The master’s specialisation in Marketing consists of core courses, seminars, electives and a master’s thesis distributed over five blocks of eight weeks each.
In block 1 you will first follow three core courses (4 credits each), that aim to build expertise in the three different areas of our program (marketing management, customer experience, and customer insights). In the Branding & Product Management course, you will gain a deep understanding of branding and how to develop a strong brand identity that resonates with customers and sets your business apart from competitors. Furthermore, you will learn how to create a customer-centric culture that prioritizes the customer experience at every touchpoint in the course Managing Omnichannel Experiences. Finally, in the Customer Intelligence course you will understand how you can collect data about your customers, using various methods, including surveys, focus groups, and social media listening.
In block 2, you continue with a core course (Marketing Analytics and Data Visualization), in which you learn how to use analytical tools and software to analyze customer data. It also includes data visualization tools and predictive analytics. You also choose two electives (4 credits each). One of these electives has to be a marketing course, while the other can be an economics and business course. There is a variety of marketing elective courses, such as Engaging Customers Through Digital Marketing, and Marketing & Sales Alignment that will help you to further develop your skills.
Seminars are the most important component of the master’s specialisation. For these intensive courses with a maximum group size of 24 students, active participation and strong commitment are essential. You start with your first seminar Strategic Marketing Leadership in block 3 (10 credits), which combines a hands-on marketing strategy simulation (StratSim) with discussion-based sessions (lectures, coaching, and cases). It will teach students how marketing analytics can be connected to strategic decision-making, how to balance the short term and the long term, and how to make decisions under uncertainty. As such, the simulation bridges the “theory” and the “practice” of strategic marketing and students will also gain soft skills and teamwork skills (learning how to divide roles, adopt decision processes and joint efforts to make better decisions).
In block 4, you can choose a seminar in order to specialise in a topic of your interest, such as Marketing in a Globalized World, Marketing Meets Society, Designing New Products and Experiences, Leveraging Insights to Create Customer Value. Our experienced lecturers will present insightful marketing cases during class, and introduce guest lecturers with a proven marketing practice track record who are happy to share their experience with you. You will be expected to present excerpts of literature or case applications, ask questions, express doubts, and share ideas in class discussions.
You should already start to think about the research subject of your Master’s thesis in December and the last three blocks will be (partially) dedicated to the writing of your Master thesis, which is based on research you have conducted yourself under close supervision of a member of our academic staff.
Curriculum
The curriculum consists of:
- 34% marketing management
- 33% customer experience
- 33% customer insights
The following table provides an overview of the preliminary curriculum for the academic year 2024-2025 across blocks and areas:
| Marketing Management | Customer Experience | Customer Insights |
Block 1 | Branding & Product Management (core course) | Managing Omnichannel Experiences (core course) | Customer Intelligence (core course) |
Block 2 | Marketing & Sales Alignment (elective) | Engaging Customers Through Digital marketing (elective) | Marketing Analytics and Data Visualization (core course) |
Block 3 | Seminar Strategic Marketing Leadership (core seminar) Master thesis | Seminar Strategic Marketing Leadership (core seminar) Master thesis | Seminar Strategic Marketing Leadership (core seminar) Master thesis |
Block 4 | Marketing Meets Society (elective seminar) Marketing in a Globalized World (elective seminar) Master thesis | Designing New Products and Experiences (elective seminar
Master thesis | Leveraging Insights to Create Customer Value (elective seminar)
Master thesis |
Block 5 | Master thesis | Master thesis | Master thesis |
Study schedule
The Take-Off is the introduction programme for all new students at Erasmus School of Economics. During the Take-Off you will meet your fellow students, get acquainted with our study associations and learn all the ins and outs of your new study programme, supporting information systems and life on campus and in the city.
The emphasis on this course is to use marketing research to aid to managerial decision making. Hence, we will focus our attention on the interpretation of statistical results in the applied aspects of various research techniques unique to marketing data. This is not a course on statistics and hence no attempt will be made to prove statistical theorems or derive mathematical solutions to statistical problems. However, this course builds heavily on prior knowledge on statistical methods and extends this to methods that are frequently used in marketing research. In particular, we will focus on ANOVA, linear regression models, choice models and factor analysis.
A brand is often considered to be the company’s most valuable asset, although the origin of this value resides in the mind of the consumer. This Branding course takes a strong consumer‐based view on branding, so we will discuss the foundation of branding in consumer behavior and consumer psychology. The course provides insight into how consumers perceive brands and the roles these brands play in their everyday lives.
We will look at product and service brands and we will look at brands and branding in international consumer markets as well as in international industrial markets. We will focus on the value of brands, brand associations, consumer‐brand relationships, brand building strategies, the leverage of brand value, brand architecture, and brand image measurement. Although the basis for our approach is the consumer, we will continuously translate these consumer insights into operational and strategic brand management practice.
We will build a strong theoretical foundation by studying journal articles about brands and branding, but we will continuously translate the models and concepts of this theory to practice by means of short articles from the business press, discussions on company's branding strategies (including several guest presentations by brand designers and brand managers) and practical team assignments. Apart from instructive and interesting, this course has the potential to be a lot of fun! We are confronted with brands every single day, and it is challenging to explore the processes by which these are built and communicated to you.
In this course, you will be exploring the exciting world of sales. As you know, ‘sales’ is no longer stigmatized by greasy door-to-door salesmen utilizing slimy tactics and techniques to con their customers out of cash (remember the “always be closing” speech from Alec Baldwin? Google it). Sales is a global and thriving enterprise at the heart of everything we do. Think about it: the sales department is often the only profit-generating function in an organization! ‘Sales’ is also relevant to our personal and professional lives, as we all use persuasion to promote ourselves and our ideas. Whether you are interviewing for a job, sharing your ideas with friends/colleagues, or preparing assignments for this course—you are selling! This course therefore covers a broad range of topics and competences related to your career in business and marketing whether you will be working in a sales role or not.
Specifically, this course will cover key topics including
1. Define a research topic from acdemeic and managerial points of view
2. Position the research topics and highlight the contributions to academic theories and business practices
3. Develop the conceputal frameork and hypotheses
4. Use reliable and valid measures to validate the research.
5. Types of Data and Analysis
To achieve its learning goals, this seminar combines a hands-on marketing strategy simulation (StratSim) with discussion-based sessions (lectures, coaching, and cases), which allows us to offer you important insights that can become the cornerstone of a career in marketing, consulting, corporate strategy, or entrepreneurship.
In particular, we will embrace four common tension points in marketing strategy:
- The tension between the short and the long term
- The tension between targeted and focused marketing efforts (i.e., a local approach) and mass market appeal (i.e., a global approach)
- The tension between volume and profit margin
- The tension between insights and evidence, and the need for assumptions and intuition when making decisions under uncertainty
Thus, we will make strategic marketing decisions for simulated firms and for a total of 7-8 simulated years, which will allow us to feel and practice how to handle these tensions.
Students choose one of the listed seminars:
- Seminar Developing and Marketing New Products
- Seminar Customer Intelligence and CRM
- Seminar Global Brand Strategy
- Seminar Omnichannel Marketing
- Digital Marketing
- other Economics and Business master's course
Students choose the listed course and one other Economics and Business master’s course, with the exception of the core courses from the specialisation Data Science and Marketing Analytics.
The thesis is an individual assignment about a subject from your Master's specialisation. More information about thesis subjects, thesis supervisors and the writing process can be found on the Master thesis website.
Disclaimer
The overview above provides an impression of the curriculum for this programme for the academic year 2025-2026. It is not an up-to-date study schedule for current students. They can find their full study schedules on MyEUR. Please note that minor changes to this schedule are possible in future academic years.