BE550-7-SP-CO:
Critical Marketing
PLEASE NOTE: This module is inactive. Visit the Module Directory to view modules and variants offered during the current academic year.
2023/24
Essex Business School
Colchester Campus
Spring
Postgraduate: Level 7
Inactive
Monday 15 January 2024
Friday 22 March 2024
20
31 March 2021
Requisites for this module
(none)
(none)
(none)
(none)
(none)
The grand narrative of the market is that it enables autonomy and freedom by providing the conditions for innovation and choice. According to this narrative, the market, and therefore marketing, improves our lives and guarantee economic, social, and cultural progress. Critical Marketing is a discourse – i.e. a form of thought and practice – that presents the counter to this grand narrative. The primary intervention made by this discourse is that markets and marketing tend to manipulate and exploit.
This module is designed to introduce students to this aspect of the debate. It provokes thought towards new ways of looking at and understanding market activities, brand consumption, advertisements and their meanings, etc. It introduces students to foundational texts in the field and thereby enables a trans-disciplinary engagement with the wider social, psychological and ecological impacts of marketing. As such, this module is designed to prepare students to look marketing from an ethical perspective. Over the ten weeks, the module will inculcate critical questioning skills and a deeper and more informed understanding of the nature of the world around us.
The aims of the module are:
• To provide critical understanding of the issues central to contemporary marketing practice and discourse
• To identify the mechanisms used by marketers for creating, supporting, and subverting customer values in the global market
• To develop a critical understanding of the development, implementation, and social consequences of marketing strategies and programmes in contemporary contexts
• To provide critical understanding of the organisation and impact of marketing operations
On successful completion of the module, students will be able to:
• Debate the role of marketing as a discourse that is embedded and reproduced in a variety of different spheres of society.
• Engage in a variety of contemporary issues of marketing and apply a critical understanding to everyday life.
• Critically analyse, using appropriate marketing and social science concepts and theories, marketing discourses and practices in contemporary society. • Examine the global linkages within marketing activities, and analyse dependencies between global and local contexts of marketing.
Skills for Your Professional Life (Transferable Skills)
After completing this module students should have:
1. Developed their digital/technical fluency through the use and application of Microsoft Office software package and Encore database.
2. Enhanced their written communication skills through producing discursive coursework assignments
3. Improved their collaborative and team working skills by taking part in group work
4. Enhanced their research skills through researching two coursework assignments.
5. Recognised the relevance and importance of critical marketing theory in the current global landscape.
No additional information available.
The Module consists of ten weekly sessions of three hours each. To present examples of current international marketing practice, the sessions include relevant case studies.
This module does not appear to have a published bibliography for this year.
Assessment items, weightings and deadlines
| Coursework / exam |
Description |
Deadline |
Coursework weighting |
Exam format definitions
- Remote, open book: Your exam will take place remotely via an online learning platform. You may refer to any physical or electronic materials during the exam.
- In-person, open book: Your exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer to any physical materials such as paper study notes or a textbook during the exam. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, open book (restricted): The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer only to specific physical materials such as a named textbook during the exam. Permitted materials will be specified by your department. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, closed book: The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may not refer to any physical materials or electronic devices during the exam. There may be times when a paper dictionary,
for example, may be permitted in an otherwise closed book exam. Any exceptions will be specified by your department.
Your department will provide further guidance before your exams.
Overall assessment
Reassessment
Module supervisor and teaching staff
Dr Louise Nash, email: louisen@essex.ac.uk.
Louise Nash
Yes
No
Yes
Dr Stephanie Anderson
Available via Moodle
Of 30 hours, 30 (100%) hours available to students:
0 hours not recorded due to service coverage or fault;
0 hours not recorded due to opt-out by lecturer(s).
Disclaimer: The University makes every effort to ensure that this information on its Module Directory is accurate and up-to-date. Exceptionally it can
be necessary to make changes, for example to programmes, modules, facilities or fees. Examples of such reasons might include a change of law or regulatory requirements,
industrial action, lack of demand, departure of key personnel, change in government policy, or withdrawal/reduction of funding. Changes to modules may for example consist
of variations to the content and method of delivery or assessment of modules and other services, to discontinue modules and other services and to merge or combine modules.
The University will endeavour to keep such changes to a minimum, and will also keep students informed appropriately by updating our programme specifications and module directory.
The full Procedures, Rules and Regulations of the University governing how it operates are set out in the Charter, Statutes and Ordinances and in the University Regulations, Policy and Procedures.