophisticated and theoretically informed understanding of how the various players in the retail environment interact in catering to consumers’ needs in addition to maximising profitability.

You will address those elements of the commercial process that determine the nature of the transactional interface with the consumer. It will also enable you to integrate academic models pertaining to the scope and function of the buying and merchandising processes that determine not only the availability of products but also the manner in which these are perceived.

The aims of this module are to:

• Develop a critical awareness of, and introduce a range of theoretical approaches to, issues extant in contemporary retail design, buying and merchandising.

• Propose insights into the differentiated decision-making processes of commercial practice and furnish students with understandings of buying behaviours across a fast-changing retail environment.

• Foster creativity in the application of knowledge, developing sophisticated techniques of research enquiry and contributing to practical understanding of the field in order to advance scholarship.

• Facilitate students in gaining a holistic overview of professional practice in a range of consumer-facing contexts within the global marketing context.

• Enhance cognitive, practical, academic and transferable skills (time-management; problem-solving; numeracy; creativity; written, verbal & visual communication) together with applied decision-making abilities needed for a successful career in marketing and other related disciplines.