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Marketing with Brand Management (Professional Practice) MSc

2025-26 (also available for 2024-25)

Start date

22 September 2025

12 January 2026

18 May 2026

Duration

18 months with placement

About the course

Reasons to study

  1. This course allows you to gain Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) exemptions whilst studying for your MSc degree.
  2. Study at the Times Higher Education Business School of the Year 2023.
  3. Study at an AACSB International accredited Business School. Globally, less than 6% of institutions offering business degrees achieve this accreditation. 

This course is specifically aimed at International students, supporting those wishing to gain practical work based experiential learning. Together with studying your chosen course we are offering an additional 6-month placement opportunity, making the course 18 months in length. This allows students to put into practice the skills and techniques developed throughout the Master’s degree within a UK environment after completing the 12-month taught programme.

This course provides a comprehensive study of core marketing principles, with additional focus on brands and branding, enabling you to prepare for a career in marketing and brand management.

Few businesses can afford to ignore international markets and competitors. This course has been designed to develop your knowledge and understanding of the strategic importance of brands and branding in an increasingly internationalised and globalised business environment. You will find that our course is theoretically robust with an emphasis on applied critical thinking and analysis. We seek to maximise your opportunity to put marketing theory into practice through the use of relevant case studies and projects.

  • Throughout the course, extensive use is made of contemporary marketing problems, which emphasise branding at the centre of strategic decision-making.
  • The focus of this course is the development of the strategic brand leaders of tomorrow.
  • On this brand management route of our Marketing Masters, you will take a specialist module in Strategic Brand Management.
  • Further specialisation and an opportunity to pursue an area of branding that interests you or which you are passionate about comes in your choice of research project.
  • The 18-month route has the opportunity to undertake a 6-month placement element at the end of the 12 month taught programme.

Course detail

Core modules

Strategic Marketing Management

The business world has become increasingly unpredictable and liable to change rapidly, meaning that companies are having to grasp the changes and adapt efficiently and effectively in order to better connect with the market. As a marketing professional, you will be the forefront of a company in gathering market intelligence and facilitating a market-driven propositions. This module emphasises a market-oriented, customer driven approach to planning and implementing marketing strategies that help achieve organisational goals. You'll have the opportunity to develop knowledge and skills to undertake strategic analysis of any given markets, and create, adapt and implement marketing strategies.

Strategic Brand Management
Contemporary Consumer Engagement
The Global Professional

Your course provides you the option to select from 6 modules which may include:

Intelligent Business Information Systems

This module will review the principles and applications of information systems and business intelligence in different types of businesses and organisations. The role of information systems and business intelligence in modern operations and supply chains will be reviewed and discussed. The most recent advances in technology, their applications and implications in managing businesses will be discussed. Different types of information and enterprise systems and software will be reviewed and discussed in this module. Issues to be considered in the implementation and use of these packages will be highlighted.

Managing Sustainable Challenges
Managing Employee Relations
Global Business and Human Rights
Emotional Intelligence for the Effective Leader
Management Accounting

Final Project

An opportunity to pursue an area that interests you or which you are passionate about comes in your choice of project. You have a choice of three routes: Research Route, Consultancy Route and New Venture Creation Route (subject to tutor approval).

Research Route

Research Methods

This module aims to provide you with foundation concepts of research methods to prepare you to conduct your own research. It will introduce you to different types of research approaches available to researchers, how to formulate good research questions, how to review academic literature in the research process, how to select the appropriate data collection techniques, how to carry out the data analysis and write-up. The module should provide a solid basis for you to develop your skills further in your own research project.

Individual Research Project

Consultancy Route

Consultancy Skills

This module prepares you for the Group Consultancy Project. It introduces the theory underpinning the process of consultancy in organisations. The module will analyse various models of consultancy and you will be given an opportunity to explore different stages in the consultancy cycle including: the purpose of consultancy in business context, project scoping and contracting, information gathering, analysis and report, action planning, implementation, review and exiting.

Group Consultancy Project

New Venture Creation

Launch a venture

The module provides you with the opportunity to take the practical steps to initiate a new venture or facilitate growth and innovation in an existing venture. The focus is on developing an understanding of business practicalities through action, reflection and case study. The module encourages you to acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes for practice, recognising that you may be at different stages and working on different issues at the same time. Supervision and action learning sets provide flexible support to enable self directed learning to facilitate start up and business development initiatives with existing businesses.

New Venture Creation

MSc Professional Practice Placement

The Professional Practice module gives you an opportunity to reflect on your personal and professional development and put theory into practice through professional work experience. This route must be chosen at the point of application by selecting the specific (Professional Practice) route as the placement adds a further 6 months to your duration of study. Due to the competitive nature of the placement route the Professional Practice course has limited availability and places are capped.

Placements are not guaranteed and are secured through a competitive process. You may be required to undertake formal application processes and interviews with placement providers in order to successfully secure a work placement.

Assessment of this module is in the form of a reflective log.

Entry requirements

Entry requirements for Professional Practice courses are normally:

  • An Honours degree (2:1 or above) or equivalent professional qualification, in any subject.
  • Applicants with other appropriate professional qualifications and/or experience will be considered on an individual basis.

If your first language is not English, you will need to meet the minimum requirements of an English Language qualification. The minimum for IELTS is 7.0 overall with no element lower than 6.5 (a minimum of TOEFL 550 (Computer Based Toefl 213) score) or equivalent. Read more about the University’s entry requirements for students outside of the UK on our International Entry Requirements page.

THE Business School of the Year


Huddersfield Business School is the Times Higher Education Business School of the Year 2023.

In December 2023 we were named Business School of the Year 2023 at the Times Higher Education Awards. The award recognises our work in embedding the School in the local region, supporting communities and enhancing organisations. Judges commended us for our “very clear purpose and identity” and programmes of work, which “aligned brilliantly with the distinctiveness of the region”. “The school has delivered fantastic evidence of impact and outcomes, such as job creation and high levels of engagement to the benefit of students, the local community, employers and the economy”. 

Placements


This course offers you the chance to undertake a 6 month placement at the end of the taught element. A placement can help you build on the knowledge and skills developed on the course.

The placement is a valuable tool that can enhance your employability and help you to develop as an individual. It is acknowledged that graduates with work experience are generally much more attractive to employers.

Our Employability and Placements Office are available to support you in finding placement opportunities and can provide advice in areas such as interview skills and preparing CVs and covering letters.

Your career


Previous graduates from courses in this subject area have gone on to work in a variety of roles such as Advertising Account Executive, SEO Specialist, Market Researcher, Digital Marketer, PPC Specialist, Social Media Manager, Product Manager, UX Designer and Web Content Manager.*

*Source: Prospects
**Percentage of graduates from the School of Business, Education and Law who are in work and/or further study fifteen months after graduating (HESA Graduate Outcomes 21/22, UK domiciled graduates).

91.3%** Graduates employed

Student support

​At the University of Huddersfield, you'll find support networks and services to help you get ahead in your studies and social life. Whether you study at undergraduate or postgraduate level, you'll soon discover that you're never far away from our dedicated staff and resources to help you to navigate through your personal student journey. Find out more about all our support services.

Important information

Although we always try and ensure we deliver our courses as described, sometimes we may have to make changes for the following reasons

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