Markets and Consumption (MN1305) Course Summary

 

The rationale of Markets and Consumption (MN1305) is to integrate the research expertise of the Marketing faculty at Royal Holloway for your benefit as a first year student in the School of Management.

 

The Marketing subject group at Royal Holloway http://pure.rhul.ac.uk/portal/en/organisations/marketing(e3a07645-4887-4cb3-9d79-608903739adb).html is one of the largest ones within the University of London. The faculty blog http://royalhollowaymarketing.blogspot.co.uk/, used to support the MA Marketing and MA Consumption, Culture & Marketing, is an excellent introduction to the overall orientation of Marketing at Royal Holloway.

 

MN1305 Markets and Consumption, as a course, introduces all first year students who are reading management as part of their degree – that is you – to marketing, as both an academic discipline and a business practice. How and why marketing has developed, and continues to develop, as an academic discipline underpins our approach. Treating marketing as a management practice includes assessing the application of marketing in various marketplaces. By various marketplaces, we mean that the discourse of marketing has penetrated all sectors of the economy (i.e., private, public, and voluntary or not-for-profit). In addition, as a signatory to the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), which is based on the United Nations’ Global Compact, attention is devoted to the sustainability of marketing practices in an increasingly globalized consumer society.

 

The use of ‘markets’ and ‘consumption’ is, in the title of a course on marketing, part of our answer to what is taught and why it is taught. The course asks you to consider the various relationships between markets and consumption. The consumer is a key stakeholder for organizational success so marketing is fundamental to understanding how the economy operates. What we purchase as consumers – the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the places we travel on vacation – define us and our world. Marketing is everywhere. A core concept of marketing is ‘exchange of value’. Such exchanges often take place in markets, which are marked by firms in competition. Firms are competing for consumers. This is to say the consumer is a key stakeholder. Satisfying consumers is crucial to the success of organizations. As such we seek to understand consumers and their consumption behaviours and decisions in making choices amongst competing firms.   

 

Marketing occupies a significant space within the study of management. Marketing is also interdisciplinary: it intersects other disciplines including microeconomics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, public policy, and visual culture.