Module Code - Title:
MK4025
-
MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
Year Last Offered:
2026/7
Hours Per Week:
Grading Type:
N
Prerequisite Modules:
Rationale and Purpose of the Module:
Marketing Communications is reposnsible for creating and communicating the public face and value of products, brands and even entire corporations. This module will introduce students to traditional marketing communications theory, explore the influence of international institutions of consumer culture in underpinning meaning in marketing communications, and demonstrate how organisations work to build brands through communications.
Syllabus:
This module is organised around three loose themes: traditional marketing understandings of communications, cultural understandings of marketing communications, and cultural strategy and brand building. These themes will necessarily incorporate discussions of transportation models of communications and hierarchies of effects, the study of meaning and of the transfer of meaning from culture to commercial offerings, the nature of brands and the use of cultural strategy to build brands.
Learning Outcomes:
Cognitive (Knowledge, Understanding, Application, Analysis, Evaluation, Synthesis)
On successful completion of this module, students will be able to:
Articulate an understanding of marketing communications based on traditional transportation models, uses and gratifications theory, and the study of meaning.
Describe the expanding role of audiences as co-creators of communications meaning.
Examine the impact that marketing communications have on international markets and on our daily lives.
Offer a critique of the approaches taken by marketers to marketing communications.
Affective (Attitudes and Values)
On successful completion of this module, students will be able to:
Resolve tensions between traditional and critical attitudes towards marketing communications.
Demonstrate key personal skills in respect of individual task management, teamworking, self-presentation, communication, and critical evaluation.
Psychomotor (Physical Skills)
N/A
How the Module will be Taught and what will be the Learning Experiences of the Students:
This module will be taught through a combination of research-led formal lectures and task-oriented tutorials. The assessment is challenge-driven as students are required in group-based activities to produce and defend examples of marketing communications across a range of possible contexts.
Prime Texts:
Smith, P. and Z. Zook (2024)
Marketing Communications:Integrating online and offline, customer
engagement and digital technologies
, Kogan Page
Other Relevant Texts:
Nesterenko, V., Miskiewicz, R. and Abazov, R., (2023)
Marketing communications in the era of digital transformation
, Virtual Economics, 6(1), pp.57-70.
Programme(s) in which this Module is Offered:
BACHELOR OF ARTS IN APPLIED LANGUAGES
BACHELOR OF ARTS IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
BACHELOR OF BUSINESS STUDIES
BACHELOR OF BUSINESS STUDIES WITH FRENCH
BACHELOR OF BUSINESS STUDIES WITH GERMAN
BACHELOR OF BUSINESS STUDIES WITH JAPANESE
BACHELOR OF BUSINESS STUDIES WITH SPANISH
Semester(s) Module is Offered:
Spring
Module Leader:
maurice.patterson@ul.ie