Overview
The increase in the collection and analysis of Big Data, - extremely large sets of information, such as social media comments or online product reviews - can provide valuable insight to consumer behaviours and preferences. As a result, businesses need market research analysts who are able to handle data and apply it to real-world marketing contexts.
This course is designed to provide students with a thorough understanding of the industrial and scientific relevance of marketing analytics and their application in strategic and operational decision making for organisations that use Big Data. It's been developed to equip you with the practical, evaluative and analytical skills to allow you, as a future Marketing Manager, to influence and develop strategy and performance within organisations, as an expert in marketing analytics.
The course is multidisciplinary, combining the Stirling Management School’s expertise in marketing, business management and leadership with computing expertise. A key feature of the course is an Industry Partnership and Action Learning approach through consultancy projects with industry. To finish your studies, you'll undertake a three-month project giving you an opportunity to apply in the concepts and theories you've worked on during the course to a real-life topic.
We are AACSB accredited
The University of Stirling is accredited by AACSB International in recognition of our excellence in business education. This puts the University of Stirling Management School among the top 6% of business schools globally.
Preparing business leaders of the future
Postgraduate education at the University of Stirling Management School goes beyond text books and lecture rooms, we also focus on your personal and professional development.
Our unique Flying Start Leadership Programme equips you with the awareness, knowledge and techniques essential for building a successful career in this big data age. These range from practical skills, like effective public speaking, to developing ways to work under pressure in difficult situations and manage conflict. Find out more about Flying Start.
The course is tailored for those who plan to pursue a career in the field of Marketing Analytics, as well as those seeking professional development or career change. It answers the industry’s demand for a skilled pool of graduates who can apply data science to solve marketing challenges.
You’ll work on real-world projects with key organisations who are using marketing analytics for strategic development. Our extensive network of external organisations across all sectors provides opportunities to build your knowledge, skills and experience for a successful career in marketing analytics roles.
80% of our research impact in Business and Management Studies is classed as world leading or internationally excellent (REF 2021).
Members of our academic staff regularly publish in journals such as:
- British Journal of Management
- Journal of Marketing Management
- European Journal of Marketing
- Journal of Business Ethics
- Journal of Advertising
- Industrial Marketing Management
- Marketing Intelligence and Planning
- Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services
Our staff consistently serve as conference and track chairs at international marketing and management conferences and hold editorial posts across a wide-variety of academic journals. Notably, current members of staff regularly provide consultation to industry in high-profile issues such as the horse meat scandal, the role of marketing towards children, and the issues facing the high street retailers across the UK.
Entry requirements
A minimum of a second class honours degree or equivalent. Applicants without these formal qualifications but with significant appropriate/relevant work/life experience are encouraged to apply. No background in business is required but you will need to have a strong interest in marketing and data analytics to get the most from the course.
Other routes of entry
If you don't currently meet our academic requirements, INTO University of Stirling offers a variety of preparation programmes that can earn you the qualifications and skills you need to progress onto some of our courses. Explore INTO University of Stirling to see the pathway and pre-masters routes available.
International entry requirements
If English is not your first language you must have one of the following qualifications as evidence of your English language skills:
- IELTS Academic or UKVI 6.0 with a minimum of 5.5 in each sub-skill.
- Pearson Test of English (Academic) 60 overall with a minimum of 59 in each sub-skill.
- IBT TOEFL 78 overall with a minimum of 17 in listening, 18 in reading, 20 in speaking and 17 in writing.
See our information on English language requirements for more details on the language tests we accept and options to waive these requirements.
If you need to improve your English language skills before you enter this course, our partner INTO University of Stirling offers a range of English language courses. These intensive and flexible courses are designed to improve your English ability for entry to this degree.
Find out more about our pre-sessional English language courses.
Course details
The course will teach you how to interpret the marketing data generated by businesses and how to effectively communicate your findings to inspire better ways of working. This course addresses the need for industry to have more managers with marketing analytics skills. Marketing Analytics opens up careers in diverse areas such as Marketing Management, Operations Planning, Sustainability, Customer-Relationship Management, Supply-Chain-Management, Process Improvement, or Disruption and Change Management.
Modules
The module information below provides an example of the types of course module you may study. The details listed are for the academic year that starts in September 2024. Modules and start dates are regularly reviewed and may be subject to change in future years.
Course Details
Teaching is carried out a through a mix of lectures, tutorials, case studies, role playing, computer simulations, guest speakers and company projects as well as fieldwork exercises and site visits, when possible.
The course uses a variety of assessment methods ranging from individual assignments, group assignments, class tests, examinations, individual and/or group presentations, research design and marketing reports.
Assignments and essays are used to test research skills with a strong emphasis on critical analysis and reflective insights. The assignments also provide the opportunity to develop and assess your problem identification and management communication skills and capability of using key software packages; presentations are used to test your oral communication skills and assess your capability for case study analysis.
You can expect to have around 20 contact hours per 10-credit module each semester and 40 contact hours per 20-credit module. This can add up to between 10 and 15 hours of classroom contact in any week.
You'll be expected to work, either on your own or in a group, for at least another 20 hours a week to be able to complete all of the tasks expected of you.
Dr Keri Davies is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing and a member of the Institute for Retail Studies at the University of Stirling. He is currently the Programme Director for the MSc Marketing. In addition to his academic credentials, Dr Davies has worked for the Town and Country Planning Association and he was elected to the Scottish Regional Board of the Cooperative Group in 2011-2012. His research interests include the retail change in Pacific Asia, and the development and role of community and food cooperatives in different regions of the world.
Dr Anupam Singh is a Lecturer in Digital Marketing, Stirling Management School. His research interests lie at the intersection between data science, sustainability, and Marketing. He uses text mining, machine learning, and deep learning to understand consumer behaviour in areas such as sustainable consumption.
Dr Edgar is a Senior Lecturer in Management, Work and Organisation, and the Associate Dean of Learning and Teaching, Stirling Management School. His teaching interests lie in Information Systems Management, Project Management and Business Excellence. He is a founding member of the Scottish Quality Management Centre, KTP Provider, University of Stirling.
Dr Erdem is an Associate Professor of Economics and the Postgraduate Research Director of Stirling Management School. She is also a member of Stirling Behavioural Science Centre and Applied Choice Research Group, and a steering group member of the University of Stirling's two research programmes: the Global Food Security Research Programme and the Health and Behavioural Research Programme. Outside academia, she serves as an expert member of the Social Science Research Committee of the UK's Food Standards Agency, a non-ministerial government department of the UK to support decisions about public health at policy-level.
Dr Kane is a research-active Senior Lecturer in Business Analytics, with interests in analytics, data science and artificial intelligence. His primary research area is in the interactions between businesses and people. He has particular interests in Free and Open-Source Software for Medical Informatics and Large-Scale AI systems that perform Business and Societal functions. His background is both academic having published across these areas, and business focused; with work having been undertaken in consultancy capacities for some of the most innovative organisations in the UK. The rollout of business implementations of AI systems that address the ethical questions these systems raise are of interest both to his artificial intelligence training and his business background.
Professor Tinson’s research interests focus on generating insight into youth consumer behaviour. This research is both international and national as evidenced in her published work and conference presentations. Wider dissemination of and interest in her research has also been demonstrated by invited presentations as well as media attention and expert opinion to practitioner publications, she is often in the press e.g. The Times, The Scotsman, The Herald, Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday and on radio (e.g. BBC Business, You and Yours and BBC Radio Scotland, BBC News drive). She also appeared on Channel 4 SuperShoppers in May 2019. Her research is motivated by an interest in how transition impacts consumption and identity formation within families/groups. The contexts for this work have included rituals e.g. high school prom, as well as sport fandom and music. Her work often involves practitioners (e.g. The National Wallace Monument), and she has been successful in securing project funding from a range of organisations including Barclays, Associa, Tpoll and Channel 4.
Dr Brownlee is a Lecturer in the Data Science Research Group within Computing Science and Mathematics at Stirling, and also a Visiting Fellow in Civil and Building Engineering at Loughborough University. He is interested in value-added optimisation: techniques that yield optimal or near-optimal solutions but also reveal underlying information about the problem to help people make informed decisions. His main focus is in metaheuristics, including evolutionary algorithms and estimation of distribution algorithms; related issues such as fitness modelling (and mining such models), handling constraints and multiple objectives, and decision support. He works in application areas including scheduling and simulation-based optimisation in civil engineering and transport, and in art.
Fees and funding
University of Stirling alumni will automatically be awarded a fee waiver for the first year of Masters studies through our Stirling Alumni Scholarship.
Applicants from the UK or Republic of Ireland who hold a first-class honours degree or equivalent will automatically be awarded a £2,000 scholarship through our Postgraduate Merit Scholarship.
If you need to extend your period of study, you may be liable for additional fees.
If you are studying part time, the total course fee will be split over the years that you study. The total fee will remain the same and will be held at the rate set in your year of entry.
For more information on courses invoiced on an annual fee basis, please read our tuition fee policy.
Eligible students could receive a scholarship worth between £4,000-£7,000. See our range of generous scholarships for international postgraduate students.
If you need to extend your period of study, you may be liable for additional fees.
If you are studying part time, the total course fee will be split over the years that you study. The total fee will remain the same and will be held at the rate set in your year of entry.
For more information on courses invoiced on an annual fee basis, please read our tuition fee policy.
Postgraduate tuition fee loans
This course is eligible for a postgraduate tuition fee loan from one of the UK’s governments. See the Scholarships and funding section, below, for more details.
Additional costs
There are some instances where additional fees may apply. Depending on your chosen course, you may need to pay additional costs, for example for field trips. Learn more about additional fees.
Funding
If you have the talent, ability and drive to study with us, we want to make sure you make the most of the opportunity – regardless of your financial circumstances.
Learn more about available funding opportunities or use our scholarship finder to explore our range of scholarships.
Postgraduate tuition fee loans
Scottish students may be eligible to apply to the Students Award Agency for Scotland (SAAS) for loans of up to £11,500 to cover tuition fees and associated living costs.
English students can apply for a loan of up to £12,167 each year as part of the Postgraduate Masters Loan Scheme.
Welsh students can apply for financial support of up to £18,770 as a combination of grant and loan from Student Finance Wales.
Northern Irish students can apply for a postgraduate tuition fee loan of up to £6,500 from Student Finance NI.
International students may be able to gain additional funding from loan providers.
If you’re domiciled in the UK, you can typically apply to your relevant funding body for help with living costs. This usually takes the form of student loans, grants or bursaries, and the amount awarded depends upon your personal circumstances and household income.
International (including EU) students won’t normally be able to claim living support through SAAS or other UK public funding bodies. You should contact the relevant authority in your country to find out if you’re eligible to receive support.
We aim to be as flexible as possible, and offer a wide range of payment methods - including the option to pay fees by instalments. Learn more about how to pay
After you graduate
A 2014 report by Egon Zehnder and the Kellog School of Management states that “all leaders need a working knowledge of data science” and the marketing industry is no exception. Further, the US Bureau of Labour Statistics is predicting employment of market research analysts to grow 18% from 2019 to 2029, a higher rate than the average for all occupations.
Through this course, you'll acquire knowledge, skills and experience for a successful career in roles requiring good understanding of marketing analytics and data-driven decision-making. These may include:
- strategic Planning or Sustainability Analytics teams;
- customer Insight or Marketing Analytics teams;
- finance, Pricing or other Technical Analytics teams.
After having completed other related courses, our graduates have gone on to work with well-known brands and with organisations in countries such as Japan, China, Netherlands, Australia, South Africa, Switzerland, Germany, Mexico and India. They're currently contributing to the performance of organisations such as: Yves Saint Laurent, Nokia, Unilever, eBay, Pepsico, Bloomberg, NCR Corporation, Intelligent Media Ltd, Nestle, Capital Group UK, Google and more.
In an on-going survey by The Data Lab of organisations across all sectors in Scotland, 44% of the organisations indicate that the biggest constraint to develop a data-driven decision-making approach is the lack of a compelling business case and lack of the right skills and access to training. This demonstrates the need for capability building in this area not only in Scotland but at an international level.
The University of Stirling Management School has a dedicated Employability Manager and from the very beginning of the course your career is our focus.
MSc Marketing graduates in the past three years are currently employed as:
- Marketing and Communications Officer, Stirling Council (UK)
- Sales Consultant, Yves Saint Laurent (UK)
- Marketing Communications Associate, Eugenides Foundation (Greece)
- Global Sales, Karma Medical Products (Taiwan)
- Social Media Manager, Liquorice - Digital Innovation for Brands (South Africa)
Building on that foundation, alumni of the University of Stirling’s MSc Marketing who graduated between five and ten years ago have since advanced into some of the following positions:
- Brand Manager, Unilever (Greece)
- Senior PR Specialist, National Education Association (USA)
- Sales and Marketing Executive, Alma Lasers (Japan)
- Senior Marketing Specialist, Symantec (Mexico)
- Account Manager, Cheil (Taiwan)
- Account Executive, McCann Erickson (Greece)
- Senior Lecturer, University of Roehampton (UK)
Some of our more established alumni are currently leading and shaping marketing strategy across many different sectors:
- Marketing Manager, Nestle (Greece)
- Supply Chain Manager, Aibel Pte Ltd (Singapore)
- Director of Marketing and E-Business, Elsevier (Hong Kong)
- International Sales Manager, Importaco, S.A. (Spain)
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